A Small Update:
A couple of weeks ago I updated my blog's background to this awesome vintage fabric my grandma made one of my favorite shirts out of. I thought it was funky and would make a cool background. I like to update my blog look every so often or it bugs me.
I also have added a new blog link section on the side to include other OCD blogs. I figured it made no sense to make finding us all so damn difficult. There are literally thousands of OCD sufferers walking the earth. Some of us are doctors. Some of us are teachers. Some of us are taxi drivers and some of us are bloggers. We are here and if people want to read about OCD to better understand what we go through or maybe even want to read our blogs because they are also sufferers, than it should be easier for them to locate such blogs. So I hope this list will keep growing and more people join in. Please keep checking in for more OCD blog links! Or if you are an OCD blogger and would like me to add a link to your blog please let me know in the comment section. I only ask that you add a link to my blog somewhere on your site as well, to keep the "OCD blog ring" going. Now on to today's post....
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It Is Not An Addiction...
I was looking up news about OCD because I like to stay informed about what is going on with my diagnoses. What I found instead was a blog post talking about OCD, rituals, and the fact that the author believes OCD to be an addiction. I was irritated to say the least.
Of course this author discussed OCD as only being the touching of door knobs, germ-a-phobia, and cleanliness of OCD sufferers. At this point I had ceased to be irritated and had moved on to becoming angry.
In this day and age to learn about illness, almost any illness, all you have to do is do a simple google search. To write a blog post without any semblance of information about the illness in which you decided to write a post on is not only ignorant and dare I say lazy, but also negligent.
It just goes to show the sheer ignorance and judgments that follow a mental illness diagnoses. It uncovers the stigma we face on a daily basis. How many times have you heard that your mental illness was something you faked, something you use an excuse, or (according to this author) not a mental illness at all but just an addiction to doing weird things?
Listen bub, an addiction means that at some point you had a choice to do something (unless you were born addicted which sadly can happen). You have a choice the first time you put a cigarette to your lips. You have a choice the first time you snort a line of coke or stick a needle in your arm. You become addicted and then it becomes less of a choice and more of a need.
I didn't just clean my house one day and just couldn't get enough. I don't have a desire to cry myself to sleep at night because my youngest had a nose bleed and my OCD makes me terrified that he has something horribly scary like Leukemia. Nor do I crave the feeling of washing my hands til they are raw and bloody because I can "feel" the germs on them even though I can see that they are perfectly clean. That isn't a need or desire. I wasn't given a choice, I was born this way.
Not every OCD sufferer has germ-a-phobia, or contamination fears. Not every OCD sufferer counts or touches things. There is literally hundreds of symptoms to this mental illness and not all of us are preoccupied with cleaning or washing our hands. I don't know how many times this has to be said but apparently it has to be said constantly because ignorance is everywhere and it spreads faster and easier than the cold hard truth.
The cold hard truth is OCD is not a choice. It was never a choice to anyone that has it because no one , NO ONE would choose this pain, this self doubt, this agony. We learn to live with it and use it to our advantage sometimes and we are proud of how far we able to overcome but we would never choose to suffer on purpose. Nor would we wish it on anyone else. That is just a silly statement not to mention an uneducated one.
I mean, no one would write a post and make up half truths about heart disease. No one would write something as uneducated and wrong as claiming heart attacks were an addiction. No one would write a post about diabetes with misrepresented symptoms and misguided attitudes. That would unacceptable to the public and yet it seems to be perfectly acceptable to write such misconceptions about mental illness. It just goes to show the differences in how physical illness is viewed vs mental illness. There is no stigma in having diabetes or heart disease. There is nothing but stigma when you suffer from mental illness.
I guess what I am trying to say is, if you are going to write a post about any mental illness, get your facts straight first. Otherwise the post is about your opinion that is based on other's opinions and only further promotes ignorance and stigma. If you do not know what you are talking about, it should be your duty to educate yourself. If you don't and you write misleading posts than you are part of the problem of stigma that we face daily and I don't think you mean to be. I just think that you are misguided and ignorant of just how mental illness works. We are not addicted to our mental illness, we suffer from it.
Neurotic Nelly
Showing posts with label addiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label addiction. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Thursday, August 21, 2014
She Never Had A Chance.....
XXXX.....WARNING TRIGGER WARNING TRIGGER WARNING.....XXXX
I was going to write a post about mental illness but honestly, my mind is somewhere else right now. My Aunt has had an extremely hard life.
Picture a beautiful blonde haired, green eyed girl with a slight band of freckles across the bridge of her nose, growing up in the sixties and seventies. Bell bottoms and maxi dresses. Peace and love. Picture her smile and her humor. Picture her life surrounded by love and laughter, and it would be true except that her life wasn't surrounded by love and laughter or very many smiles.
