Unacceptable.....

 I was watching The View and I was quite flabbergasted. They were talking about the allegations about Mr. Cosby and the fifteen, I think it is now, accusers that say he raped them. I was upset at the side talking and swaying of the issue. Now, I don't always agree with Rosie O'Donnell's views but in this case I agreed wholeheartedly. The other's seemed to side track the issue and remain muted on the actual subject of rape. They made it about media slander and if there is a media slander going on anywhere let me tell you, just read the comments people are saying about these women accusing Mr. Cosby of rape.
It is beyond disheartening the way other people have dragged their names and assumed personal characters through the mud.

I do not know if Mr. Cosby did what he is accused of.  I do have an opinion on it, but that isn't even the point of this post. The point of this post is to clear up the overwhelming amount of ignorance there seems to be in the mass public about sexual assault and rape. And as sexual assault victim it really bothers me.

The things I have read and the victim shaming and blaming really upset me. Questions like, "Who waits thirty years to report a rape?" or "Why didn't they go to the police?" It seems like these would be easy questions to answer but they aren't.

In this country, 60% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police.  I know I did not report my assault. I was young, I was scared, and I was ashamed. I never spoke about it in a public way until last year. That means I didn't openly discuss it for...21 years. That in no way means that I made it up or I wanted attention. I only decided to post about it earlier this year because  one of my dear friends convinced me to in hopes that it may help someone else struggling with sexual assault issues. Otherwise, I may have never discussed it all. Not because it didn't affect me but because it did affect me and I don't like to relive it.

Sadly still in this day and age, many survivors do not report their rape or sexual assault. Even when they do only a staggering  3% of rapes get a conviction. That means that 97% of reported rapes and sexual assaults go unpunished by our legal system.

And why do survivors end up not reporting their rape or sexual assault? It hurts so much and the shame is so overwhelming. Having to relive the painful act over and over. Having to tell strangers or even worse our loved ones the unspeakable things that were done to us is devastating. The feeling that somehow it is our fault or that we did something to provoke an unwanted attack. After all, we are often times told by ill informed individuals, that if we had done something differently we might have been spared. Rape is an act not a consequence and yet often times it is implied that it is a consequence of something that we, the survivors, have done.

We don't report it for many reasons but a big reason is the exact thing these women are getting now with these comments. Victim blaming, "Why did she get so drunk then?" or "Why did she go back again?" or "Why did she take that pill he gave?". Sure things are better now in 2014 than they were in the 60's and 70's when it comes to prosecution of rape but lets be real for a second. How many times have you heard someone say it is a woman's fault for being so drunk? Or that she had some culpability because she was drinking, or walking alone at night, or dressed in a tight outfit? Like doing any of these things is a big sign that you are open to being sexually assaulted. Like these things make rape acceptable in some way. That kind of ignorance is still out there and it is still said out loud. Disgusting as it may be, there are people who still think this way. In the sixties and seventies there were no rape kits, no DNA evidence. It was his word against hers and the burden of proof would be hers to get him convicted or even at the very least, arrested in the first place. And just how easy do you think it would to convince a large group of people that some famous rich guy who everyone loves has raped you after you went to his room? And that you may have been drugged? And that you don't recall everything that happened because of it?

And let us not forget that as much as people want you to believe that women were," I am woman hear me roar,"  and "let's grow our arm pit hair long and burn our bras" in the 70's , at that time if your husband beat you, the police tended to consider it a "domestic issue" and he was often times not arrested. You were not necessarily legally protected from domestic abuse like you are now. This wasn't the television shows you see on t.v. This was reality. A reality that in the sixties women weren't even considered worthy enough to own the things we have now. You couldn't get a credit card in your name as an unmarried woman and your husband had to cosign it if you were married. You couldn't go to an Ivy league college, you couldn't serve on a jury, and you weren't even allowed to get the birth control pill unless your doctor signed off on it because you had extreme menstrual distress. There was no equality in the work place, there was no equality at all and yet some people still sit behind their computer screens and ask if these allegations were true, why they did not go to the police.....I don't ask why not, I ask why would they? What would have been done? Nothing most likely, except that other people would have blamed them, openly talked bad about them, and would have made misguided judgments about their character. (Guess that last part still hasn't changed much, has it.)

