Loss....Warning Trigger Material.

They are turning the machines off tomorrow, and I can not breathe. My heart aches. I wish I could be there to hold her hand. To kiss her cheek one last time. To whisper in her ear.

As it is, I called and they held the phone to her ear and I professed my love, my thankfulness of her being in my life, I told her over and over again how much she means to me. They said she nodded and teared up.

I did not cry to her because I did not want her to hear my fear. My overwhelming sense of loss. I did not want her to know how afraid I am to live the rest of my life without ever hearing her voice again. The way she sings happy birthday off key.  How the palms of her hands are always warm but the tips of her fingers cold as ice. How she dotes on my, now, devastated children.

 Little flashes of thought run through my mind...how her purse used to smell like old spearmint gum. How she used to hold her hands over my ears when I had bad ear infections as a child. The sound of her voice when she spoke to me whilst my head rested on her chest. How she would call me sir and my sons ma'am as a joke. How she would tease me on the paper route that my clean hands were filthy and her ink covered hands were clean.  How she cried when she held my first born child. What do I do with these memories now? These bitter sweet memories that taste of tears.

Almost thirty eight years of memories and she was in almost all of them. How am I supposed to go on? What do I do? The weight in my chest is so heavy I have forgotten how to breathe. Every room I walk into is silent. Food has no taste. Sleep is elusive. I feel hollowed out.

I called again when they removed the ventilator.... I told her again how much we all loved her, how she was the best grandma a person could ever ask for, how I loved her bunches and bunches, which was her saying. Then I sang jingle bells to her. It was her favorite song. She always asked me to sing it to her, even in the middle of Summer.  I hope she heard me. She was no longer  responsive.


They turned off her machines today...she no longer breathes. My heart aches so fucking much. I wish I could have been there to hold her hand. To kiss her cheek one last time. To whisper in her ear.

I don't know how I will get through this but I do know that life will never be the same. I am better for having known her. Blessed for having been loved by her. I am utterly devastated. I do not know really what to say. The words escape me.

Goodbye my Grandma, my rock, my best friend. I miss you so much already.  My heart is broken.

Neurotic Nelly

Willful....

   

If given the option to be willfully ignorant or willfully indigent, I choose to be willfully defiant.

   I am willful. I am one intrusive thought away from becoming the hillbilly hermit, the troll underneath the bridge, or the creepy castle recluse in some antiquated children's book..... Sometimes, it takes pure will power to just live. I have to fight or this disorder will take over and I will be damned if I am going down without swinging.

    Am I willful? You fucking bet I am. Willful, spiteful, ravenous.  with a stubbornness that burns stoic and impertinent. I am the loudly whispering insolence that only comes with a mindful defiance that burns itself with embers so hot it has etched itself in to the recesses of my soul. A spider like web of pure pigheadedness and sheer inflexible iron-will. I will myself out of bed in the morning. I will myself to brush my teeth. I will myself to leave the house and go to my appointments. I will myself to shower, shave, to brush my hair. I will myself to cook dinner and to eat. I will myself to walk outside and feel the sun on face. I will myself to help with homework, to do laundry, to talk to strangers. I will myself to sleep after an exhausting day of doing things I did not want to do.  

    I am not going to be told what I can and can not do. Not by my own disorder and not by anyone else. I am not afraid to stand up for myself anymore.

   I was being willful when I disagreed with was a friend  who claimed that I was privileged for being only mental ill.  I was being willful when I told her that I refuse to accept that something that has ruined my life should ever be called a privilege. I was being willful when I told her to go fuck herself when she continued to argue with me as if she had any idea what hell my life has been.

   I earned this dysfunction with hard work. Before this dysfunction was me being unable to function at all. My life may be screwy but it is now a life because of pure stubbornness.

  Yeah, I'm willful walking past those who choose to be ignorant with my gaze held forward and my head held high. I am not ashamed to be me anymore and the likes of supposed friends aren't going to change that. I accept no one in my life trying to tear me back down where I used to dwell. I will not go quietly into the night. I will scream, yell, claw, grab, and scratch my way back into the light. I am not a whisper but a sonic boom. I will not be unheard.

     I want to live. I want to taste the snowflakes on my tongue. I want to feel the breeze in my hair. I want to go out of my house and be out of my house which is both exhilarating and yet terrifying all at the same time and I am doing it one day at  a time... unapologetically, unabashed, unashamed, unafraid.

Because I am willful, therefore I am strong.

