After the Flood

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. As most of you know, the weekend before last, the first week of May, Nashville flooded. My husband and I were fine. I often complain about our tiny, old apartment, but I've been especially thankful for it now as it kept us safe and dry. We know friends who were not as lucky as us though and looking around our city has been hard.

One of the hardest things about the OCD and a crisis like this is I find myself very unable to offer my helping hands. I'm freaked out by other people's homes on a daily basis. Add standing water, possibilities of mold, etc, and I simple cannot do it. So, I haven't been part of Nashville's outpouring of support to those of its citizens that have been most affected.

We've also, as a city, needed to conserve water. Now, as someone who has OCD and washes her hands many times a day, this could have been interesting. Thankfully, I've grown to rely more on hand sanitizer over the past several months and so it didn't seem like such a big thing. (Of course, I'm not ok that Target ran out of almost all the hand sanitizer and I had to get little bottles of the kind I don't like. But go Nashvillians for conserving!)

I've been feeling very anxious lately and I'm not sure why. I'm trying to sort through my own stuff. But we are thankful that we were safe in the flood and we're praying for all those who have lost homes, possessions, family and who are just trying to put their lives back together right now.

A Wonderful Trip

Sorry I haven't written in awhile. Last weekend, my husband and I traveled to see some friends for our anniversary. We had a great time. Seeing the city of DC, catching up, eating good food, drinking good drinks. It was just a wonderful time.

The treat of the weekend was that my OCD behaved itself. It wasn't gone by any means, but I did stuff that I haven't done in a long time. I shared food, not just something I could split, but we all shared some amazing chocolate mousse. I don't share food because one of my biggest OCD fears is fever blisters. Our friends have a dog and I handled that amazingly well. I even let him lick my clothes and didn't worry about it. Most importantly, I knew that our friends were out in the world and touched things in their home without using my OCD rules, and yet, I felt completely comfortable there. I still hand sanitized like crazy, I still showered after our day at the Smithsonian. But I felt so much better about so many little things that usually get me into an OCD frenzy.

The weekend was a blessing. But it also made me sad. It was a taste of freedom and when I came home, I felt like I was headed back to prison. But I think that maybe I've held onto just a bit of the momentum that came from the weekend. It was so nice to be just a bit more free, to taste just a slice of something ever so slightly more normal.

To our friends - Thank you for the great weekend! We love and miss you!

TV

So, I was watching New Moon (don’t judge, just love me for it). Actually, I was watching some deleted scenes and in one the main character has been lost and her dad puts her in bed after she’s found. It’s very sweet. That’s not what I saw.

When he lays her in bed, he puts her in the wrong way, with her feet on the pillow, head at the end of the bed. I was watching this with a friend and I know for a fact that this meant nothing to her except for any storytelling value it may have had. For me, it started the OCD screaming. She had her shoes on and they were not only on the bed, but on her pillow! She had not just her clothes on in bed, which is hard enough for me, but she had her jacket on. When I pointed this out to my friend, she said, yeah but she was just on the dirt and that’s not as big of a deal for you. Well, she’s right. But the OCD countered with the fact that that jacket goes everywhere, to school, to the mall, out into the world of germs and now it was in her bed!

This is what it’s like for me to watch tv or movies or read books. I don’t just see the story, I see the OCD. When someone puts their feet up on a couch, I notice. When someone picks something up off the floor and just moves on, I see it. I’ve been watching Bones lately (love it!) and I notice when they touch something gross and they pull one of their lamps over. And I wonder, do they touch that later?

I guess I’m trying to show that OCD isn’t just something that I do. It’s how I see the whole world.

Some Depression I Guess

I've been feeling very blah lately. In one of my therapies last week, we talked about how I've kind of lost my fight. Trust me, it's not that I don't want to beat the OCD, it's that I'm tired and a part of me has simply given in and let it have whatever it wants. Not a good place to be. So, I need to find my fight again.

The next day, in the other therapist's office, I had a great session and gained some feelings of self-worth. Which I then connected as something I can use to help fight. But it's not enough. I'm waiting for that something to kick me into gear. I guess maybe I should go out and find it, but I'm just not sure what it is.

This isn't the best of posts, but I guess it's a reflection of my mood. I'm just so full of feeling nothing that I don't have much to write about this week. Sorry.

A Small Miracle

Recently we were visiting my far away parents. We had a wonderful time, but alas, we had some challenges too. So, my parents have 2 cats. The older one we’ve had for 11 years and her name is Dara. She’s mean, though I love her anyway, and so mostly I just spend my time playing with the littler one, Oreo, or as I prefer to call him, Kitty. Now, Kitty breaks my OCD rules. He has full run of my parents’ farm house, he goes places I am NOT ok with, and yet I still hold him, snuggle with him, even kiss him sometimes. I love this Kitty. It’s pretty pitiful.

We had only been here a day or so when one night I was just worried that there was a mouse in the kitchen. I didn’t have any concrete info to tell me this, there was just something about the way Dara looked at the kitchen stove that made me worried. But mom assured me that if it were true, Dara would be going nuts and so there was no mouse. So later, when Kitty was batting something around under and near the stove, I promised myself that it was not a mouse.

About an hour later, Dara walks into the living room, dead mouse in her mouth. I do not take this well.