And rape isn't always like you see on television either. Not everyone screams no and fights. Some people don't fight. Some people can't fight and some people freeze. And no, not everyone runs away afterwards. Some people are in a state of shock that can take hours if not even days to really come to grips with what has happened to them. And for some people it takes years. So it is not that much of a stretch for me to believe that some of these women may have stayed in his hotel or condo for a few days after he left them there confused and sore. Especially, if they were drinking heavily or using drugs. They may have simply been so in shock that they were unsure what else to do. It happens.

There is still a double standard with these kind of allegations. There was no huge outpouring of comments claiming that the men who had been raped and assaulted by Jerry Sandusky were just saying that to get money.  Even though many of the claims had been done years after the assaults took place. There was an overwhelming amount of support for his victims. People were appalled. However, when several women come forward with disturbingly similar stories about Mr. Cosby all of a sudden it is not because they are victims, it is for their fifteen minutes of fame or they just want to cash in on it. They are all in cahoots. They just want to ruin a man they don't even know even though they receive nothing for their efforts. He can not be prosecuted due to time restraints. He does not have to settle in court for these particular allegations. What would be the purpose of raising these allegations if there wasn't some truth to them?

And probably the biggest thing that pisses me off about this whole thing is the idea that because Mr. Cosby has had such success and played such monumental characters that we feel like we know him or that he is like "America's Dad" people say he could not be a rapist. How could he be the thing that goes bump in the night? He could have any woman in the world why would he rape? ect. ect. ect.

We do not want to believe it and I understand that. I don't want to believe it either but not wanting to believe something doesn't make it not true.

Let me paint a different and yet oh so similar picture for you. There once was a doting father, a singer, a well respected community leader. He was a father of four. A "loving" husband. He was a former soldier. He was the ideal of what an "American Dad" should look like. He was holy and God fearing. Clean shaven and wore suits. He was even a well known Southern Baptist preacher in the area. Everyone loved him and he could in fact, have just about any woman he wanted. And he did have them. But that didn't stop him from raping and assaulting his two daughters from the ages of seven until they were sixteen and fifteen. Now, I don't want to believe that my grandfather was a rapist, a pedophile, a molester, a sexual deviant....but that doesn't make it not true. He was and no one on the outside looking in would have ever suspected it. No one would have believed it, and they didn't believe it when they were told. And just so we are clear, this happened in the 60's and 70's. So don't sit there and tell me that not only is it impossible that someone who is seen as a "hero" could easily get away with that kind of crime, but that you would be believed if you went to the police and reported it. Because I am here to tell you that is complete bullshit. And just to quell any questions about time being a factor in the truth of accusations, my mother and aunt waited almost thirty years before they started openly talking about it. The thirty years they did not speak of it does not make it any less true or as some commentators have suggested, made it any less devastating. Simply because someone doesn't report it for decades or even never reports it all, does not mean that it did not affect them in a horribly disfiguring way. That is just crazy.

I am not saying that Mr. Cosby did this. What I am saying is that the reasons people give for not believing the allegations are born of ignorance and bias. You can not say someone isn't a rapist because he/she seems to be the perfect father figure/mother figure. You can not say that someone isn't an offender just because of the wonderful success they have had. You can not predict how a rape victim will act or say how they should react to being raped. That is ridiculous. It's unfair and it is ignorant. You can not simply say an accusation is not true because the accuser acts in a way you find to be different than how you think you would react in that situation. Every rape is different just as every situation is different and unless you have been raped or assaulted then in my opinion you have no right to judge what actual victims do or don't do afterwards.


Being a survivor of a sexual assault, the daughter and niece of survivors, the great grand daughter of a survivor, the sister of a survivor, and the friend of many survivors I feel the need to stand up for these women. I feel the responsibility to stand up for all survivors of sexual abuse and sexual assault. Whether it be men, women, or children. For as survivors, if we sit on the fence or accept other people's ignorance when it comes to why survivors wait, or don't report, or allow others to victim blame then we have failed them and ourselves. Rape is not a choice. It is not a consequence. It is never okay. And those who report it should be looked upon with respect and compassion because they are brave. They were able to do something many are too afraid to do and they should not be punished for doing so. They should be believed and they should be treated like the human beings that they are. It is always easy to judge others form behind a computer screen because what they are claiming may not be what you want to hear, but I have to ask you this:

Would be so quick to judge these women if they were your daughter, your sister, your aunt, your wife, your girlfriend, or your mother?