    This is my life and I will carve it out as best I can with whatever shitty tools I find along the road. I will claw at it with my bare hands if need be. I will tear out chunks with frozen fingers and broken skin. I will carve out my life regardless of pain, discomfort, or complication.   That could be the "crazy" in me, or my red hair talking, or just that I am very much my grandmother's granddaughter in that way.  I am busy carving my life out, with lopsided shovels, broken down spades, plastic forks, and tarnished silver spoons.

Yes, I am willful....and there is dirt under my fingernails again.

Neurotic Nelly

Wow Just Wow...

     I am not really a supporter of the media and Hollywood. I have issues with what I can only describe as hypocrisy.

   The way they present people with mental illness is defaming and misguided and has been such for decades. I have a hard time being supportive of a community who is certainly not  supportive of people like myself.

  Hollywood has claimed to have made it's cause to fight for minorities, the underprivileged, and the supposed ignored. They complain about how women are treated and paid in the arts. They even talk at award shows about how disabled people were referenced by outsiders with passion and frustration. But when it comes to depictions of the mentally ill coming out of their own camp, they are strangely silent. They have a lot to say and a lot fingers to point at others but where is the outrage when it comes to how they portray us?

   In the last twenty years Hollywood has put out maybe four movies that have represented mental illness and stigma with dignity and compassion. The Hurt Locker, The Aviator, Silver Lining's Playbook, and A Beautiful Mind were some of the most representative movies of the plight of people that suffer from mental illness released to date. In that same twenty years, they have released countless movies where those of us that suffer from mental illness are presented in a  magnificently misinformed way, steeped in stigma, and left to boil over on the stove with a side of bullshit that only some place like Hollywood could fashion.

    Hollywood does not usually depict us at all but most of the time when they do it is as mentally ill maniacal murderers, creepy stalkers, or the cruel  dangerous monsters that maim and rape. I just have to ask where is the outrage for that? Where is the shame for participating in the stigma spreading of our disorders for profit?

    How can Hollywood be pissed about a man being made fun of  for a birth defect and yet not be pissed about it's own people making movies that end up perpetuating a belief that ends up killing people by making them afraid to get help? A belief and representation that hurts so many by labeling them with false presentations?

   This....this is what they stand for? They will stand for everyone else and be mad for everyone else and yet remain silent when it is about mental illness that they actively contribute to. Really? Wow, just wow.

    I was horrified to see a movie trailer today called Split. It depicts  a person with multiple personalities abducting women and scaring them.

    First off, the actual diagnoses for that is called DID or Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are going to make some big bullshit movie about it, at the very least get it's name right.

    The thing is, DID is not something that makes you a serial killer or mass abductor and honestly, I am beyond irritated about this movie.

    Lets be honest, There is no other disability  that Hollywood would allow to be used to imply dangerous behavior.

   This movie would never be called "Wheels" and imply that a man was a phsyco murderer because he was in a red wheelchair.

   It would never be called "Dresses" and infer that  the  character was dangerous because he was transgender.

That would be inappropriate and wrong.

It is the also just as inappropriate and wrong to make movies about the mental illness community and labeling them dangerous simply because of that diagnosis.


   There is nothing else that receives the unfair and biased damning that  Hollywood does to the mental illness community for entertainment purposes and profit.

   Movies are exciting. I get it, and I know that statistics aren't but that doesn't make them any less right. When the facts show that mental illness sufferers are twice as likely to be victims of violence rather than to cause violence, one would think Hollywood would get a new script and leave us out of the killer/slasher/murderer roles.

   And I am sure people will say that I am just being over sensitive to it but I live this life under the full weight of the stigma that movies like these help promote and propagate so yeah, I may be a tad bit fucking over sensitive about it.

I am angry and I don't even suffer from DID.

   I am angry that in 2017 we are still fighting to end stigma so we can save people that need help  but are too afraid to get it because of how they will be looked at, judged, and treated. I am angry that in 2017 movies are still being made making us all out to be dangerous maniacs when something as simple as a google search could prove how inaccurate that draconian thought is. I am angry that is 2017 and people will go see this moronic film call it horror and then go home to their normal lives and not think about the struggle someone with actual DID is going through. What everyone with the moniker of being mentally ill goes through daily.  As we try and do the best we can with stigma and misrepresentations all around us not only just blindly being accepted but also being actively promoted as entertainment. Especially, by the very people who claim to be tolerant and understanding of everyone's hardships, that is unless you are mentally ill I guess. I suppose when you struggle with mental illness it is not important or, at the very least, not as important as movie ticket sales.