She was abused as a child by the same person that molested my mother. Physically, sexually, and mentally tormented. Called ugly and stupid. Her nickname by her father/abuser was "rummy dummy". He never called her by her name just "rummy dummy" as to make her feel even more worthless and ignorant over and over again. He called her a liar and so she learned to lie because no one believed her anyway. He took from her, her innocence, her sense of self, her security every child has a right to feel, and her voice. She has been a hardcore drug addict since the age of thirteen. She has lived on the streets, turned tricks, and been in prison several times. This is the reality of drug use. The ugly horrible truth of what life is like for addicts. Being used and using others all for a fix to numb the pain. So when I say that no one wakes up and says, "Today, I am going to become a drug addict", I mean it. There is no glory in living an addicts life. No comfort when you have to live in crack houses, sleep on the concrete sidewalk, steal for food, get high behind a rancid dumpster in some darkened alley way, or getting in a car with some john paying you to demean yourself all for a fix. She has been beaten black and blue, raped, robbed. She has been strangled, humiliated, and demonized. She had boyfriends beat her and turn her out. She was arrested so many times in Dallas that the police knew her by sight. None of these people she was around cared for her. All of them abused her much like the father she grew up with. No comfort. No love, only pain. She has suffered immensely.
What do you lose as an addict? You lose yourself. You lose your children. You lose your family's trust and respect. The belief that you are a worthy human being. The understanding that you deserve better. That you have a disease, because addiction is a disease and not a choice.You lose everything.
Underneath all of that my aunt is a good person, just a person that wrestles the demons of her past and has no idea how to get rid of them. My mother got therapy for the abuse, my aunt turned to the needle. It could have been my mom. I could have been raised by a drug addict. Very easily my mother and aunt could have lived on the same path. But they didn't.
There is a large amount of addicts in my family. It is a sign of the dysfunction that has seeped down the line. Loving addicts changes a person. You try and live a normal life but somethings are never truly normal. I can not explain the hardship of growing up wondering when we would get the phone call that one of our loved ones would be found dead in some ditch somewhere from over dosing or being murdered due to the dangerous people that addicts hang around. The apprehension of any late night phone calls. Afraid that each ring was an omen of the bad news we tried to prepare ourselves to hear. Would it be my brother, my sister, my uncle, or my aunt? Thankfully, all of them have gotten clean and we never received that dreaded phone call, just the calls we got when they were arrested. The visiting a loved one in jail or reading letters from them sent from prison. The stories of the horrible things they have endured to get high. We are a remarkable family for all that we have been through and yet there are so many of us families out there. Wrestling with the loss/pain and frustration of loving our addicts because we love the person not the disease. There becomes a loss of hope as we watch the ones we love lose everything around them and spiral out of control. We have to learn not to enable and that is hard because we know why they suffer and we don't want them to suffer more and yet we can't give them money, or trust their actions. or get them out of trouble. They have to hit rock bottom and unfortunately, sometimes rock bottom kills them. It feels like watching them drown and there is no way to save them until they are ready to ask for a life jacket.
Out of all of the addicts in my family, my aunt struggles the most. My uncle was clean and sober for over ten years when he died of a heart attack. My brother and sister are relatively healthy and have been clean for years. My aunt still wrestles with addiction and relapse. She is still in the system and is on probation. She had a five year clean streak until her then husband started using and started pressuring her to use again. That was years ago. She got clean again for a bit and relapsed two years ago. She is freshly clean again. It has been on and off but she tries really hard.... Her life has been very difficult. To makes matters worse, her 54 year old body has been greatly affected by her abuse of it over the years. She has difficulty breathing. She has hepatitis. She once had gangrene in her needle marks. She has had unusual illnesses that only come with being in the dirty disgusting drug dens or from being a prostitute or injecting that shit into your veins. Now, she is on oxygen. She has something wrong with her lungs but we are not sure what, and today I learned that while in the hospital she has suffered a stroke. She can't talk right, she isn't cognizant of what is going on, and she is scared. Worst of all she doesn't seem to know who we are and she is halfway across the country from us. All I keep thinking is what can I do to help? How can I comfort her? This woman who has never really had any real comfort in her life.
My heart is just broken for this woman. This strong woman who has battled for so long. Not just an addict but a woman I love very deeply. Because addicts are not just addicts they are also the broken people underneath the disease. She is an addict but she is still my aunt, a beautiful blonde green eyed woman trapped in addicts failing body. I want to hate my grandfather. I want to rage at him but he too is dead and sadly he too was a victim of horrid sickening sexual and physical abuse. He had no childhood. He was terribly abused and by many. It doesn't excuse what he did but it explains his sick perspective. When someone says abuse is a cycle, they know what they are talking about. I don't know how to feel right now except sad. My mother says when she thinks of my aunt she thinks she never really had a chance.....
She never knew trust. Never knew love from a man that didn't consist of rape, abuse, or drugs except her first husband but she was too far into drugs to stay and didn't understand his love because she equates love with pain. Never been told she is a worthy human being. Never been taken seriously. Never believed. Never trusted because of the drug use. Has no home, no job, no career, no family close by except her girlfriend, no pets, no car, no plans for the future that most of us have. She has never gone on a real vacation or traveled outside of the U.S. She has nothing that most of us take for granted everyday and yet she is the age most people look at to start retiring. She should have those things but drugs took those things away from her. Her disease has taken away so much. Her abuser continues to win every time she uses which also allows his abusers to win. Yes, I know she has to take responsibility for her actions but then I wonder who should take responsibility for why she uses to forget in the first place? The way she grew up and the path she took I sometimes think my mother is more right then she knows. Maybe she really didn't have a chance at a normal life because my mom found help and my aunt never could...