Because 1 out of 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime.

Would you look your loved one in the eye and ask the questions you keep asking these women? Would you ask your loved one if she was just "making it up" for fame or money? Would you tell her it happened to her because she was careless or asked for it? Or claim that it was just a "relationship gone wrong"? And how would you feel if someone said that about them after they had been victimized over and over again, first by their rapist and secondly by ignorant people that felt they knew how "a rape victim should act"?
Because when you judge these women that have come forward to tell their stories, that is what you are doing. Telling them that you know more about their rape then they do.

And that is completely unacceptable.

Neurotic Nelly

Feeling Like A Loser.....

Today was one of the days I hate....the day I have my three month Diabetes check up. I have to fast which makes me cranky. I have to have my blood drawn and my finger stuck, which doesn't bother me too much as  long as they don't try to press the diabetes stick needle through the other side of my finger. I hate just being in that germ infested place touching things and breathing the same infected air. Ugh.

I was more than a little freaked out when an elderly lady sat next to me, grabbed a magazine from the rack and proceeded to lick her finger and turn the pages one by one. Lick, swipe page, lick, swipe page, lick. ect. I was trying my best not to stare and cringe with every slow motion movement of her finger going to her mouth and back down to the magazine page. I was horrified. All I can say is I hope that lady got her flu shot already.....I really truly do.

After I used hand sanitizer because watching her do that made my hands feel dirty, I got my blood drawn and my finger stick done and my AC1 was higher than my last check up. It was a 6.6 and now it is a 7.2. I was upset. I have been cycling on my elliptical bike five miles a day five days a week. I haven't been as rigid in my diet as before but honestly, with the exercise I thought I was doing well. But I guess that is not the case. Now I have to be on a small dose of an ACE inhibitor to protect my kidneys for the next three months because having an AC1 above 7 can start to cause kidney damage. Hopefully at my next three month check up it will back down to where it was. I am so mad at myself right now. I am not sure what I could do differently but still I am beyond pissed. I am trying to control my Diabetes and get to where I don't need medication and yet now I have somehow messed it up and have to get on yet another medication. Double UGH!

Medications scare me. I have OCD worries about their side effects and I try not to read them because if it is bad, even if it is extremely rare, I will totally wig out about it. And I don't think I need to stress myself out anymore than I already am. I mean...Dear God. Now I am terrified of not taking it because of my stupid Diabetes could be hurting my internal organs and at the same time I am terrified to take the medicine because of side effects that most likely won't even happen to me. And I can't help but feel like this is all of my fault.

I feel really deflated. I am still cranky but now I also feel like a loser. I know that it is a small setback and I can most likely get my AC1 level back down but it just really feels likes I was punched in the gut. Like I can't do the simplest thing. Like I suck at being healthy. Like I just suck period. I think I am just going to have a good cry when I am done writing this. I know that how I am feeling is the negative self talk but that doesn't really make me feel any better at the moment. Triple UGH.

 Oh well, there isn't anything I can do to change the past. All I can do is try harder.....Hopefully I will be in a better mental state on Tuesday and have something funny or uplifting to write about then. Hope you guys have an amazing weekend.

Neurotic Nelly

Thankful....

So Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching and although I find "thankful" posts on facebook to be annoying and self serving, it is only because people feel the need to post them every day of the month of November. I just find them silly and quiet honestly over done. Usually they revolve around family, which one should always be thankful for in my opinion, unless your family is mean, in which case feeling thankful may be hard to do. And they always say something about the spouse being perfect or the children being angelic....No one is perfect and children are supposed to be little dirt spewing, world upturning, darling little monsters. They are supposed to be difficult and wonderful. They are children and children are miraculous little human beings full of crazed energy, innocence, curiosity and imagination. They are not angelic and that is okay because what they are is better than any words we could possibly dig up, scour through, or make up to describe them.

I guess the posts irritate me for their lack of detail and the implication that we forget to be thankful everyday and only remember now because some stupid trend arises on social media one month a year and that bothers me for some reason.

