MaMa, Catastrophizer

Catastrophe:  Any large and disastrous event of great significance; a disaster beyond expectations.

There's this idea that your parents have a lot of influence in your life.  While I tend to reject the status quo, preferring unconventional concepts to popularly held beliefs, I'm having a lot of trouble disputing this one.  You could come up with a lot more supporting documentation to back this theory than I could refuting it.  The contest would be a rout.  Common sense would suggest that someone who controls your life for most of your first ten or twelve years is going to leave an imprint on your personality.  Plus, they weigh like 150 pounds more than you do so you might as well add in the fact of physical domination.

I bent over and tweaked something in the side of my knee yesterday.  I don't think I'm a hypochondriac but I seem to bitch about my health all of the time.  I've decided not to look up the definition of "hypochondriac" this morning.  I don't want to know what it means.  

My mother was a great woman.  I'm biased, of course, but almost everyone thought she was great.  A person who always had a smile on her face and something kind to say.  She was universally liked.  I honestly can say I never heard anyone say anything negative about her, which was not the case with my father, but that huge topic is for another day.

In public.  Her persona in our family was a good deal darker.  She would be mortified to hear me say this and she would also be mortified to hear that I think she was a moderately depressed person in a time when depression was stigmatized and under-medicated.  Today everyone's on something.  It's almost cool to be crazy.  The only thing better is to be a crazy drug addict and alcoholic.

I'm three for three.

My mother catastrophized.  Whatever was happening, no matter how wonderful, was going to get worse.  If it was bad it was going to be a cataclysm.  I swear to god that woman could always find something to worry about.  My dad just got mad.  A depressive, over-protective mother and a withdrawn alcoholic father is a recipe for anxiety.

When I'm ill or injured I have a difficult time separating the rational thoughts in my rational mind with the disastrous outcomes that my emotions foresee.

"It makes absolutely no sense to worry about this," Bob says.  (Bob is a metaphor for my rational mind).

"Be afraid!   Be very, very afraid," replies Bob.  (Bob is also a metaphor for my emotional being.   What can I tell you?  I like the name Bob.  I call almost everything Bob).

My mom had ears that stuck out and dad was blind as a bat.  In a non-humorous universe I would have been born with 20/20 vision and cute well-formed ears.  

Guess what happened?