I sit here and write this I have no idea why. I guess I wanted other people to know her story. She deserves to be believed and her story counts. Maybe other people will understand addicts better from it. Maybe other families going through this will find comfort that they are not alone. Maybe my aunt will find comfort in the fact she is not alone....She deserved better and she still does. Maybe people will see how abuse ruins people's lives. How damaging it is. How it affects everything you do and every choice that you make. Maybe it will bring some sympathy in the hearts of those that think addicts want to live such a miserable life. They don't, they are just tortured and need help.
I am not giving up hope for her. I refuse to give up on her like so many have. My mom and grandma and my other uncle and his wife will continue to hope that she will recover as will my aunt's girlfriend. She needs to know that we love her and we believe in her. She is not "rummy dummy" she is Patti and she is beautiful. She is magnificent. She is worthy. Maybe she never had a chance, but she has one now.
So I am asking if you guys would send her some positive thoughts, or pray for her, or send her light. She needs to recover from this stroke so she can continue her path of staying clean. I would really appreciate it because, dammit that woman has had enough crap coming down on her all of her life. She could use a little support.
Thanks guys,
Neurotic Nelly
I was going to write a post about mental illness but honestly, my mind is somewhere else right now. My Aunt has had an extremely hard life.
Picture a beautiful blonde haired, green eyed girl with a slight band of freckles across the bridge of her nose, growing up in the sixties and seventies. Bell bottoms and maxi dresses. Peace and love. Picture her smile and her humor. Picture her life surrounded by love and laughter, and it would be true except that her life wasn't surrounded by love and laughter or very many smiles.
She was abused as a child by the same person that molested my mother. Physically, sexually, and mentally tormented. Called ugly and stupid. Her nickname by her father/abuser was "rummy dummy". He never called her by her name just "rummy dummy" as to make her feel even more worthless and ignorant over and over again. He called her a liar and so she learned to lie because no one believed her anyway. He took from her, her innocence, her sense of self, her security every child has a right to feel, and her voice. She has been a hardcore drug addict since the age of thirteen. She has lived on the streets, turned tricks, and been in prison several times. This is the reality of drug use. The ugly horrible truth of what life is like for addicts. Being used and using others all for a fix to numb the pain. So when I say that no one wakes up and says, "Today, I am going to become a drug addict", I mean it. There is no glory in living an addicts life. No comfort when you have to live in crack houses, sleep on the concrete sidewalk, steal for food, get high behind a rancid dumpster in some darkened alley way, or getting in a car with some john paying you to demean yourself all for a fix. She has been beaten black and blue, raped, robbed. She has been strangled, humiliated, and demonized. She had boyfriends beat her and turn her out. She was arrested so many times in Dallas that the police knew her by sight. None of these people she was around cared for her. All of them abused her much like the father she grew up with. No comfort. No love, only pain. She has suffered immensely.
What do you lose as an addict? You lose yourself. You lose your children. You lose your family's trust and respect. The belief that you are a worthy human being. The understanding that you deserve better. That you have a disease, because addiction is a disease and not a choice.You lose everything.
Underneath all of that my aunt is a good person, just a person that wrestles the demons of her past and has no idea how to get rid of them. My mother got therapy for the abuse, my aunt turned to the needle. It could have been my mom. I could have been raised by a drug addict. Very easily my mother and aunt could have lived on the same path. But they didn't.
There is a large amount of addicts in my family. It is a sign of the dysfunction that has seeped down the line. Loving addicts changes a person. You try and live a normal life but somethings are never truly normal. I can not explain the hardship of growing up wondering when we would get the phone call that one of our loved ones would be found dead in some ditch somewhere from over dosing or being murdered due to the dangerous people that addicts hang around. The apprehension of any late night phone calls. Afraid that each ring was an omen of the bad news we tried to prepare ourselves to hear. Would it be my brother, my sister, my uncle, or my aunt? Thankfully, all of them have gotten clean and we never received that dreaded phone call, just the calls we got when they were arrested. The visiting a loved one in jail or reading letters from them sent from prison. The stories of the horrible things they have endured to get high. We are a remarkable family for all that we have been through and yet there are so many of us families out there. Wrestling with the loss/pain and frustration of loving our addicts because we love the person not the disease. There becomes a loss of hope as we watch the ones we love lose everything around them and spiral out of control. We have to learn not to enable and that is hard because we know why they suffer and we don't want them to suffer more and yet we can't give them money, or trust their actions. or get them out of trouble. They have to hit rock bottom and unfortunately, sometimes rock bottom kills them. It feels like watching them drown and there is no way to save them until they are ready to ask for a life jacket.
Out of all of the addicts in my family, my aunt struggles the most. My uncle was clean and sober for over ten years when he died of a heart attack. My brother and sister are relatively healthy and have been clean for years. My aunt still wrestles with addiction and relapse. She is still in the system and is on probation. She had a five year clean streak until her then husband started using and started pressuring her to use again. That was years ago. She got clean again for a bit and relapsed two years ago. She is freshly clean again. It has been on and off but she tries really hard.... Her life has been very difficult. To makes matters worse, her 54 year old body has been greatly affected by her abuse of it over the years. She has difficulty breathing. She has hepatitis. She once had gangrene in her needle marks. She has had unusual illnesses that only come with being in the dirty disgusting drug dens or from being a prostitute or injecting that shit into your veins. Now, she is on oxygen. She has something wrong with her lungs but we are not sure what, and today I learned that while in the hospital she has suffered a stroke. She can't talk right, she isn't cognizant of what is going on, and she is scared. Worst of all she doesn't seem to know who we are and she is halfway across the country from us. All I keep thinking is what can I do to help? How can I comfort her? This woman who has never really had any real comfort in her life.