Maybe because I hate smarmy things that make me cry or maybe because I detect a slight air of bull shit when I read such posts. No one's spouse is the best spouse to walk the earth, they are the best spouse for you. They would most likely be a horrible match for someone else. That makes them the best spouse in the world to you, but alas, not the entire world. That is kind of a tall order and those shoes are too big for any human being to fill. Be real and say that you are thankful for your spouse because they make you coffee in the morning or they put up with your snoring or your PMS. Be less vague and more descriptive of why you are thankful for them because they mean a great deal to you and probably deserve more than just some generic post about how they are the bee's knees.

Children are wonderful, lovely, exhausting and exhilarating but they are not little angels.  They aren't angelic because they are human beings. Tiny human beings that drive you crazy but human beings none the less. Reality is you should be thankful for them because they are yours and they make you happy and you are a family but cut the bullshit already. You know  that your kids refuse to even let you sit on the toilet without asking you where the black lego piece went or where the cat hid, or without them sticking their tiny little fingers under the door just to remind you that you are not alone while you are trying to "do your business". Be thankful for them yes, but not the false advertisements you pretend they are. Be thankful for them exactly for who they are now because one day they will grow up and you will get to use the bathroom quietly because they are off to college and you will never again see their tiny fingers wiggling under the bathroom door....and believe it or not you will miss it. Be thankful for them because they are your children and your husband and you are blessed to have them, flaws and all, miracles and all, love and all.

And I guess maybe I get irritated reading the simplicity of people's "thankful" posts. There is so much to be thankful for that they never seem to post. They have a whole month to talk about all that they are thankful for and it is always the same generic things everyone else blabs on their posts. Be original. Almost never do you see them being thankful for small things like being able to get out of bed in the morning. Because a lot of people struggle with such things and to be able to do so is something to be thankful for.

There is no thankfulness for food on the table when so many struggle to provide such for their families. No thankfulness for the job in an economy that has so little jobs available in certain areas. No thankfulness for the neighbors that may shovel snow out of your walkway just because they want to be helpful or thankfulness for the medications so many of us have access to when in many countries something as small as antibiotics are hard to come by. There are so many many things to be thankful for and they deserve to be thanked more than just one month a year. They should be thanked every single day because without these many things that make our lives bearable and easier, our lives would be completely different.

I am thankful for so much in my life and no I don't need to schmooze or be dramatic about them or use generic generalizations to describe them. I don't care what people think of just what I am thankful for or how it may appear to others. I am thankful for them and I am thankful for them every single day.

I am thankful for my family even though they are crazy and silly and broken and odd. I am thankful for my children who keep me on my toes and have shown me the true meaning of unconditional love. I am thankful for my husband who drives me insane and makes me mad and makes me laugh and is the one person in the world that knows me better than I know myself. I am thankful for my home and heaters and clean water and medicines and neighbors and pets. I am thankful for a pillow to rest my head on and thankful to be able to get in up in the morning and not let things like depression keep me there with my head on said pillow all day. I am thankful for my friends and my readers, and this blog. All of which have supported me and helped me to see things in a way I may have missed all on my own. I am thankful for the freedom of speech and God and the ability to believe what I choose and not have to be afraid that those beliefs would imprison me or endanger my family. I am thankful for the sun coming out today even though it was frigid outside and the ground was covered in ice. I am thankful that I didn't slip and fall on that ice even though I was expecting too. I am thankful for the internet and books and paper and pens. I am thankful for the flowers in Spring and the leaves that turn such pretty colors and drop to the earth in the Fall. I am thankful for the snowmen we will make in the Winter and the shorts we will wear in the Summer. I am thankful for music because it is one of the few things that drown out my obsessing about stuff. I am thankful for only washing my hands ten times today instead of the usual twenty times I wash them daily. I am thankful for being able to rant to my best friend so I can stop worrying over things that make it impossible for me to sleep. I am thankful for my Dad who listens to all of my medical fears and never gets frustrated with me even when I am disgusted with myself because I can't stop being afraid. I am thankful for my Mom and Grandma who understand what I go through and always offer support and acceptance. I am thankful for the many other OCD sufferers out there that go through what I go through and help me to feel less alone. I am thankful for those that fight the stigma against mental illness because we deserve to be treated like the wonderful human beings that we are. I am thankful for the  voice to speak and the words to write because for so long I felt I had neither of those things in my life. I am thankful for the struggles I have gone through because they made me stronger and although I hate the things my OCD does to me I am thankful that I will keep fighting because I know I have to. I am thankful for so many many things and I will be damned if I just think about them on November of every year. I will be damned if I make them sound paltry or normal of less amazingly life changing as they are. I will be damned if I post "thankful" posts on facebook in November because I am always thankful and I don't have time for that. I am too busy being thankful than to throw some regurgitated peice of fluff on a fb post and hope that it makes me fashionable and acceptable. I don't care if I am acceptable and I am thankful for that as well.

