Today I wanted to write something emphatically helpful and inspiring. I wanted to write something that opens up new communication about mental illness and how we the sufferers feel, live, and survive. Right now, I would settle just to write something that makes sense, instead I am left feeling disjointed and lost. Like a Lego house that is missing too many pieces that have fallen under the bed, behind the dresser, under the carpet never to emerge from their hiding spot until I walk in unsuspecting and impale my foot with one of the sharp little buggers. Ouch.
My missing pieces are caused from the anxiety level that I am under and I feel like I am at risk of losing my grip on to whatever shreds of sanity I have left. And it's all because of this damn wisdom tooth. What is the purpose of a wisdom tooth anyway? I mean really.
Tomorrow I have to have one of my wisdom teeth extracted. It is painful and infected. I have been chugging down these blue capsules to kill the infection every eight hours and I am so tired of it. I am tired of being in pain. Tired of being terrified the antibiotics aren't working and the infection is going to kill me. Tired of worrying about the pain I will be dealt tomorrow as they crank my tooth out with a pair of pliers. Let's face it, they are funny looking but they are still pliers. Tired of going through the whole process in my mind repeatedly. Tired of the alarm going off to tell me to take my pills three times a day. Tired of feeling like I am on the verge of yet another panic attack. Tired of talking about it over and over like a broken record. I am just plain tired.
This is how OCD works. Medical OCD. The one where you are afraid there is something horribly wrong with you and you can't shake the idea no matter how hard you try. Fear so deep that you can't think about anything else. You can taste it and it tastes like bile and yesterday's spaghetti dinner. You can feel it and it makes you tremble with uncertainty. You can hear it and it sounds like the intrusive voice that you wish to God just once it would take a fucking break. It's frustrating and exhausting and I want to scream. I want to rattle the cages OCD has locked me in my whole life. I want to rage against my mind. I want...... I want to take a freaking nap. I haven't been sleeping well lately.
Medical OCD is one of the symptoms of OCD that I have. It has been a struggle for me. I have learned a few things on combating it. An example is what I thought to be a mole on my leg. It appeared after I cut myself shaving. My OCD turned this into skin cancer. Makes no sense because I avoid the sun as a redhead lest I spontaneously combust. But there it was, my medical OCD telling me my days were numbered. The pain of fearing of leaving my children left me immobile. I spent nights crying myself to sleep in a panic. Knowing that what I feared was irrational but at the same time compelling and filling my mind with various ways of disaster. I googled my symptoms and became even more afraid. Googling symptoms rarely leads to positive outcomes. Especially for me. I made a doctors visit only to find out that my fear was a waste of time because it was a protruding scar. It wasn't even a mole for God's sake. I wasted all of that energy and fear on nothing. I could have used that energy with my kids. I could have cleaned more. I could have played with them more. I could have actually gotten a better nights sleep. Minutes of my life that I can not get back. If you multiply that by as many episodes of medical OCD I have endured it would add up to days, months, years even that I can not get back. So much pain and so much time wasted. And that is how it works. It takes your fear and ramps up your anxiety. It tells you lies and blurs the truth. It makes you doubt and exhausts you to the point of utter and complete panic. Others look at this as you being a hypochondriac. They may ridicule you and wipe it away as the ravings of a mad person. They may get angry because they do not know how to help you and you have no answers on what to tell them to do. It's highly frustrating to both parties involved. Make no mistake the fear is real. The anxiety is as solid as you or I. It is real to the sufferer. It is real to us and it hurts. It scares us and it hurts. It frustrates us and it hurts. It makes us unable to function and it hurts. It slowly steals moments away from our lives and it hurts.We do not feel this way because we want to. We do not have these fears because we are weak or ignorant. It is simply a symptom of something much bigger going on in the background. It is a symptom of OCD.
Tomorrow will hurt physically and emotionally. I will get over it. I will be very scared and possibly have a panic attack. I will heal. I may even shed some tears tonight before I fall asleep. I will be fine after the deed is done and the anxiety and OCD ebbs away. There is safety in knowing that this too shall pass. There is hope in knowing it is not a permanent state of fear afterwards.
Neurotic Nelly
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