My heart is just broken for this woman. This strong woman who has battled for so long. Not just an addict but a woman I love very deeply. Because addicts are not just addicts they are also the broken people underneath the disease. She is an addict but she is still my aunt, a beautiful blonde green eyed woman trapped in addicts failing body. I want to hate my grandfather. I want to rage at him but he too is dead and sadly he too was a victim of horrid sickening sexual and physical abuse. He had no childhood. He was terribly abused and by many. It doesn't excuse what he did but it explains his sick perspective. When someone says abuse is a cycle, they know what they are talking about. I don't know how to feel right now except sad. My mother says when she thinks of my aunt she thinks she never really had a chance.....
She never knew trust. Never knew love from a man that didn't consist of rape, abuse, or drugs except her first husband but she was too far into drugs to stay and didn't understand his love because she equates love with pain. Never been told she is a worthy human being. Never been taken seriously. Never believed. Never trusted because of the drug use. Has no home, no job, no career, no family close by except her girlfriend, no pets, no car, no plans for the future that most of us have. She has never gone on a real vacation or traveled outside of the U.S. She has nothing that most of us take for granted everyday and yet she is the age most people look at to start retiring. She should have those things but drugs took those things away from her. Her disease has taken away so much. Her abuser continues to win every time she uses which also allows his abusers to win. Yes, I know she has to take responsibility for her actions but then I wonder who should take responsibility for why she uses to forget in the first place? The way she grew up and the path she took I sometimes think my mother is more right then she knows. Maybe she really didn't have a chance at a normal life because my mom found help and my aunt never could...
I sit here and write this I have no idea why. I guess I wanted other people to know her story. She deserves to be believed and her story counts. Maybe other people will understand addicts better from it. Maybe other families going through this will find comfort that they are not alone. Maybe my aunt will find comfort in the fact she is not alone....She deserved better and she still does. Maybe people will see how abuse ruins people's lives. How damaging it is. How it affects everything you do and every choice that you make. Maybe it will bring some sympathy in the hearts of those that think addicts want to live such a miserable life. They don't, they are just tortured and need help.
I am not giving up hope for her. I refuse to give up on her like so many have. My mom and grandma and my other uncle and his wife will continue to hope that she will recover as will my aunt's girlfriend. She needs to know that we love her and we believe in her. She is not "rummy dummy" she is Patti and she is beautiful. She is magnificent. She is worthy. Maybe she never had a chance, but she has one now.
So I am asking if you guys would send her some positive thoughts, or pray for her, or send her light. She needs to recover from this stroke so she can continue her path of staying clean. I would really appreciate it because, dammit that woman has had enough crap coming down on her all of her life. She could use a little support.
Thanks guys,
Neurotic Nelly
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Big Tongue, Small Mind....RANT. RANT. RANT.....
XXXXXXXXX....WARNING>>>GORE AND FOUL LANGUAGE>>>WARNING....XXXXXXXX
I like Gene Simmons. His music isn't necessarily my go to music but I do like his brand. He is a very savvy intelligent guy. He happens to be in my uncle's favorite band. I am familiar with his work and I have even bought some of his merchandise as Christmas presents. That being said, I am woefully dumbfounded by some comments that he made on July 31 during an interview with Songfacts that are just coming to the surface. To be fair, this was a rather long and interesting interview and this is only a small blurb of many topics he discussed but here is the quote that has recently put him in hot water.
When asked if he still gets along with the original guys he answered the following:
No, I don't get along with anybody who's a drug addict and has a dark cloud over their head and sees themselves as a victim. Drug addicts and alcoholics are always: "The world is a harsh place." My mother was in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. I don't want to hear fuck all about "the world as a harsh place." She gets up every day, smells the roses and loves life. And for a putz, 20-year-old kid to say, "I'm depressed, I live in Seattle." Fuck you, then kill yourself.
I never understand, because I always call them on their bluff. I'm the guy who says 'Jump!' when there's a guy on top of a building who says, "That's it, I can't take it anymore, I'm going to jump."
Are you kidding? Why are you announcing it? Shut the fuck up, have some dignity and jump! You've got the crowd.
By the way, you walk up to the same guy on a ledge who threatens to jump and put a gun to his head, "I'm going to blow your fuckin' head off!" He'll go, "Please don't!" It's true. He's not that insane.
"To the extent my comments reported by the media speak of depression, I was wrong and in the spur of the moment made remarks that in hindsight were made without regard for those who truly suffer the struggles of depression. Somewhere along the line, my intention of speaking in very directly and perhaps politically incorrectly about drug use and alcoholics has been misconstrued as vile commentary on depression. Unkind statements about depression was certainly never my intention. I simply want to be clear that my heart goes out to anyone suffering from depression and I deeply regret any offhand remarks in the heat of an interview that might have suggested otherwise."
