Why My Problems Are Puny

Well, I haven't got very many of them, for one thing. Just the typical constantly careening self-esteem of a teenager, lack of any sort of romantic anything ever, a relatively minor health issue, on and off anxiety, fairly frequent social paranoia, clumsiness and a severe case of the geeks. Well, that last one isn't so much a problem as a solution. And, all in all, none of those are particularly bad.

A lot of teenagers have horrible self-images, so the fact that mine sometimes is good is definitely a good thing. Lack of romantic anything ever is hardly unusual for a sixteen year old nerd. Thyroid problems are easily medicated. The anxiety I deal with. The social paranoia is vastly improved upon by large numbers of awesome friends. The clumsiness is cute. I mean, I'm 5'9", so I could probably do some serious damage and I probably look ridiculous, but I'm saying it's cute because it makes me feel better.

And geek is fun. As is nerd. And I'm probably more nerd than geek, anyways.

There is also the oft-recommended there-are-children-starving-in-Africa method. This is basically reminding yourself that somebody else has it worse. Watching The Kiterunner, for example, will do that to a girl. Because, seriously, at least I wasn't hunted down and killed or raped. Visiting the hospital also helps. I went to see Avon today. I drove on the highway, by myself I might add, and then crawled from the exit to the parking garage, trying desperately not to get hopelessly lost (I know the hospital is very visible, but roads are confusing!).

I finally got there. The people in the hospital are so nice, Avon included, but the whole experience is still somewhat terrifying. I mean, hospitals don't bother me- I'm very comfortable with hanging bags of blood and IV lines and people in scrubs. It's just I hate the idea of being so sick that one has to go to the hospital. Illness is so utterly random. I know that it's not, really, that it's the product of genes and of environment, that there are any number of things I could be doing to keep myself healthy, but there are still the totally confusing syndromes like ITP. Idiomatic Thrombocytosis Purpleosis, as I told Avon I call it. It's scary, the way people can be here one day and gone the next. I don't like to think about it too often. It's the lack of control that bothers me. I'd like to be able to say, unequivocally, that I'm going to live for 78.6 years, have 2.5 kids and 1.3 husbands, but I can't, and, sometimes, that terrifying thought seems like more of a problem than the whole list of the ones above.