Wow, just wow.

Neurotic Nelly

I Dwell There No Longer...

I have dwelled in the shadows for so long I can accurately describe the taste of darkness.

Musty dampness with a hint of mothballs.

I have lived in the recesses of my mind to the point where I know ever mark on the walls, every dent, every scratch, every happenstance pen mark.


I have treaded what seems to me like oceans of guilt and shame. I have drunken so much water while trying to keep my head above it's waves that the salt content has etched into my esophagus like finely frosted glass panes .

Surely that is why when my anxiety flows away from me, I am unable to speak. It is why I do not utter a sound lest my glass throat shatter.

I have absorbed those oceans through my skin and that is why my tears are salty and why there is so many of them able to fall in one setting.

That must be why.

I know what it is to live but be lifeless. To exhale but not be really breathing. I know how badly soap stings when  it seeps into the dried hardened cracks of overly washed hands.


I know what it is like to be so exhausted just breathing seems like a monumental task. To be so tried that one can not sleep. To pray to dream about something other than what is going on in my life. To dream of being someone else. Someone more whole.

But I also know what the sun feels like on my face. I know what warmth feels like. Like a hundred million tiny glimpses of light beaming on me from the clouds. I know how little condensation drips when the light of life thaws your soul.

I know what it feels like to laugh. Like the coziest fuzziest hairs on your favorite blanket touching naked skin. The prickles of glee penetrating my consciousness.

I know what happiness is and I cling to those moments like a buoy to a person in the act of drowning.

I know what life can be and what it will be. It will be hard. I will always tread water. I will cry myself to sleep some days. But other days I will laugh too. I will hold on. I will keep going. I will overcome. I may lose battles with this mental illness but I will not lose myself.

I am no longer bothered by other people's stigma. They have not lived as I. They do not understand me and that is okay. I no longer allow other people's judgments bother me. Stigma can only control you if you have fear of it and I am not afraid.

For I dwell there no longer....

Kindness Week...

I wanted to do something kind in honor of this being national kindness week but that is kind of hard to do when I haven't left my home since three days before Thanksgiving. I can't very well open doors for anyone or compliment people as I sit on my couch watching mind numbingly boring television. It's hard to be kind to others when you are shut in. I mean, I am kind but I am kind of like a hermit too.

I was thinking about kindness week last night and I thought about all of those times all I needed to hang on or to make my day less shitty was one kind word. And just how powerful one kind word can really be. My act of kindness will have to come from my blog this week and I wanted to share something I really believe in.

 Be kind to yourself. With all the negative self talk, all of the stigma that surrounds our diagnoses, with all of the self doubt, be kind. Say something kind about yourself once a day. It doesn't have to be prophetic. It doesn't have to be deep. It can be a simple as," Well, I have decent hair today."

One kind word to ourselves can mean a lot. Especially, since many of us go weeks, months, sometimes even years without hearing one nice thing.

Kindness week doesn't have to mean only being kind to others. We need to also remember to also be kind to ourselves. We deserve it too.

So be kind to others, try to lift them up. Be helpful if you can and also be kind to you too.  I know it isn't easy. We can sometimes be our worst enemy. We tend to be harder on ourselves than others are on us. We tend to judge ourselves way too harshly. So, be kind.

Tell yourself how worthy you are, how beautiful, how unique. Tell yourself how you are loved. How you are heard. Tell yourself how strong you are, how intelligent, how remarkable. Tell yourself these things even if you don't yet believe them. Just because you can't see it doesn't make it any less true.

Tell yourself what a good person you are. Because you are  good person. Be proud of all of your accomplishments even if they seem small to you. Celebrate your wins. Be kind to yourself.


I think of how strong all us are, how amazing, how determined. I think about how different and yet supportive we all are. How brave. I think of us as magnificent in spite of our challenges.

And although today hasn't been stellar and I feel kinda crappy, I am going to be kind to myself this week too. Even if it means I have to tell myself that I am beautiful whilst sitting in my bathrobe with coffee stains on it. Because I need to hear I am beautiful sometimes just as all people do.

  So in honor of kindness week : I am unique and all of you are unique too. I am strong just like all of you are strong. We are worthy. We are important. We matter. And if I am beautiful than you are all beautiful even in your coffee stained robes on a not so stellar day when you feel like crap.

Be safe, and be kind, and have a great weekend my friends.
Neurotic Nelly

Thanksgiving....

  Next Thursday is Thanksgiving so I thought I would write today. Mostly because I am going to be spending time with my family and because I am going to be cooking for two days straight.