Now, I am happy he apologized but nowhere in that statement does he explain why his comments were wrong, leaving me to believe that maybe he doesn't understand why what he said was both damaging and completely insensitive. For me to accept his apology he would have to not only have educated himself on depression but also make an effort to educate everyone else that he made that comment to, on it as well. His apology to me speaks of backtracking and reeks of an ass covering fluff piece all people backpedal into when they say something inappropriate but have no idea why it is in fact, inappropriate. I would like to enlighten him and people that think this way about depression and other mental illnesses so bear with me and hold onto your hats girl's it isn't going to be pretty.
I like Gene Simmons. His music isn't necessarily my go to music but I do like his brand. He is a very savvy intelligent guy. He happens to be in my uncle's favorite band. I am familiar with his work and I have even bought some of his merchandise as Christmas presents. That being said, I am woefully dumbfounded by some comments that he made on July 31 during an interview with Songfacts that are just coming to the surface. To be fair, this was a rather long and interesting interview and this is only a small blurb of many topics he discussed but here is the quote that has recently put him in hot water.
When asked if he still gets along with the original guys he answered the following:
No, I don't get along with anybody who's a drug addict and has a dark cloud over their head and sees themselves as a victim. Drug addicts and alcoholics are always: "The world is a harsh place." My mother was in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. I don't want to hear fuck all about "the world as a harsh place." She gets up every day, smells the roses and loves life. And for a putz, 20-year-old kid to say, "I'm depressed, I live in Seattle." Fuck you, then kill yourself.
I never understand, because I always call them on their bluff. I'm the guy who says 'Jump!' when there's a guy on top of a building who says, "That's it, I can't take it anymore, I'm going to jump."
Are you kidding? Why are you announcing it? Shut the fuck up, have some dignity and jump! You've got the crowd.
By the way, you walk up to the same guy on a ledge who threatens to jump and put a gun to his head, "I'm going to blow your fuckin' head off!" He'll go, "Please don't!" It's true. He's not that insane.
You can read the article and interview yourself in it's entirety here:
When he received the negative attention he did apologize stating :
"To the extent my comments reported by the media speak of depression, I was wrong and in the spur of the moment made remarks that in hindsight were made without regard for those who truly suffer the struggles of depression. Somewhere along the line, my intention of speaking in very directly and perhaps politically incorrectly about drug use and alcoholics has been misconstrued as vile commentary on depression. Unkind statements about depression was certainly never my intention. I simply want to be clear that my heart goes out to anyone suffering from depression and I deeply regret any offhand remarks in the heat of an interview that might have suggested otherwise."
Now, I am happy he apologized but nowhere in that statement does he explain why his comments were wrong, leaving me to believe that maybe he doesn't understand why what he said was both damaging and completely insensitive. For me to accept his apology he would have to not only have educated himself on depression but also make an effort to educate everyone else that he made that comment to, on it as well. His apology to me speaks of backtracking and reeks of an ass covering fluff piece all people backpedal into when they say something inappropriate but have no idea why it is in fact, inappropriate. I would like to enlighten him and people that think this way about depression and other mental illnesses so bear with me and hold onto your hats girl's it isn't going to be pretty.
Mr. Simmons, I agree with you about your mother who suffered through a horrific event. The holocaust was absolutely horrible. I am not even sure there is a word to describe the horrors of that period of time. The crimes committed against innocent people were tragic and horrendous. I stand by that statement completely. Your mother must be a wonderful, courageous, and strong person to have lived through such, and I totally see where you are coming from at this point of your statement. However, your main issue is comparing your mother's traumatic life in the concentration camp to other people's traumatic life events and you can't effectively do that. All pain is pain and there is no comparison. Who are you to act as if this mythical twenty year old from Seattle hasn't gone through enough pain to be suicidal? Are you the pain police? Do you know his life personally? Maybe he was abused. Maybe he was molested as a child. Maybe he has no other family. Maybe he suffers from other mental illnesses. Maybe the horrors of his life are so profound to him that he doesn't know how to deal with them any other way than to beg for help as loudly as he can. Sure, he looks like a regular twenty year old from Seattle but then again, we all appear normal on the outside. The holocaust was caused by evil people, depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in our brains. There is no one to punish or hold accountable for the horrors of depression. So we end up not only feeling hopeless but also blaming ourselves for having depression in the first place.
I would like you to think about how much pain it takes to make someone to not want to live anymore. I would further like you to think about the fact that addicts, which you so despise, usually become addicts to suppress such agonizing things such as mental illnesses, physical pain, abuse issues, and feelings of self degradation and worthlessness. No one wakes up one morning and says," Today I want to become a drug addict." That life is neither fun nor noble. No one purposely chooses to end up with a needle in their arm in some dark scum covered alley smelling of urine and unwashed body odor.
As to the comment about holding the gun next to a suicidal person's head, let me be real with you for a minute. My great uncle decided to end his life by blowing his brains out all over the ceiling. Do you really think that if you had popped up beside him right before he pulled the trigger and put a pistol to his head he would have begged for his life? In what world does that make any fucking sense? And sadly, my great uncle wasn't loudly protesting what he was going through, although we all wish he had been. Maybe we could have saved him or gotten him help if we had known this was where he was at mentally. Or at the very least we would know why he felt killing himself was the only way out, we still don't know why and because he is not here to tell us that, we never will.
