What If...

So, I got Ringworm.

It's a fungal/bacterial skin infection that causes little circular lesions on the skin. It's contagious through direct skin contact (basically, I'd have to touch the thing on my arm and then touch your skin. Luckily, the two that I have are in places that most people wouldn't touch. That is, my upper arm and under my left nipple.) Essentially, it's Athlete's Foot writ large on the hairy canvas that is my body. The Good News is that it's treatable with anti-fungal cream.

Yeah, I'm not happy about it. I have no idea how I got it, really, but what are ya gonna do? Okay, before I get a bunch of you's shouting the same thing at me ("IT'S YOUR CAT, JACKASS!!!"), I will just say that I spoke with the vet and she pretty much said, "Honestly, Hal. You've had her for over a month. If you were gonna get it from her, you would have gotten it a lot sooner."

The truth is, you can get it from anyone or anything. And it is that fact and that fact alone that is proving to be both scary and liberating.

For those of you reading this who aren't familiar with who I am and what I'm about, I suffer from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and I am terribly germaphobic. Normally, if I have any suspicions whatsoever that you are sick, I will basically steer clear of you until I know you are cured (I'm talking colds, the flu, the plague...anything that Yours Truly can catch). Nothing personal.

But what most people don't know is that my OCD stems not so much from the fear of myself getting sick, but rather, it's the fear of getting sick and getting other people sick. The thought of getting someone like my mom or my dad or any of my closest friends sick is a thought that is more than I can bear sometimes.

And I know all about sickness.

I was sick for a good portion of my life. See, I was afflicted with Guillain-Barré syndrome when I was seven, which paralyzed me from the head down. No, it wasn't covered by the Polio vaccine. It's that rare. I lived in the hospital for over 18 weeks and had to undergo daily, excruciatingly painful physical therapy routines. And while I am pretty much able to do what everyone else can do (walk, run, play video games, etc.), I will never have the strength of a normal man and I will always have a slight limp when I walk. I have multiple scars on my feet and lower legs from all of the surgeries performed on me to keep my feet straight and prevent them from drooping down, due to the fact that all of the muscles in my feet had atrophied.

And how did I get it? Well, I got a cold. That's right! I stood next to some kid at Jewish day camp and caught his cold and it snowballed into something much, much bigger.

And yeah, I won't lie. I wonder what would have happened if I had just stood back a little farther away from this kid--even just a few inches, ya know? Would my life have been different? Would it have been easier? Harder? Would I have been a better person or a mean sonofabitch? Would I have played sports? Would I have had lots more luck with the ladies? Who knows, right? Yeah, I think about shit like that from time to time. But only occasionally. Thinking about it tends to put me in a melancholy moods. I think if I dwelled on it too often, I'd be a complete nutter.

What's even more frustrating is that every once in a while, I bump into that kid that I stood next to, that day at camp. I see him living his normal life and dancing at the clubs and I think to myself...he'll never know. And ya know what? That's okay. I think it's better that way. Yeah, my life might have been significantly different had I not stood next to him that day, but it's not his fault. And it would be despicable of me to place that kind of blame on one person's shoulders like that. It was my immune system changed the course of my life...not him.

It has taken me a long time to come to terms with that notion. After all, it's only human nature to want a black and white, concrete, This Is How It Happened explanation. We want a body to blame. After all, gray area can be one of the most maddening places of all. Alas, though, as the old saying goes...

Shit happens.

Which leads me back to the topic of my Ringworm. I could have gotten it from anyone or anything. And depending on what effect you let that thought have on you, that can either be downright frightening or entirely liberating. For the last 20 years, I have lived in fear of getting sick.

And I gotta tell ya, I am so very fucking tired of being afraid. I am so fucking tired of not being able to function, to live my life to its fullest because I'm afraid of getting sick. And while I'm not exactly ecstatic about getting Ringworm, it's not the End of the World. I'm still alive. I'm not dying.

I think it's time to start living--really Living--with my eyes wide open; take risks and not worry about hypotheticals, Worst Case Scenarios so much. I've based nearly my entire life on What If. Fuck that!! It's time to start working on the What Is. The here. The now.

And it is not going to be an overnight fix. Twenty years of fear and paranoia is a lot to overcome. But I have to try.

It's like what Morgan Freeman said in "The Shawshank Redemption..."

Get busy livin'...or get busy dyin'.