There will be a lot of preparing food, possibly some burning of fingers, most likely a few tears shed from the sheer amount of baking. I may never be the same. I may not make it guys.

All joking aside, I truly hope that all of you have a wonderful day of family and friends, of good food and good thoughts.  And even if you happen to find yourself alone on Thanksgiving I hope that you have a peaceful and relaxing day. I am thankful for all of you. Because even if you don't know it, you are magnificent. You are fantastic. You are worth so much. Many of you have helped me feel less alone, less odd, and less damaged. I hope that in some small way, my words will reach those that need it the most and do the same for them. Because unity is power. If you feel like you have nothing else to be thankful for, be thankful for each other.

So, thank you all for reading, and being there for me, for leaving comments, for being supportive, for being the strong fantastic people you are. Thank you all for being you.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!
See you Thursday after next and until then, walk with your heads held high. You are magnificent, marvelous people and I appreciate you all.

Neurotic Nelly

I Struggle.....

I struggle daily with my OCD.

There, I said it.

I struggle with the thoughts and the obsessions. I struggle with the feeling of not being good enough. I struggle with the anxiety. I struggle in public and I struggle in private.

I struggle with people assuming I am fine because I appear to be a healthy, functional adult.

I struggle with stress and lack of sleep making my OCD worse.

I struggle that my child has inherited my mental illness and I struggle not to blame myself for it because he got it from my poisoned genes.

I struggle with not being able to drive and doing or going places that I would like to.

I struggle to have to depend on others more than I would like to.

I struggle with my children' homeschooling that makes me terrified that I am somehow failing them if I can't do everything for them correctly.

I struggle.....believe me.....I struggle.


But I am hopeful.


I can not just sit in the misery of my own making and punish myself for something I can not control. I have to force myself to remember how important we all are to this universe. I have to remember that I have people in my life who love me, depend on me, care for me. I have to remember that I have made it through thirty three years of OCD and I am still living, fighting, breathing. Yes, I struggle but that is no different today as it was yesterday, last week, or sixteen years ago. There are hard days, hard weeks, and hard months but I am hopeful.

I know there is no magical cure. I know that this will be what it is. I know that I am different because of my disorder but I also know that I am stronger than most people. That I am brave. I know that I am not someone who ever backs down. I know who I am as a person.

I remain hopeful.

And if my blog does anything for anyone, I would hope that it has helped other people feel hopeful. I would hope that it helps them feel less alone, less scared. I would hope that it would make people realize that even if they struggle how important they are, how worthy, how magnificent. I would hope that they could hear how brave and strong they are in my words and take that to heart. To know what badasses they are in their own struggles even if it is hard for them to see it themselves.

Life is full of struggles be it mental illness or not, be it stress induced panic or not, be it hard scrabble days where you fight tooth and nail just to get out of bed in the morning or a nice crisp day with nothing to worry about at all. There is always something to overcome, over throw, or override. Always......and we are pretty good at overcoming things.


So this weekend, my wish for you is to have a great week but in case you don't, I hope that you can remain hopeful....because you are important. You are worthy. You are good enough. People care.

See you all on Thursday with a new post. Hang in there.
Neurotic Nelly

Truth and Perceptions....

I have a new hobby and it is taking over my life.

I have spent countless hours refinishing old furniture, lately. Some people would complain but I like that it has made me obsessive or rather that my obsessive disorder is triggered on it because if I am sanding and staining and scrubbing things beautiful, I am not obsessing about getting some rare cancer from inhaling Scandinavian sheep farts.

I kid, but the reality of my dysfunction can be literally exhausting. I am afraid of every pain, every ache, every fleeting moment. I am terrified of things getting contaminated or tainted. I am frightened of every day life. My brain makes me worry. If my side hurts I may have liver cancer. If my head hurts it could be a tumor. A rash could mean something nefarious and scary.  The gum under the table could give me Hepatitis. And even though I know this is all bullshit my mind makes up, it changes nothing for my anxiety.

And as much as I would love to, I can not turn it off. I can't stop thinking about it. The only thing I can do is distract myself when that same old broken record with the same old shitty song starts replaying in my head over and over and over again.

Being me can be so very tiring.

Days, weeks, months are filled with excessive worry. People see me as someone who has her shit together. I try so very hard to present myself that way but the truth and perception are two very different things.


The truth is that I have battled this mental illness for thirty three years. I know nothing else. It has stolen so much of my time and resources. It has ruined relationships. It has made my life hell.

