Killed the Cat

I can't get into the shower fast enough.

I'm covered in a sticky film of dried sweat, sunscreen, dust, probably splattered bugs, and a sheen of bicycle grease over the top of everything.

I haven't sidestepped and fallen into the Bog of Eternal Stench. I've gone on a lovely Sunday morning bike ride with a friend followed by a quick lesson in basic bike maintenance, followed by basking in the sunshine, followed by nearly three hours driving back to the North Country, and as I said, I can't get into the shower fast enough.

The splattered bugs, sunscreen, grit, and perspiration sluice off relatively easily, and the noise I make when I take down my hair and start to shampoo it is, well, indecent. The bike grease, however, is proving a bit more difficult without a large bottle of Lava soap. It's when I reach down to scrub at a particularly persistent bit of grime when my world comes crashing down.

There's a huge, hard lump in my calf that's never been there before.

Immediately the hysterical, anxious part of my brain (that's been reasonably quiet as of late) sounds the klaxons and OHMYGODIHAVELEGCANCER. Or OHMYGODIHAVEACYSTANDAMGOINGTONEEDSURGERY. 

Or. Or. Or.

I'm suddenly contorting in ways that would make an acrobat proud, trying to get a decent look at my leg. Panic is, by now, a familiar thing to me, but it's still unsettling when your breath gets raspy and you have a hard time swallowing. I'm trying to suck in enough oxygen to keep upright while simultaneously running my fingers over the knot in my calf when it occurs to me. This isn't cancer. Of course it's not cancer. It's not a cyst either.

"Kelly, you crazy bitch." I mutter to myself, successfully scraping the grease from a newly toned muscle in my calf.

***

"I'm afraid of . . . losing myself."

I cringe at the expression. As if therapy wasn't bad enough, I never, never manage to get through a session without resorting to cliches. 

My shrink has the most perfect skeptical eyebrows in the world. She pauses, setting her pen down next to her. "Really?"

I hate therapy. I hate it. I hate having to articulate my emotions out loud to someone and have them scrutinized. I hate the guilt that comes along with having to go the therapy and knowing that the guilt is just a construction and that the majority of Americans have anxiety and seeking treatment was a brave thing. 

Mainly I hate that therapy makes me feel inarticulate. It makes me feel stupid. 

I sigh, grit my teeth, and tell myself It's part of the process. "I get passionately, intensely, a little obsessively interested in things. I can't tell you what I'll be interested in down the road."

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but what have you been interested in in the past?"

"God. Why we exist. How stars are formed. Quantum mechanics. Sea turtle migration. The guidelines the Romance Writers of America set down for good romance novels. Lincoln." 

"So, what, exactly, are you afraid of losing?"

"Curiosity."

"So you've been suffering from panic attacks for your entire life, and from the way you describe them, they're pretty intense ones. I mean, leg cancer, the kind you thought you had, isn't a thing. You're a smart woman. You know that. Now imagine a life without them. A life where you never have trouble swallowing or breathing or have your heart race because you're scared of something that's irrational. Also imagine that in order to do so you only, say, watch one lecture on quantum mechanics instead of " she checks her notes "seventeen. Is it worth it?"

I make myself look her dead in the eyes when I answer.

"No."

***

I bookended my weekends in similar ways. Namely, by getting so involved in a project that I forgot to eat or drink anything. 

Friday, I spent  literally the entire day having only consumed a pot of tea and two pieces of toast after getting deeply involved in A Discovery of Witches--to digress, there's a(nother) post coming about vampire literature and dominance/submission in relationships-- Sunday I made an equally poor choice by going on a long bike ride, eating some scrambled eggs and then becoming so absorbed in learning to fix my bike, cleaning my house, listening to The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes that I forgot to eat anything aside from my breakfast scrambled eggs and didn't drink anything aside from a glass of lemonade in the afternoon. At 8:30pm, I looked up from my obsessive bathtub-scrubbing to realize ohshitI'mstarvingandparched.

This is not an unusual state of affairs. I've never been particularly good at taking care of myself, but I'm never as bad as when I'm reading a book that interests me, learning a new skill, chasing down a new thought. On those days (which happen a few times a month) I am so involved in my own head and my own thoughts that I neglect just about everything I'm supposed to get done during the course of the day from eating something to going to the gym to taking the garbage out.

***

Have I mentioned that I hate therapy? 

I mean, therapy is good. It forces me to talk about my feelings instead of just repressing them. It's helped me get better to point where I only go now and again for a mental health touch-up, some detail work to buff out the rough edges, but I hate therapy. 

I hate how therapy requires that I look at all of my personality, Not just the bits and pieces I like, the parts I feel like I can list proudly to friends and family, but all of the parts of my personality. The times when I don't leave my house for days because I'm so involved in a project. 

Part of me is inclined to let myself off easily, to claim artistic temperment+OCD and write it off. "This," I want to say "is part of who I am. And you can like it or lump it, but realize that being a friend of mine means that sometimes I will blow off your party to finish a project. That I will turn up at your house famished because I've been reading for two days straight and didn't remember to eat. That haven't done laundry in three weeks and am only doing it now because I'm entirely out of underwear and the reason I didn't do it is because I'm trying to launch a new blog."

In summation, deal with it.

Despite all of my therapeutic self-examination this was the way I approached my (marginally) healthier obsessions until recently, while I was having a conversation with a friend who said (simply, mildly, devastatingly) "I don't like you when you're like that. It's like seeing you panic about the stove or the iron, but worse, because you don't get it yet."

In summation, you are obsessive about completing projects, about being the best. You are addicted to perfection. 

It's, ah, really something to have someone tell you (simply, mildly, devastatingly) that the qualities you value most in yourself, your ambition, your concentration, your mental prowess, may be nothing more than yet another coping mechanism. 

They may just be one more way of checking to make sure the stove is on.