So, in short don't be thankful for what you have in the month of November. Be thankful for them always because even in the darkest of days, in the worst of hours there is always.....always something to be thankful for. You simply have to take a moment, breathe, look around and see it.



Neurotic Nelly

Messed Up.....

I took a blog hiatus for my last two blogging days. It has been a mixture of things that have left me exhausted, overwhelmed, and incapable of processing all of my thoughts on paper.

Basically, my OCD has come to a head. I couldn't figure out just what was causing it. Could be my husband's new job, or Christmas coming up, or all of the online school things I am responsible for, or the weather...but honestly all of these things have been going on before my OCD decided to kick into full fledged panic. No, there has to be something else that I just can't handle at face value.

You see, how my OCD works is that when something is stressful, instead of me reacting to said stressful thing with stress, I go numb about it. As a result of the stress I should be feeling, my OCD kicks into overdrive. If bills should be the cause of my stress, my OCD brain will go numb to the fear of not being able to pay them and start concentrating on whether a small pain in my side is cancer. I get anxiety about the thing that isn't real and not about the things that are.

I often compare it to Dissociative Identity Disorder. Not that I have more than one personality, I don't. But that when a person with DID comes across a situation the main person can not handle a different person takes their place so they can cope. My OCD is very much like that when it is triggered. Instead of me dealing with whatever is stressing me out, my OCD reacts instead of me reacting. I can't handle dealing with whatever is triggering me, so my OCD numbs me to it only to stress me out about something I know is not very likely. Almost like it is some defunct coping mechanism.

It makes no sense and it is not helpful to me at all but that is what is going on with me lately.

In my last few blog posts I have been more angry and less positive. I mean, my blog isn't always going to be happy and inspiring. I am a real person, not some robot. My blog is usually positive but that doesn't mean it is always going to be rainbows and unicorn farts. Sometimes it will be sad, or painful, or glum. It happens. My life happens and let's face it, sometimes my life can be sad, painful, and glum.

 So, I took stock in the things that were changing around me to try and figure out what has gotten me in such a state I am unable to even sleep properly and it hit me. Two weeks ago......two weeks ago I asked about my Aunt's autopsy results. It has been two months and we still have no idea what she died from. I still haven't been able to grieve but I feel it bubbling up inside me. It just won't come out. I have tried and tried to make it come to the surface but I feel almost like it is jammed up. Like the flow of my emotions are dammed up with anger, frustration, broken promises, wet newspaper, and little bits of straw. I can feel the current moving underneath my skin and I am hopeful that the autopsy results will give me the answers I seek and in turn  unleash the damn and let the stagnant emotions free. The stench of the black water that is my emotions is literally making me feel insane. I need to be able to understand, to acknowledge, to breath again. I feel like I am drowning in it. I am praying that this little printed piece of paper can unwind my ties to it. That it will finally allow me to grieve. That I can finally stop waiting to feel again and start to heal.

Everyday I wait for my mother to call me and tell me what some medical examiner found in my Aunt's body. I don't know how to feel about her being cut open and dissected, so I feel nothing at all. It is necessary but still it is hard for me to put into words the oddness of talking about a paper that describes her like some specimen in a jar. That the person they are describing by organ weight is the same woman that taught me that I should put perfume behind my ears not on my neck, or how to play gin rummy and never lose , or that there is, in fact, such a thing as a panty line and that people do actually notice such things. (Well, I don't but apparently other people do.)

