Fun & Famous

24 THOUGHTS OF A DOOMSDAYER SLASH HYPOCHONDRIAC

You wouldn't say it because I always look so cheerful, and so handsome, and so balanced, and so slim, and so cozy and positive, but deep in my heart, I am a doomsayer. Plus a hypochondriac.

For me, the glass is half empty, and if a disaster can happen, it will happen. Moreover, with every little pain and every physical discomfort, I have something serious wrong with me. Probably cancer. In any case, something terrible that means my last days are numbered. By the way, it's just a matter of realism as far as I'm concerned, because nowadays people are dropping like flies. I don't know how it is with your timeline, but in mine, I always read about someone (a family member with) cancer or another dreadful disease. And on TV, there are plenty of programs about terrible diseases and women dying at 35. And then there's of course the book ‘A Woman Goes to the Doctor‘.

However, for others, I am that rather annoying doomsayer chick who never has anything. But then I think: yes, that's what you say now. Just wait! Tomorrow you'll be at my sickbed! Here are my daily thoughts in a row.
1. I always have to say goodbye to my partner and my children when I leave, because I am sure that I will end up under a tram or that the house will catch fire with my partner and children inside. So if I haven't said goodbye properly enough, I come back to really say goodbye.

2. I see A SUSPICIOUS MOLE EVERY DAY. Well, this is also because I had a small melanoma this summer. Since then, I am sure that my skin is secretly one big hotspot. But then I go to the dermatologist, ready for the bad news that I have three melanomas again, but then he sees nothing. Wait, what?

3. I can't sleep I can't sleep I can't sleep. See, I can't sleep. And tomorrow I have to be up at 7:00, so that's going to be one big disaster, that's clear now.

4. Soon I will have a serious illness and we won't be able to pay the medical bills and we'll go bankrupt and have to live on the street. And then I will also have a serious illness.

5. I dare not watch ‘A Dime on Its Edge’, because what those people experience will definitely happen to us. We will end up in the gutter, that's for sure.

6. I also never dare to watch Addicted!, because I am myself addicted to alcohol. At least, I almost think so, because I haven't drunk for two days now and I am looking forward to a glass so much that it's not normal anymore. I think I need to check myself into a detox clinic soon and then they will of course come to film.

7. You know what it is? I have had seven fat years now, so soon the fat years will be over and it will be a big pile of misery. It's just a matter of time.

8. I met my beloved when I was 15, and that's probably because ‘upstairs’ already knew that I wouldn't make it to forty, so they let me meet The Man at a young age.

9. Only when I am dead will they bundle my columns and discover how talented I am. Was, was.

10. I regularly think about my own funeral and then I imagine how my favorite music from the past is played and how people carry my coffin and then I have to cry.

11. I am terrified of contracts. You should just never sign a contract because people always want to pull a fast one on you.

12. I don't dare to start a blog for myself because I don't know if I can and I also can't handle a potential social media scandal on my own.

13. But I do want to start a blog for myself. Other people just start a blog for themselves, they can handle their fears better. Correction, they have no fears. Why do I have all these fears and others don't? It's just ridiculous.

14. With one foot on the sidewalk and one foot in the gutter, and if I don't do that, then I will be dead tomorrow. This is a song from Kinderen voor Kinderen and it's about how you have to walk on certain tiles and stuff because otherwise, things will end badly for you. That's me.

15. I submitted an article to a magazine and I haven't heard anything for two hours, so I am sure they are now trying to figure out how to explain to me in God's name that this article is really the worst article they have ever read and then they will of course want nothing more to do with me.

16. The plane is going to crash. And if it doesn't crash today, it will crash next time, because it is certain that it will crash, because crashing is just really something for me.

17. I am getting a cold sore I am getting a cold sore I am getting a cold sore YES, it is a cold sore.

18. We just sold our house, but the buyers will probably back out, that would really be something for us/me.

19. I have back pain and sometimes have trouble breathing. The physiotherapist says I need to exercise but I think it's something else, something serious, and I just know that the physiotherapist knows this too, but that he is trying to spare me in a strange way.

20. I had a mammogram in June and then I had nothing, but I probably really have something now. I just don't dare to examine myself, because what if I find something, then I will never safely get to the doctor on my own again.

21. Next year we are moving to our newly built house in the Houthavens, but I can't imagine what it would be like to live there, no matter how hard I try. According to my sister, that's because it's a new development area that still needs to be built, but I think it's because I will be gone before that.

22. I am really going to drink a glass of wine now, because for a doomsayer/hypochondriac, it's terrifying to write down these kinds of things. For example, I now think that by writing this text, I am jinxing everything. Or that everything that is written here will actually happen, purely and simply because I wrote it down. Jinxing = tempting the gods, so to speak.

23. Ah nice, wine. I immediately feel a bit better.

24. I think they are coming to do an intervention tomorrow.