There is something wrong with me. Always something else. The mind or the body. The mind influencing the body or the body on the mind. What’s the difference? A twinge there, a nagging, a repeat offender. Am I filled with ailments? My fifth humor, the ickness. Mixed in with the bile and blood and what ever else. Too homogenized into my being to ever be leeched away. It is just a matter of where I am feeling it.

The specifics? Sure I’ll name few. Seeming insignificant quirks. One as unrelated to the other. But all part of the same disease I think.

1. My ring finger on my left hand. It feels different than all of my other digits. Bad? no. Painful? no. Just different. It stands out. And the feeling flares up now and again.
2. My eyes twitch. A spasm or localized micro seizure. left to right for less than a second. Maybe once a week. Maybe less. Still.
3. My right foot never fits as well into my shoes. Noticeably.
4. The kink in my neck is unbelievable no matter how many times I pop it.
5. I dream so vividly and realistically sometimes that I catch myself referencing dreams as reality. As simple as “I already bought this from the store, oh wait that was a dream”. But sometimes not so simple. My days are riddled with deva vu.

Oh those are small right? Those are just things about you. Ordinarily of no consequence. Lets go on.

6. I can feel my heartbeat. In my gums,, my palms, in my fingertips, when my knees rest together in bed, if any part of my contacts the other.
7. My ears ring. Concerningly not in rhythm with my heart. The waves and chorus of unhearable sound, pitched high of its own accord. I can feel its origin. Not without, but within. In the base of my skull. In the hinge of my jaw. As much a noise as it is a pressure.
8. I get headaches. Originating from a similar point. They build and build throughout the day. Incurable by any known means other than sleep. Though that’s a gamble. Sometimes the dull ache grows and I wake as though I have been struck with hammers.
9. My shoulders and neck hurt. That’s just how it is.
10. My teeth don’t fit together. I cannot bring my two front teeth to touch and so to bite anything, as squidward does his first bite of krabby patty, I must twist my lower jaw into an uncomfortable sideways position.

Now all of that seems to be just part of getting old. My telomeres shrinking. My body withering. Whatever genetic failing or past injury hath caused. But then there’s more. More wrong.

10. My heart skips in its beating. Sometimes rumbling on in my chest like a misfiring tractor. Racing when it should be still. Still when it should be racing. Astringent pains. Rarely shooting to the jaw or shoulder but still. What counts?
11. The left side of my body has been going numb, particularly at night. Was it the nicotine? The alcohol? The high sugar content of my meals that day? Will it go away. Is it still there I just only notice when my senses are dulled in the calm of bed? I don’t know. Its only happened a few times. So what?
12. The truly pulsatile tinnitus comes onto me for weeks at a time. It feels, as much as it sounds, like a helicopter is flying just outside the window or my left ear. Pounding upon my ear drum. Actually and physically berating it. My neck twinging from my ear down to my shoulder. For minutes at a time I beg that it ends. I know it will end, but still fearing it might go on. And when it leaves I can feel the muscle just waiting to spasm again. And I fight against it. Only for it come on again. Drowning the world in thump thump thumps as rapid as gunfire.
13. I wake unable to move. Akin to, but not necessarily sleep paralysis. At least not how I have read about it. I panic and fight to move even a finger. Thinking finally that the time has come when the wrong in my neck and skull has finally severed the connection between my mind and my body. There they will find me. Drooling in bed with panicked eyes. Everyday? No. Every month? No. But enough to worry.

I think the wrongness is innate. I see it in my father. In his mannerisms and thoughts. I see it in my uncles. I see it in my mother and grandmother. I wonder how many generations back the wrongness goes. From how many stained bloodlines. Am I the culmination? The lucky or forced spawn of people who know something is off, but do their everyday damnedness to conceal it. Its been getting worse as I age, for sure. And my family tends to birth young. Maybe my millenia of ancestors just passed it off before they were really sure they had it. Is it my family? Or is everyone wrong. Scared to silence. Doctor’s cannot help. Sharing doesn’t help. Is there a support group for people who just don’t seem right to themselves? I’m sure there is.

My greatest fear is that I won’t have biological children of my own. I think on a evolutionary level, to not have kids is life’s ultimate failing. It’s not just the vain thing about passing on my genes. It means someone liked me enough to copulate. It means the wrongness wasn’t so apparent in my face that it put the thought of genetic procreation with someone totally out of their minds when it comes to me. I think spiritually it is good to see your progeny. I think it is a human right and duty. I think its a kind thing to give someone else a chance at life. Even given the wrongness. It means I was a successful organism. The least I could be is a successful organism. Just multiply. That’s my only job.
It is the job of all life forms. Of course in the bounds of our intellect and society that of course means a certain level of other success’s. But really it comes down to the very core. Every cell in your body has its little function, but if it failed in one thing: to reproduce, then it is a detriment. No capillary cells? No brain cells. You can’t run out. You can’t be too few. You much be enough, at least replace yourself in the population.

Of course you could always be cancer. Too much reproduction. But there are natural mechanisms to punish that behavior. Maybe I do have cancer? I think not. Other than a benign tumor on my brain stem. I don’t see it spreading, and my cell count is good. Cancer has claimed many in my tree. Could be heart disease? And although I am an over indulger and not the best exerciser, I am only in my twenties. Could be neurological issue. A deterioration of vital nerve tissues, whether disease or a trick of the immune system.

I just know I am not right. I have something wrong with me. Something that might get a diagnoses one day, but probably not. Will it kill me?