Or since you are obviously so knowledgeable about suicide and other people's pain maybe you could have been there to tell him simply to cheer up. Maybe your pep talk with a gun would have made him change his mind and my great grandparents could have ended up walking in and seeing him sitting there reading a newspaper and smoking a pipe rather than opening up the door and stepping in his brain matter....what do you think? Possible???
Or you could have also applied this logic to my mother the second before she swallowed a bottle of prescription pills when she was 31. You could tell her that just because she was raped from the age of seven to the age of eighteen by her father who was the community preacher, that her pain isn't as bad as your mother's so she should just quit her bitching. It doesn't matter that she suffers from Depression, Bipolar, and PTSD. Since you know all about pain and suicide and who has the right to be miserable or not, you could save us all from ourselves and our own "pity parties" before it is too late. We want you to stop us before we become too victim like for your taste, because your opinion seems to be the only one that matters.
You see Mr.Simmons, suicide isn't about attention grabbing, or pity, or unfounded misguided jealousy. It isn't about what you have or don't have, or what horrid God awful things have happened in your life, or if you were born into a perfectly wonderful family with no issues. Suicide is the final act of immense desperation. An act to simply end unbearable agony and hopelessness. As you said," He'll go, "Please don't!" It's true. He's not that insane." you have made a great misjudgment. At that exact moment in time when he/she is ready to step over that threshold and commit suicide, they are just that insane and make no mistake, they are victims. Victims of a disease that kills more people than AIDS, car accidents, homicides, or prostate cancer. But hey, what do I know? Maybe after losing one family member to suicide and almost losing my own mother to it, I am just a tad bit sensitive on the matter. Well, then I am just so very sorry to have to put a damper on your ignorant way of thinking.
Apparently, Mr. Simmons has never had to live with depression or known anyone in his circle of loved ones that has suffered from it. Apparently, he has never had to deal with the ragged, open, gaping wound left behind from a loved one's suicide. Well, good for him, I wish that we could all be so lucky. I wish that none of the 30,000 American families each year never had to know what it is like finding your loved one dead on the floor in a pile of empty pill bottles, or bleeding from the wrists, or after shooting themselves in the face, or after suffocating themselves with car exhaust, or see their broken bodies after jumping from a building, or God forbid finding them hanging from a belt wedged between the closet door and the door frame......
We are all victims of this disease whether we suffer from it or not Mr. Simmons and I think it would be more wise to understand that.
Neurotic Nelly
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
My Addiction
Washing my hands is a release except for when it is not. It is helpful except for when it doesn't work. It can be pleasurable and nice except on days when it is a torture. Days when I am too stressed. Days when my hands feel soiled and no amount of washing will take away the feeling of dirtiness. Days when my hands are left raw, cracked, and or bleeding.
I wash my hands, on a good day about, twenty to thirty times. Not an astronomical amount and depending on your daily activities or work it is possible that this is normal or even less than how much other's may wash their hands daily. Such as a doctor, nurse, butcher, childcare giver......places that you would need to be more conscious of germs and bacteria. I am none of those things. I rarely leave my home, I am surrounded by the same germs and bacteria everyday.
It isn't just about the amount of times I wash. It is about the process in which I wash. And there is always a process for those of us that have OCD germ and contamination fears. A way we wash every time that never wavers or falters.
On some days I love to wash my hands. I love the sickly sweet heady scent of soap that reminds me of helping my great grandmother hang the laundry out in the sun to dry or summers spent as a child blowing bubbles from soap when the bubble solution spilled or disappeared. The smell I equate to cleanliness. I love the texture of soap. The way it bubbles and froths. They way I can cover every inch of my hands to where I know that germs are dying. I often think if I listened really closely I might be able to hear them beg for mercy before the soap zaps them into nothing. I love the calm the washing can give me from the intrusive thought of being poisoned, accidentally poisoning someone else, or getting myself sick. It is hard to describe the pure joy of simply being deemed clean enough by my own mind.
My process consists of almost scalding hot water, hot enough that I can just barely stand it. Then it's the liquid soap. I place it in my left palm. I smear it onto both hands and then I commence the scrubbing. I scrub on the inside of my fingers, on the outside of my hands, and I spend an inordinate mount of time washing and scrubbing the backs of my hands. Mainly because I use these to touch my face when my hands feel dirty when I can not wash. I make the bubbles resemble gloves and then it's on to rinsing. I have a process here as well. I take the left hand and hold it under the faucet in a circular motion, then the right, and so on for a few times until, it feels clean.