But I refuse to be macabre and morose about it. I refuse to stay silent in the shadows and be ashamed. It is not me being brave it is me trying desperately to survive under it's clutches. And I will survive because I am not someone who gives up. I can't afford to be or this illness would take everything from me and I am not going down like that.

Which leads me to my point of this post:


Last weekend someone threw this table out to be picked up by the garbage truck. It was rough, dirty, and damp. It looked like it had went through hell and back and possibly a house fire and a war zone with angry bat wielding leprechauns. Someone had felt that it's ugliness meant that nothing beautiful was underneath the years of it's mistreatment and bad style choices. They overlooked it. They counted it to be less than. But I could see it for what it really was. Something that just needed some tlc. It just needed someone to see it for what it truly was, strong underneath all of it's ugly.

I saw myself in that piece of furniture. A little warped, some ugly bits on the outside, thought of as less than what I am worth at first glance because not everything about me is pretty to behold or easy to deal with. But under all of that distraction and dysfunction I am sturdy. I am more beautiful and strong than I ever thought possible.

Under the layers of paint and pain I am still me, still real, still a solid force to deal with. Maybe that is why this table, so casually discarded, moved me so much. Because I could see, even if no one else could, that this table was way more than just trash.

Refinishing this table delighted me. It healed me with every scrape of the paint chisel, with every piece of sandpaper, with every brush stroke of stain. Every moment of saving this table felt like me saving myself. Weird, I know.

 A little sanding, a little stain, and a little bit of soapy water and viola.....

How could something so beautiful and sturdy as this be considered as garbage?


So, I am going to keep at it and keep refinishing the furniture I find  discarded because of perceived flaws. I will make them beautiful again. And every time I bring something back to it's original beauty I will be reminded that deep down we are all beautiful underneath too. Despite our flaws and in spite of our supposed "ugly". Flaws don't make you weak, hideous, nor does it make you expendable. We are beautiful.

Truth and perceptions, people....truth and perceptions.


Neurotic Nelly

Hang In There....

        You are not broken. Maybe, there are some chips on the surface. Maybe, you are a bit tattered around the edges. Maybe, you lean a bit to the side. Maybe right now, it feels like your life is a raging inferno of garbage and it is all falling  down around your head. Maybe, the debris field of all of the things you think you have lost is all you can see.You might be different, unique, unwell, depressed, repressed, upset, scared, or complicated but you are not broken. Hang in there.

Being us is never easy. We know this. The people that love us know this. Life is complicated. Mental illness is complicated. We can be complicated. Hang in there.

I know that sometimes we get exhausted. The fall into bed face first, fully clothed, and reeking of last night's dinner and disappointment kind of exhausted. It happens. People have shitty days, shitty weeks, shitty months. I once had a whole shitty year. Things can always get better. Hang in there.

On some days we feel completely alone. It can feel like not another soul on the face of this planet understands how you feel. 

It can feel like no one gets you, knows your struggles, or can comprehend the pain you are in. You are never alone. We all feel this way on occasion and we do understand you. Hang in there.

People care about you. They do, even if you are unable to see it. Sometimes our illness can block out all of the good things in our lives or can skew our perceptions and view of life making us unable to see the good. Sometimes we can not see the love other people have for us or we mistake it for pity. Sometimes we convince ourselves the blatant lie, that they would be better off without us because we are a burden. There are people in your life that look up to you, that love you, that care more for you then you would ever guess and they do not see you as anything but the person they care for. They do not consider you a burden and they don't want to lose you. You are loved. Hang in there. 

Hang in there, the world is a vast place and you have an important role in it. You are important. You are worthy. You are unique. You are loved.  So, please hang in there because you matter. 

You matter to all of us. We are all in the same boat and by boat I may mean a shitty, moss covered pirate ship with torn sails, marooned on a sand dune full of rotten coconuts with no elected captain and no real sense of direction but we are making the best of it. We stand up for each other. We know how you feel. So, hang in there.

You are worth it.

Neurotic Nelly

Porch Opossums, Flower Pots, and Mental Illness......Oh My

I have an inside/outside cat. We have, on occasion, put out cat food for him. Problem being that we have discovered that he doesn't actually eat the outside food. The food bowl would empty but the cat would not be the one emptying it. It was like a bizarre magical trick until a few days ago. That is when we saw it.

We have an opossum. 

Smallish but getting bigger everyday. It has taken over our porch at night. It has become fearless. It doesn't really care if you see it, as long as you don't get too close. Last night, that bastard broke one of my flower pots and stood there defiantly licking his fur on my outside bench.  Clearly, it is not afraid of me or my outside cat, or my flower pots.