At the time that Dara waltzes in with her prize, I am holding Kitty, his paw across my face and I start freaking out. What if that’s what Kitty was playing with under the stove? What if I get that terrible virus that mice very rarely carry but that I’ve heard about? What about the fact that it’s just plain gross?

My dad takes care of the mouse. I go into a panic attack. I cried. I went away from the cats. I tried to not just run and jump in the shower. But then here’s the small miracle. This is a farmhouse which has gotten mice for years. My parents don’t do a thing about it other than get rid of the mouse. There’s no cleaning, no sanitizing, nothing. And somehow, I made it and was ok with that. I didn’t have a good evening. I worried about more mice for the rest of the trip. I took an anxiety pill that night, cleaned off my face and didn’t let Kitty in to sleep with us that night (see how he breaks all the rules?). My husband had to talk me through a lot. But I didn’t make my mom scour things. I didn’t shower that night even though I felt gross. I didn’t banish Kitty away from me. I didn’t stop enjoying my parents’ home. And by the next morning, I held Kitty again. I steered clear of Dara for a couple of days, but I didn’t let the OCD run everything about the situation.

I’m still totally freaked out by mice. But I made it through one more victory.

A Day Out

Today was a rough OCD day because I was actually out in the world. I didn’t have my safety net, my husband, and I was with a bunch of people who didn’t know about the OCD and I was faced with the normal world. It was hard. I did a semester study program back in 2001 and the current students were here for their semester’s trip. So, it was an opportunity for me to see my old professors and tag along to a couple of their meetings.

Well, I didn’t know tagging along meant having 3 people in my car with me. I didn’t know it would mean opening doors and not feeling like I could hand sanitize. I didn’t know that one girl would leave her phone in my car and of course ask for my keys so she could go get it. I never hand my keys over. And then I had to just put them in my purse!

I ended up having a pretty good day. I did a really good job of just pushing the OCD aside and saying I’d deal with it later. But dealing with it later sucks. It meant a shower. It meant my husband spraying down the car and cleaning stuff for me. It will mean cleaning all the stuff in my purse off, and of course spraying my purse with Febreeze Anti-Microbial, but that’s pretty standard when I take my purse out in public. The shower is fairly normal too after an intense time out. But the car and the inside of the purse and the keys and everything…well, it was just a big day for OCDumb.

An Overview...Kind Of

I have been living with OCD for a little more than 2 years. I’m 28 and it’s somewhat unusual for it to hit so late, but it’s hit me and hard. I had a completely different life before this. I went on mission trips to third world countries and didn’t think twice about it. I traveled all over Europe, trains and planes and gross hostels and sometimes by myself. And I didn’t give the germs a second thought. And then it all changed. The severity has gradually gotten worse over the past 2 years, but the onset has been pretty rapid in the span of my life.

I’m not sure how to describe my OCD. No wait, that’s not true. There’s one word that does it nicely: fear. My obsessions revolve around germs. I see germs where most people wouldn’t even dream of looking. I notice things that I guarantee your eyes miss. I follow actions, I follow the path of the germs after someone touches something “dirty.” And I’m terrified. I’m afraid that these little invisible germs are going to harm me or ruin my life in some way. Usually, it’s unnameable, though sometimes I fear a particular disease. I avoid places that seem germy. I hand sanitize more than you can imagine. No. Really. A huge bottle of hand sanitzer, and by huge I mean 32 ounces, lasts me about a week. I make my husband do things certain ways, using hand sanitizer after every public door is just an example. Eating out fills me with terror because I have to sit in seats someone else has been in, touch a table someone else has touched. And don’t get me started on how scared I am of the servers. Even church is a place of fear. The throng of people, the “unclean” chairs…most of the time I can’t bring myself to go anymore.

And then, on the occasions when I can convince myself that I’m not actually that afraid of the germs (and these are few and far between) I am afraid of the anxiety. The anxiety attacks or panic attacks or hours of focusing on that one little touch of something dirty are the worst part of this disorder. They leave me a wreck, they leave me unable to even focus on a tv show, and we all know that’s not too hard.

Spread on a thick layer of depression and you get a small glimpse of my OCD life. It is very hard to put into words and I’m sure I didn’t do a great job of explaining it, but I hope to cover more of that through the stories of what my day to day life looks like.

I am fighting to get better. I am seeing two therapists, I'm on medication, reading books, praying, being prayed for and seeking help in as many ways as I can think of. I am not currently doing Exposure and Response Prevention because I am too scared (more on that later) and don’t think I can take it. But I do force myself to do exposures occasionally and life is kind of an exposure too, isn’t it? At least it is when you’re afraid of just about everything in it.

I want you to know that I’m not writing this so you will feel sorry for me, I’m writing this so you will understand. It is hard, but it is my life. And I still have hope of getting out of this dark time. But to ignore it because it is hard will not help the person struggling in your life or you if you are fighting too.

This blog is going to be very personal. If you choose to be a reader, please be gentle. I do not fight this OCD in the “right” ways. I have my husband help me all the time, which to the professionals is called enabling, a word that makes me cry easily. But I am fighting. I have not given in. And this blog is for me to share my story with you. I hope you will be gentle with yourself too.