This takes several minutes and I don't usually mind the process. Sometimes I even enjoy it. But then there are sometimes where my washing is more like a bad addiction that I can not break. A sadistic painful torture I inflict on myself and am powerless to stop. On these days, I no longer love the feeling of clean hands because my hands refuse to feel clean. I no longer enjoy the smell of soap because it is a reminder that I have already washed over forty times today and I just want to make the disgusting heavy dirt feeling go away. The contaminated feeling. The germ encrusted feeling. I no longer have the release just a chasing of the release like a heroin addict searching for the high. More and more and more and more but still no relief. At this point I loath soap, I loath cleanliness, I loath OCD and everything that is does to me. At this point I am unable to function except to turn on the tap and wash again. Maybe this time it will be enough. Maybe this time it will make the thoughts stop. Maybe this wash, this last wash will calm me and I can stop. This last wash and it will be okay. I can stop for today. Much like the false promise of an addict's last cigarette, last needle prick, last hit of the meth pipe, except my addiction is the last dollop of Dawn, Ajax, Ivory, or Palmolive. I can stop anytime I want..........I can stop right now. Ten minutes later, I am standing at the kitchen sink and scrubbing my skin away again. I am wasting another five or ten minutes chasing something that never truly exists or at least it doesn't exist for long. Peace and quiet, stress relief, lack of negative horrifying guilt ridden thoughts. The seconds used up by washing add up to minutes which add up to hours. I wash for hours. I waste hours of my day standing in front of my sink washing away imaginary germs, imaginary bacteria, and an imaginary feeling that something is on my hands that no one can see. I can't see it either but I feel it, so I wash again and again, and again.
I knew it was a problem at four years of age when my parents slathered my hands in lotion and placed plastic bags over them because the washing had left them so dry, cracked, and chapped that any movement of the skin would make it tear and bleed. This isn't just something we do just to be funny. It is something other's take for granted but to us it can become a personal hell. A place that steals away large quantities of time and yet gives us nothing but pain in return.
Thankfully I have more good days than bad. Thankfully I have been able to not have to use the bag and lotion to re-hydrate my hands in a long time but I do remember it. It can get better and I do have other alternatives. I use antibacterial gel in place of washing sometimes. I have learned to wait to wash and deal with anxiety somewhat. I have done a lot of progress but mental illness is not fool proof and sometimes, I fall off the bandwagon and wash too much. Sometimes I fall back into bad old habits. It happens. I am working on it. I am struggling but I am trying and that is all I can ask for right now. I am not trying for magnificent or fantastic I am just trying for possible. I am trying to make washing less, possible.
Neurotic Nelly
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Triggers, Triggers, Everywhere.....
I would like to bring up a more complicated discussion today. Triggers and how they affect us as not just mental illness sufferers but also how it affects people who have endured violence and abuse and those that suffer from addiction issues.
Triggers, triggers, everywhere......
Trigger: anything, as an act or event, that initiates or precipitates a reaction or series of reactions.
An example of a good trigger would be the smell of cookies baking. Thoughts of happier times possibly childhood visits with your favorite grandma. You are reverted back to something pleasant and peaceful. The smell of cookies baking is almost as good as the taste of them or the feeling of fullness after eating them. Some triggers are not good. Some are highly unpleasant and debilitating.
I grew up very aware of what triggers are. My mother endured violent sexual abuse as a child at the hands of her father. A man who was violently sexually abused himself by his mother, grandmother, and his mother and grandmother's "clients". A chain, if you will, of devastation that ran through my family. A sick and disgusting history of extreme cruelty that ran like poison through the generations.
It was not unusual to come home after school and find my mother hiding in the closet crying and speaking in a child like voice. Scared and confused. It was not uncommon to not be able to touch or hug her because she was being triggered by touch. It was not uncommon for her to be washing dishes and just start throwing them to the floor to get the pain out. It took extensive therapy to get this to become less and to deal with the flashbacks that she was going through. As she got better she no longer hid in closets or broke plates or needed physical space from being touched at least from me. However, there were many times when we would be walking through a grocery store and she would freeze in her tracks and start to shake. Something had triggered her. A smell, a touch, a taste would bring back a flashback. Sometimes it was something that was said or not even what was said but how it was said. I was very aware of triggers and specifically her triggers so we could avoid them or if it was impossible to avoid them I would know how to help her when she was thrown back to the abuse memories. It is hard for others to comprehend what triggers are like unless they have a close friend or family member that have them themselves.
Triggers can give you flashbacks from a violent or abusive event.
Another set of people that have triggers are those that deal with addiction issues. This is why it is recommended that in recovery you do not keep the same addict friends and go to the same places where you used to use. They can become triggers that can give you stronger urges to use again.
And finally we have the mental illness community. Some of us have triggers specific to our diagnoses. I have OCD and I have triggers. It is a fact that certain things actually can trigger responses from me that are purely OCD related. I like to say something has triggered my OCD to be worse. I don't like to say that something triggers my OCD. That gives the impression that my OCD is only present when I encounter triggers. That is not the case. My OCD is constant. I am able to deal with it or overcome it to the point that many times it is not blatantly evident. That does not mean it ceases to irritate or plague me, it just means you are less likely to know it does by just looking at me.
Certain things trigger my OCD to be worse. I have triggers. I try to avoid them but as you know that is not always possible. I am aware of them but sometimes I am caught off guard. They cause me to have a visceral reaction. A physical flinching. It takes self talking and breathing. Triggers can cause an avoidance of the situation and most commonly a panic attack or extreme anxiety. And I am not the only one. People that suffer from mental illness regardless of the diagnoses can and do have triggers that make their symptoms worse or more evident.
An example is when someone touches my face, specifically my brother who finds my reaction to be highly amusing. This causes me to flinch and run to go scrub my face raw. I hate this trigger. Hate it with a extreme passion. It is debilitating, agonizing, and painful. I hate the loss of control. I hate the way it makes me feel. I hate that I am unable to control my reaction.