It made me think about mental illness, which is probably some sort of mental problem in itself, actually. How it takes what it wants. Slowly it feeds off of your fears or stress, especially in the night. How it becomes brazen in it's symptoms. How fearless it is when stealing little bit of your life away. How it has no issues knocking over your flower post and watching you whole world turn upside down. It isn't afraid. It is defiant. It is a little bastard and before you know it, it makes claims on your porch without your permission or knowledge.

And what do we do? Usually, we blame ourselves for something we did not ask for. We get scared. We worry about stigma and sometimes that worry gets in the way of the help that we need. We keep it secret a lot of the time. We struggle with sense of self worth.  We hurt.

But, I think what we need to realize is that just like the porch opossum, we are not responsible for mental illness befalling us. It is just something that happens. It is not our fault nor does it say anything about who we are as people. It does not label us. I t does not lessen our worth.

There is no need to blame ourselves for something we have no control over. And there are many things to help people with mental illness. There are therapies, medications, groups, and treatments that have been helpful for most mental illnesses. There are people that understand. there are people that know what living under the stigma of mental illness is like and there are people who care. 

Honestly, mental illnesses aren't even that rare. Much like finding an opossum eating out of your garbage can, lots of people have encountered it. The current statistics prove that 1 in 5 people in the US will have some sort of mental illness in their lifetimes. That isn't a small number. In fact, you probably know someone affected by mental illness right now. So, there is nothing to be ashamed about when you break down the sheer amount of people that suffer with you. Why we treat it like some majestic rarity is really beyond me. Clearly it is neither majestic nor a rarity at all.

That is the Point that I am making, I think. Mental illness should not be seen as a weakness or weirdness. It should be treated and looked upon the same way as any physical illness is. And until it is, we should keep fighting the stigma, keep helping ourselves, and keep being proud of how much we have been able to accomplish.  Because having a mental illness is hard and we should be proud of every single time we win against it. No matter how small that win may be. It is still a win.

I am strong. You are strong and we can do this. We can tell the mental illness opossums of the world that flower pots be damned we are not afraid to fight back and get help. That we are worth it. That we matter. Because we do and our minds and porches are not something we are just going to give over without a fight.

Neurotic Nelly

I Am Going To Be Fine....

Breathe.

Calm down. Be calm and breathe. Think about fluffy kittens and silly puppy faces. Jam your hands in your pockets. Tap your fingers on your knee. Breathe Nelly, Breathe. You can do this. You are going to be alright.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Deep breaths. Come on you can do it. Inhale and exhale. That's it. You got it. You got it! Again, inhale really deep and exhale really long. There ya go.

I am writing this trying not to have a panic attack. I hate this. I hate this so much. My heart rate goes through the roof and my breathing becomes shallow and fast. My palms get sweaty as I battle this overriding feeling of complete and utter doom. Dread encapsulates my senses and fear fills my nostrils. I can smell it. I can taste my own terror. I want to run. I want to hide......I want to throw up.

I could get angry with myself for not being able to do things like a normal fucking person, but what is the point? This is my reality. This is what I have to live with and who I am. This is one of my many, many issues and that is okay. I am going to be okay.

Just breathe.

I wish I had more control of this than I do. I find it embarrassing when it happens in public. I am not ashamed that it happens but it can be upsetting to other people. I wish that I could leave my house with the certainty that I will not lose my shit and breakdown in the middle of the floor in a public space. But I don't have that certainty and I have learned to just be happy when I surprise myself and do well. Tomorrow is probably not going to be one of those days. Not if I am already fighting of a tsunami of panic the night before. But whatever the outcome of this day, I am going to be fine.

I am going to be fine either way. Breathe....

Neurotic Nelly

I'm Back and Hopefully Better....

Well, I have recovered....sort of.  Apparently while going to my doctor's office for a checkup I contracted what can only be described as the flaming gungamo.

I have no idea how it happened. I used hand sanatizer. I avoided direct contact with other patients. I kept my hands in my pockets. All of my OCD germ tactics to stay safe.

I was going to write but I was ill in bed coughing up a lung and wishing my ears didn't feel like I was trapped underwater.

The first day I awoke to the feeling one would have if they had swallowed razor blades. Thinking I had Strep throat I went to the Urgent Care. Spoiler alert: it was not strep throat.
 I was given antibiotics. The pharmacist tried to pander their flu shots to me while I waited in line looking and feeling like a snot zombie. I was not amused.

