And So It Begins....

Often times when I talk about living with my disorder or my mental illness I refer to the fact that I have lived with this albatross for over thirty years. Sometimes, I am dumbfounded as I say it aloud and hits me like a barbell to the chest. I have dealt with this for longer than most couples stay married. If it were a career choice instead of a mental illness, I would already have payed into my retirement fund and be living off of it ( probably somewhere in Florida wearing hideous, dark blue denim, high-water pants with an elastic waistband, dark black wrap around sunglasses, and  that little old lady red visor hat old people wear in bingo halls). If it were a prison sentence I would probably be out by now (depending on my crime).  If it were calculated by dog years, I would have suffered for over 112 years. You get the picture...it's a long time.

I wanted to talk about how OCD has affected my life. How it has changed over time, the pain, the struggles, the frustrations of what I have gone through as well as the many different symptoms I have had, but I realize that it would take more than one post to fit thirty years of this.....mental haunting into words. I want to be honest. I need to be honest. This is not just my blog but my confessional. My priest. My window to the world that I look out from and I so desperately want to just let it all out. Hang the dirty laundry and let it dry. Release the haunting and be free to finally be brutally honest not just about the more "comfortable" symptoms most of us willingly talk about but also the really bad ones. The ones none of us share because it makes us feel dirty, bad, sick, and so very very alone. So, I am taking that first shaky step with wobbly knees and unsure footing with this first installment of how it all came to be, how it all began, how it all started.....And so it begins.

My first vivid memory of an intrusive thought was around the age of four. My sister and I were playing outside. She, being two years older than me was my only real source of all things worldly. She was my Tom Brokaw of the news department and everything she said was taken as truth. After all, she was bigger and smarter. She was six. She told me that when you swallowed; the food, drink, saliva, whatever turned into blood as it ran down your throat. I was horrified. I hated blood and just the mention of the word made me feel faint. I am not sure how I reacted right after she broadcast this bit of news to me, but soon thereafter I started having issues with swallowing my own spit. I was afraid it was turning into blood and it scared me. I also started washing my hands, excessively. To the point my hands were cracking and bleeding. I became aware of how things were "dirty feeling" or "tainted" even when they appeared to be clean. Then the thoughts came. The ugly scary thoughts that turned my insides cold as ice. They made my palms sweaty and my heart jump in my throat. They showed me images of my parents suffering and dying in horrible ways. Car crashes, house fires, random crazy murderous burglars.....the most vile and scary things a kid could imagine and I was afraid it would happen to my parents, my friends, my aunts and uncles...ect. It made me think about death and the death of my loved ones, my pets, my friends, myself. It terrified me more than any boogeyman lurking in the closet or monster under my bed. It was the monster that lived under my bed, but I carried it everywhere I went. It lived in the recesses of my brain. It dwelled in the corners of my mind. It played in the shadows of my cerebral cortex. It left me unable to concentrate on anything else but the fear and the nauseous feeling it left in the pit of my stomach. I started to pray until it became a mantra. A mantra I said exactly the same way over and over and over and over, every time these images would pop up. I said them with tears in my eyes. I said them with my tiny fingers jammed so far into my ears that it hurt, while screaming "Shut up! Shut up!" over and over again. I hated the voice in my head but I didn't realize the voice was only in my head. I thought maybe others could hear it too. I didn't know it wasn't normal. All I knew is that no matter how hard I prayed, no matter how much I cried, no matter how loud I yelled it never went away. It never ceased. It never stopped. I said the mantra so often that after thirty years I still remember it verbatim. Most people have wonderful playful memories of the age of four and all of the innocence and laughter. All I have is the memory of : No No No, No No No, No No No No, No No No.

Soon the "No No No's" didn't work anymore and I resorted to slapping myself in the forehead. The pain made the intrusive thoughts waver. The shock of the slap gave me a instant relief but not for long enough. So I did it again and again. It got to the point that I would bruise my forehead from hitting it so hard, so often. When my slaps became not hard enough to shock the intrusive thoughts anymore, I started begging, pleading with my mother to slap me in the forehead. "Harder, Mom it has to be harder or the thoughts won't go away."

She took me to the doctor and he suggested it could be Obsessive Compulsive Disorder but they weren't treating children for it at that time and certainly not children that young. He suggested that they not tell me anything about it or draw attention to it and maybe it would go away on it's own....it didn't.

The washing became not enough to quell the anxiety and fear. Now it had spread into things like counting. One, two three, four...... Now I have to start over again....One, two three, four. I don't like even numbers. Four is bad, I need three. Why is there four when there should be three.....One, two, three, four.....

And onto touching things to make them even. You touched that part of your right  hand on the dollhouse. Now you have to make it even. Touch it in the same spot with your left. No, that doesn't feel the same. Touch it again. Touch it again. Touch it again. Touch it again. Touch it again. Do you want your parents to die? Then touch it again. Touch it again. Touch it again. Touch it again......

And finally it spread into checking. Are you sure you shut the front door behind you? I can see that it's closed but how do you know if it is closed all the way? It could be just halfway closed but not latched. Is it latched all the way? Turn around and jiggle the knob. Okay it's closed but are you sure? What if jiggling the knob knocked the door loose and it isn't really closed? Better go check it again. You don't want it to be open and something bad happen. Check it again. Are you sure it is really truly closed? Check it again. I am not convinced it's really closed. You may have knocked it loose. Check it again. And again. And again. And again.....

I was four and this had become my new reality. Not the reality of my friends who rode their bikes and played with their Barbie dolls carefree, but my reality. A reality where even if I rode my bike or played with my Barbie doll's my mind was sure to trick me. It was sure to plague me. It was sure to punish me relentlessly over and over again. It was sure to remind me that I was responsible for anything and everything that could possibly go wrong. It all depended on me. The future depended on my ability to touch things evenly, count correctly, have clean enough hands, and making sure the front door was closed and latched all the way. My family's life depended on it. It was a lot to ask of a four year old. And it continued that way with the guilt, shame, and anxiety of all  four compulsions until I turned ten. Then it changed into something else entirely. Something much worse....I became a PureO.


Neurotic Nelly

Next installment: http://neurtoicnellyocd.blogspot.com/2014/01/what-it-became.html

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