Many mental illness sufferers have triggers whether it be phobias, anxiety, flash backs, or uncomfortable reactions. The need to avoid or run away from triggers is very strong and it can result in missing out on things that we would like to actually participate in.
Stress is a huge trigger for most of us. Where normal people would become frustrated or upset, we can become unable to function. Lack of sleep makes many cranky, for a mental illness sufferer it can be harder to manage our symptoms. Triggers that cause us extreme anxiety can be highly disruptive to our schedules.
So in conclusion, triggers suck. They are everywhere and having mental illness means that at some point you are going to encounter them. At some point, you are going to have to deal with the big, ugly, pink elephant in the room. For normal people they see a world full of possibility. For us the world can seem like a trap ready to spring. For us the world looks like a huge potential for triggers to reach out and grab you. For us, there are triggers, triggers, everywhere. It can be quite frightening. It doesn't mean that we aren't capable of being out the world and doing the things we love. It simply means that we have to work harder to be able to do so. It can be done and it would be truly magnificent that if you know someone that has issues with triggers that you be understanding and supportive.
Neurotic Nelly
Triggers, triggers, everywhere......
Trigger: anything, as an act or event, that initiates or precipitates a reaction or series of reactions.
An example of a good trigger would be the smell of cookies baking. Thoughts of happier times possibly childhood visits with your favorite grandma. You are reverted back to something pleasant and peaceful. The smell of cookies baking is almost as good as the taste of them or the feeling of fullness after eating them. Some triggers are not good. Some are highly unpleasant and debilitating.
I grew up very aware of what triggers are. My mother endured violent sexual abuse as a child at the hands of her father. A man who was violently sexually abused himself by his mother, grandmother, and his mother and grandmother's "clients". A chain, if you will, of devastation that ran through my family. A sick and disgusting history of extreme cruelty that ran like poison through the generations.
It was not unusual to come home after school and find my mother hiding in the closet crying and speaking in a child like voice. Scared and confused. It was not uncommon to not be able to touch or hug her because she was being triggered by touch. It was not uncommon for her to be washing dishes and just start throwing them to the floor to get the pain out. It took extensive therapy to get this to become less and to deal with the flashbacks that she was going through. As she got better she no longer hid in closets or broke plates or needed physical space from being touched at least from me. However, there were many times when we would be walking through a grocery store and she would freeze in her tracks and start to shake. Something had triggered her. A smell, a touch, a taste would bring back a flashback. Sometimes it was something that was said or not even what was said but how it was said. I was very aware of triggers and specifically her triggers so we could avoid them or if it was impossible to avoid them I would know how to help her when she was thrown back to the abuse memories. It is hard for others to comprehend what triggers are like unless they have a close friend or family member that have them themselves.
Triggers can give you flashbacks from a violent or abusive event.
Another set of people that have triggers are those that deal with addiction issues. This is why it is recommended that in recovery you do not keep the same addict friends and go to the same places where you used to use. They can become triggers that can give you stronger urges to use again.
And finally we have the mental illness community. Some of us have triggers specific to our diagnoses. I have OCD and I have triggers. It is a fact that certain things actually can trigger responses from me that are purely OCD related. I like to say something has triggered my OCD to be worse. I don't like to say that something triggers my OCD. That gives the impression that my OCD is only present when I encounter triggers. That is not the case. My OCD is constant. I am able to deal with it or overcome it to the point that many times it is not blatantly evident. That does not mean it ceases to irritate or plague me, it just means you are less likely to know it does by just looking at me.
Certain things trigger my OCD to be worse. I have triggers. I try to avoid them but as you know that is not always possible. I am aware of them but sometimes I am caught off guard. They cause me to have a visceral reaction. A physical flinching. It takes self talking and breathing. Triggers can cause an avoidance of the situation and most commonly a panic attack or extreme anxiety. And I am not the only one. People that suffer from mental illness regardless of the diagnoses can and do have triggers that make their symptoms worse or more evident.
An example is when someone touches my face, specifically my brother who finds my reaction to be highly amusing. This causes me to flinch and run to go scrub my face raw. I hate this trigger. Hate it with a extreme passion. It is debilitating, agonizing, and painful. I hate the loss of control. I hate the way it makes me feel. I hate that I am unable to control my reaction.
Many mental illness sufferers have triggers whether it be phobias, anxiety, flash backs, or uncomfortable reactions. The need to avoid or run away from triggers is very strong and it can result in missing out on things that we would like to actually participate in.
Stress is a huge trigger for most of us. Where normal people would become frustrated or upset, we can become unable to function. Lack of sleep makes many cranky, for a mental illness sufferer it can be harder to manage our symptoms. Triggers that cause us extreme anxiety can be highly disruptive to our schedules.
So in conclusion, triggers suck. They are everywhere and having mental illness means that at some point you are going to encounter them. At some point, you are going to have to deal with the big, ugly, pink elephant in the room. For normal people they see a world full of possibility. For us the world can seem like a trap ready to spring. For us the world looks like a huge potential for triggers to reach out and grab you. For us, there are triggers, triggers, everywhere. It can be quite frightening. It doesn't mean that we aren't capable of being out the world and doing the things we love. It simply means that we have to work harder to be able to do so. It can be done and it would be truly magnificent that if you know someone that has issues with triggers that you be understanding and supportive.
Neurotic Nelly
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