The second day, I felt as if angry bat wielding leprechauns had attacked me in my sleep. My head hurt. My sinuses were flaming balls of lava. My eyes refused to focus. I had what I like to call congestion stupidity, where the facial pressure makes you unable to concentrate. The pressure triggered my vertigo which allowed me to spend the day  bumping into everything and falling over as if I was drunk. It was fantastic....sarcasm.

The third day, I wanted to die. There was clearly no relief or hope in sight. I wasn't sure if I was going to make it and I was not entirely convinced I wanted to. The urge to crawl instead of walk from the couch to the bed to the bathroom was becoming more of a need rather than a desire. I don't remember much about it except whimpering sounds that I realized where coming from me as I laid rolled in a cover, scrunched into a ball, with kleenex shoved into my nostrils. I woke up choking from the chest congestion. I woke up unable to breathe from my whole face. I woke up having to blow my nose....I slept too much but none of it was long term bouts of rest. It was like a bad ironic joke and the punchline was clearly me at this point.

Thankfully, the third day was the worst and I was up and running on the fourth day. It has been twelve days since.

I now still cough but not as much as before and I don't sound like I have peanut m & m's shoved up nose. So, that's a plus. I did, however, pass it on to both of my children.  This is truly the gift that keeps on giving.....sorry kids.

That being said, I am in a way better mood than usual. Probably from my new found ability to breathe through both of my nostrils at the same time. Nose breathing is great, isn't it?


Other than being sick, I have nothing really to talk about. I am thankful to be back to my old crazy self. I am happy to be on the mend. I am still confused as to how I caught this bug in the first place but I am happy it is mostly over.

So, here's to you guys. I hope to write a better post than this for next week. I am hoping all of you are feeling well, and are having good days. If you are not, please just remember that even in the darkest of hours daylight is only around the corner. Just hang in there. You matter. You are important. You have insurmountable worth. You are heard.

Until next week guys,
Neurotic Nelly

Dear Self....

We don't tell ourselves good things about ourselves enough. We as mental illness sufferers can be very negative about ourselves and our accomplishments. Sometimes we fail to see even the smallest of victories as anything but failure. We get lost in the comparisons we make of ourselves with other not mentally ill people. Sometimes we forget to pat ourselves on our own backs for the things we have worked hard to improve on in our lives. We need to be proud of ourselves. We need to believe in ourselves. We need to know how important and worthy we are. If we don't then who will? So for the next few weeks I am going to write letters to myself detailing the things I have done that I am proud of. No negative criticisms, no put downs, no self deprecating backhanded comments.  Just positive feedback and maybe some humorous anecdotes. Because sometimes I need to remember that I do not have to be my own worst enemy.


Dear self,

I wanted to take a moment to tell you how proud I am of you that you didn't have a panic attack when going to your doctor's office yesterday. Sure, you tapped the arm rest of the car with your hands until they were sore, but you did not forget to breathe and focus. I mean, I would not be ashamed had you had a panic attack but I am equally proud that you didn't.

I also commend you on your extreme composure when the hand sanitizer in your purse ran out in the doctor's office and you used the one on the waiting room counter. Even though it was gritty and you promptly wiped it on your husband's shirt in front of your children with a haste only seen in Nascar races. You were completely unapologetic about doing so but I have to concede that it was the appropriate action since hand sanitizer has no business being gritty and your husband's shirt could never be a dirty as whatever lived and apparently died in that sanitizer bottle before you used it.

I would also like to congratulate you on last night. When you were staring intently at the garden orb weaver spider weaving her web on your porch and the cat touched your foot, you only screamed once. It might have been a tad bit hysterical and possibly over dramatic, but I give you props. It could have been a worse reaction. You didn't faint....

 I am proud of how you have handled school starting back up and all of the scheduling you have had to do. I know it is not your strong suit and that it gives you a ton of anxiety. You are doing the best you can and you are getting it done. Sure, the laundry is piling up around you but we can both pretend it is because of the stress of online public school. I mean, I know better because you hate laundry and your husband isn't really buying that little white lie either after fourteen years of half-assed laundry washing, but no one else needs to know. Your secret is safe with me.

I am proud of how well you have dealt with your Grandma being ill, getting better, and moving to live with her son six states away. I know this will be hard. I know that it makes you sad. I understand that change is hard for you.

