With many of my friends, acquaintances and relatives struggling with health problems and personal challenges, I'm experiencing Survivor's Guilt.
My recent physical showed optimal cholesterol levels, blood pressure and organ function. These astounding results can be attributed to nothing but luck. I eat crap and far too much of it, neglect exercise, generally live a life redolent of bad habits and behaviors, so far emerging unscathed from a gene pool as murky as anybody's.
Oh, I know eventually the piper must be paid. I fully intend to forestall inevitable complications by reinventing myself, starting tomorrow. Still, approaching fifty, even if it's all downhill from here, my balance sheet comes out ahead. Never a broken bone. No serious illness. If it wasn't for reproductive organs, no hospitalizations.
This strange protective bubble extends over my four children, who I gave birth to with no fertility problems and abbreviated labor, which is why I excuse my reproductive organs for causing minor trouble at this late date. Not only have none of my kids required splints, surgery, emergency room visits or an orthodontist, three of them have never even had a cavity.
It's not just health. I remain convinced bad things just don't happen to me.
Once, discussing this phenomenon with my brother, he reminded me of a few unpleasant life experiences. Retrieved from handy brain compartments rarely opened, I immediately pooh-poohed them as inconsequential inconveniences, pittances in the larger realm of human tragedy.
He tried the positive-attitude-impacting-perception argument, which I also disputed. Nobody likes to complain and wallow in misery more than me. After all, was I not just complaining that other people have better things to complain about? Wasn't my twisted logic that I suffered life's unfairness because I get more than my fair share? It's like being a perpetual adolescent identifying with Paris Hilton.
Furthering the Little Miss Sunshine denial, I reminded him of a childhood incident, where I screeched for fifteen minutes after stubbing my toe, the classic metaphor for insignificant misfortune. My mother and brother, arms crossed, calmly observed the scene.
"What exactly is her problem?" My brother asked, shaking his head.
"Let her go," my mother said. "I guess it makes her feel better."
Not exactly a full-time drama queen, my outbursts remain memorable. People still approach me, solicitously asking if things are better today. I give them a blank look, wondering "better than what?" having completely forgotten the emotional purging I forced them to endure and whatever precipitated it.
Apparently, if limiting stress is fundamental to health and good fortune, my greatest blessing is selective memory.