The Silence

When I am asked what about death scares me I usually do not know how to answer. I am a religious person so I am not sure how to answer the question correctly. I could say that nothing scares me but that would be a lie and I never lie. The real answer would be silence. You are always afraid of the unknown.Since I was old enough to be able to form words,I have had noise in my head. It never goes away. It never sleeps. There is a constant mumbling inside my brain that never ceases. I can hear silence in the environment around me but it never fully reaches my mind. I think silence would be the deafening quiet that happens when it is winter. The snow piles up on the ground and the big fluffy snowflakes tumble down and crash into the earth. It is like a blanket has muffled the world. I strain to hear the nothingness of silence over the talking of my brain. I have an idea of what silence would be and yet I truly have no way of knowing. I have thought about meditation. A lot of OCD survivors try and do meditation. Unfortunately, for me silencing my mind is not possible. The more you try the louder it protests, and I have accepted that. It is like giving a man with no hands a hammer. He may have always wanted a hammer. He may even have dreamed what it would be like to wield the hammer.But if given the hammer it would be useless to him.
If there were a magical pill to cure OCD I am not sure I would take it. I know that sounds crazy, right? It's not that I don't want to be cured. It is that I have no idea what being cured would entail. OCD and I are intertwined. I am more than my OCD and yet I am not more than my OCD. I would still get to be a mother, wife, daughter, aunt, niece, friend, and blogger without OCD and yet my life would not be this life without it.I could have finished school and went to college. I could have gotten a job as a CEO in a large company and made millions. I could have vacation time on a beach in a pagoda drinking Shirley temples if I did not have OCD. But, then this life would have never existed. I would have to have traded my precious children, my relationships, and everything this life has given me that I hold dear, to have had a life without OCD. How would I truly know what happiness is if I had never felt the anguish of suffering? How would I know how rich my life is without the experience of being poor? How would I know what it is like to feel whole if I had never felt hollow or empty?  How would I know what unconditional love is without hating myself first and then learning to accept and love myself ? If I had not had OCD my life would be a different set of circumstances. I would have different choices. They would be neither better or worse than the choices I was given in this life but they would be different. Right now,at this place, in this time I am happy. I would not want to change anything just to be able to be socially accepted, or normal, or be able to hear silence. It is just not worth it to me. I am the person I am today because I had to maneuver around the obstacles OCD has put in my life. Ocd is it's own entity in my mind and yet it helped formed my personality. I am funny because it has made me sad. I am understanding because I have been judged for having it. I am loyal because I have been betrayed by my mind. I am sensitive because OCD has scarred me. I can speak because I have had to live in silence for fear of the stigma around my mental illness. My mental illness does not define me and yet it does. I can not accept myself and my faults and not accept what makes me the way I am. I hate my OCD, but I am thankful for the person it has made me become.
                                                                          Neurotic Nelly