I know I should be devastated and yet everyday I sit both eager and horrified to know just what happened. I need to know. I can't accept not knowing, and honestly I don't think I can let her go till I do know and yet I am terrified to know all at the same time. I fear I have blocked up my emotions so high and let that dam get so big that when it finally bursts it may actually take me down with it and drown me in it's sorrow. I feel so inadequate. I feel so broken. I feel so numb and yet agitated. So helpless. So emotionally stunted. So desperate and yet not caring equally. I am an emotional ball of raw nerve endings and burnt out electrical impulses. In all honesty, I have never felt so crazy in my entire life as I do right now.

So after waiting on pins and needles and anxious nausea, I just found out that the reason it hasn't come in the mail yet is because they just mailed it....last night.  And now God knows how many more of days of this I am going to have sit through. I am guessing three or four. I really have no idea. Anyway, that is why I haven't written. I am just so broken right now. I am not sure that anything I am doing makes very much sense. And when I feel this completely messed up, my writing suffers with it. I plan to write on Tuesday as usual. Maybe by then I will have some answers and be in a better mental state. I hope you all are doing well. Sending positive thoughts your way....


Neurotic Nelly

It's Not So Bad.....

I am a positive person. I am a positive thinker. I am one of those annoying "the glass is half full" kind of people. I strive to see the silver lining even in the midst of a hurricane as it tears away the walls of my home and pokes holes in my ceiling. I believe that having a positive attitude is necessary for me to keep going when things get complicated and tough because things for me are always complicated and tough. I even have taught my children that anything worth having is hard because life is never easy and if something is easy it usually isn't worth having.

I am a positive individual that tries to see good in every situation. What I am not, is stupid, naive, nor am I an idiot. I am not ignorant or obtuse. I am well read, I spell impeccably but type like I have ham hocks for fingers, I have a high I.Q. although I suck at math. I curse too much. I hate couscous and have an aversion to sushi. I scream obscenities at the football game on my television even though I don't really care who wins. I watch hockey not because I know the teams or care about the scoreboard, I just like to watch people get checked into the walls. I am not perfect. I am not a saint and I certainly have things to atone for in my life. I am sensitive and kind and I am a people pleaser.

My point is, I have lived my whole life trying to please everybody. Trying to fit in. Trying to not be a burden on anyone. I have spent 31 years pretending to be okay. We all do it. We all pretend that OCD is not how it actually is. Sometimes we say it has good qualities to it. Sometimes we claim it is a gift. Sometimes we act as if it is funny or something that doesn't really affect our lives. I have seen people say that they have OCD but only enough to make them "cute" about it. We have even gone so far as to compare our symptoms to each others so we can pretend that it isn't as horrible as it is. Then we chide ourselves for complaining that it has caused us issues or that we get upset by it because other people may have it more severely than we do. Like we have no right to be irritated or upset. Like we have something to apologize for because it still bothers us.

An analogy of this would be if you woke up this morning and your hand just fell of your wrist and landed on the floor.  You would be concerned. You would be upset. Would you be less upset if you found out later that some guy two states over woke up with his whole arm gone? Would that make your pain any less real or your frustrations any less valid? No. You would have compassion for him and feel bad for his loss too but you would still have to live your life without your hand and you would have every right to feel however you felt about losing said hand and everything that has to change because you now only have one hand to work with.

 OCD is the same way. It doesn't matter who has it and to what degree, if you have OCD and it bothers you then you have a right to be mad, upset, frustrated, depressed, irritated, or disturbed by it. You have a right to your feelings about how OCD bothers you. You are not being whiny or over dramatic because Bob in sales has to wash his hands forty two times and all you do is use hand sanitizer twenty six times a day. Your pain is your pain and it is okay to say that. It is okay to not be okay. You shouldn't have to pretend that your OCD doesn't affect you if it does.

We have convinced ourselves that OCD is just not that bad and in doing so, have convinced everyone else that too. We have made it seem  like  OCD isn't as bad as other illnesses. It isn't as hard on your mental stability. It isn't as painful. It isn't as note worthy. We are constantly making excuses for it or covering it up. We tell little bitty white lies about it that fester and grow until those little white lies have all been painted together and are now the whitewash we paint ourselves with.

We don't go up to people and say, "Hi my name is Nelly. I have OCD and my life is a fucking disaster because of it." No we say paltry things like ,"Yea, I have OCD and I wash my hands sixty times a day but hey...I like clean hands. I mean, it's not that bad." or "Oh, you know, I can't drive anymore because I keep thinking I have ran over people even though I know I haven't so I have to get out of my car six times to make sure. But I always wanted to learn the bus route anyway."  We may tell people we have it but then we move on because it is easier to let others think that we just like to clean or are just quirky. We are so used to acting like it is no big deal that we start to believe it ourselves.....

We excel at pretending that what we go through isn't really because of the soul sucking succubus that lives in our minds. We don't want others to think poorly of us so we don't announce the pain we are in or the struggles we go through daily. We don't want to be a burden or make other people uncomfortable. Never mind, that we are always uncomfortable. As long as no one else is, it is okay. It's not so bad.

I am a positive person but let me be a realist for a second. OCD is not some wondrous gift bestowed upon the lucky few that have been graced with it. It's Hell. Pure mental disfigurement, terror inducing, emotional torture. It's fear and dread and a constant overwhelming plague of guilt. It is a full course meal of pain and frustration. It is a daily struggle just to keep your head above water to breathe. It is a drowning of realty. It is pulling your hair out until you have bald patches, and picking your skin until it scars. It is believing that something is wrong with your body even though no one else sees it but you. It is washing your hands until they bleed, or avoiding places, people, things because you are terrified of your own mind and what it shows you. It is touching, counting, checking things for hours and hours and hours only to have to stand there and do it again. It is living in a constant state of doubting yourself, your mind, the whole world around you. It is being unable to control racing thoughts of violence or sex or blasphemy and then hating yourself and blaming yourself for not being able to control the unwanted thoughts in the first place. It is being afraid of anything or everything and sometimes both at the same time. It is feeling alone and scared and completely fucked up because unlike other mental illnesses you are perfectly aware that it is fucked up in the first place. It is crying yourself to sleep at night, or worrying yourself sick , or having the same thought loop through your mind over and over and over and over an over and over and over again until you want to fucking stick your fingers down your throat in hopes that you can finally purge this evil thing, this mental demon that refuses to let you be. This isn't a pleasure cruise or a college road trip. This isn't about being neat or tidy. This has nothing to do with organization or being punctual. This is Hell. No, this is worse than Hell ever thought about being. This is OCD. This is Hell on steroids mixed with caffeine and a cigarette addiction. This is Hell in technicolor with surround sound. This is Hell imprinted on a broken record trapped under the bent needle of a child's 1950's plastic red Fisher-Price record player.

If it were like we try and brush it off to be, if it were not so bad as we play act it out, than instead of it plaguing it's sufferer it would wear a pink polka dot apron, have a bake sale, and hand out free cupcakes. It would get you promotions instead of making it impossible to function at work or in some cases, like mine, unable to work at all. If it were truly no big deal then people wouldn't commit suicide because of it or become depressed because they have it.

I am not saying that having it makes you doomed or that you can't live with it. I am not saying you can't fight it or manage it. I am not saying that we should all become morose or macabre about it. I am just saying we have to stop minimizing it's affects on our lives to other people. We have to stop comparing our symptoms and severity with others. You have it and it hurts and that is all that needs to be understood.  We have to stop people pleasing and worrying about how uncomfortable talking about how it really is to others will make them feel. We have to be real about it because if we act like it is not so bad, how are other people going to understand what we go through? How do we expect them to change their views on it if we keep brushing it off and making it sound like it is no big deal? How can we heal if we keep acting like it isn't the huge ugly vomit colored elephant in the room that it clearly is? I mean, I think if we want people to take what we go through seriously than we have to let them know what we actually go through and just how serious it can be.

OCD is not so bad, it's horrible. It is painful. It is life altering. It is just as serious as every other mental illness. It is a killer, a wounder of souls, a damager to people's lives. It is not a gift, it is a mental illness. It is not cute or fashionable no more than diabetes is cute or fashionable. It is an illness and it causes suffering and I think people should stop treating like it is not so bad, when clearly that is not the truth.



Neurotic Nelly