Please know that it is okay to cry. I know you hate to cry because it makes you feel weak. But everyone cries, Nelly. It's just tears. It  can not make you something you are not. If it bothers you so much to admit that you do sometimes need to cry we can simply  call it "eye ball sweat" from now on. I am okay with pretending your eyes are just overheated when you are sad.

I know things have been stressful and hard and off-putting but you are doing great. No, it isn't everyone else's great but it is your great and you should be proud. You are doing the best that you can. So head up, feet forward and keep going on. Remember who you are. I believe in you, even if your eyeballs need to sweat occasionally.

So, be brave Nelly, and by brave I mean keep pushing through. You can do this.

Sincerely,
Neurotic Nelly

Don't Be An Idiot.....

Words can not accurately describe how annoyed I get when I hear someone say that they believe that religion is a mental illness.

Mental illness is not something you pick. It is not a belief system. It is not a decoration that is worn around the neck like a talisman. It is not a side effect of religion nor is it a choice. It is not Voodoo. It is not a sign of demons. It is a chemical imbalance in your brain. It is a very real physical illness located in your cerebral cortex.

One can not simply choose to not have mental illness and turn away from it.  One can not switch one's mental illness for another one that they think better suits them. Mental Illness does not work that way because it is not a choice.

Some people do not like religion, but to compare it to something that has no bearing on class, race, gender, or belief systems is ridiculous. It is ignorant and anyone that repeats such drivel looks ignorant while spewing idiotic bullshit to the masses to try and make themselves look hip and different.

 To claim that religion is a mental illness is to make the words "mental illness", something that can be picked and chosen to label anything that other people don't like because it upsets them, confuses them, or makes them uncomfortable.

Calling something that isn't a true mental illness a mental illness is wrong and hurtful. It promotes the ignorance and stigma that we put up with on a daily basis. It makes our diagnoses seen as not a medical condition but a word to damn anything that is not thought of as acceptable or understandable. It takes our diagnoses and the lives that we live and  minimizes the struggle we go through and understates the triumphs that we accomplish.

If you don't want to believe in a religion, that is your choice, but do not use our diagnosis as a label for your decision to not believe. Because a chemical imbalance and a choice are not the same thing.

Don't be an idiot. Please educate yourself.
Neurotic Nelly



Neurotic Nelly

I Know Who I Am....

I know who I am.....

Many people in my life have told me that they thought I was very good with my OCD. That I seem to be dealing well.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

They truly have no idea.

It's an act of sorts. You see what I allow you to see. You hear what I allow myself to say. There are certain OCD fears, I have told no one, and may never open up about. No one knows unless I let them in. I have mastered the mask I plaster on my face to appear to the masses as a normal human being.

I am an actress of my own life. I smile when I feel like shit, I seem awake when I am exhausted, I lie to you when you ask me if I am okay. One can not look at me and know how damaged I really am.

That is the hell of it.

There is no sign upon my forehead identifying me as OCD. As a PureO there are no compulsions to show as proof.

I have had people I know tell me I talk about it too much. As if I can just turn it off like water from the tap. Like it is optional to be obessive compulsive. Like if I ignore it, it will go away.

I get it, talking about it is boring and uncomfortable. One should try living with it for thirty two years and see how uncomfortable it really is.

OCD is hell. It is the hardest thing I have ever done. It is the hardest thing I will ever do and I do it everyday. It is not something I glorify being. It is not something that I would wish on anyone. It is not something I would ever be proud of.

But I am proud that I am still fighting. That I remain as honest as I can be about it. That I keep trying even on days that I damn well know I will lose. I am proud of being strong in the face of the horror that OCD inflicts on my daily life.

I know who I am....


It might not be enough for some, to be just someone with OCD fighting to live as normal and happy a life as possible, but it is enough for me. I am proud of being who I am despite of this disorder that has single-handedly tried to take over my life. This disorder that tries to steal my life away from one fear at a time. This disorder that has made my life hell. I am proud. I know who I am.

Not just with this mental illness but in spite of it. I am a good person, a kind person, a sensitive person. Maybe to some that isn't enough. Maybe it isn't enough that I can not work. Maybe it isn't enough to them that I am unable to be more productive in their eyes. Maybe it is isn't enough that I am not always on the same page as everyone else and I don't do what everyone else does when they do it. Maybe it isn't  enough for them but then again they do not live with what I do. They don't have to deal with this.

I will tell you a little secret, most people have no idea who they really are....

So, I guess I have that. With struggle comes truth and with hardship comes knowledge. And when you fight just to get out of bed in the morning to face a day you know will be full of grief and fears, you find who you really are.

I know who I am....

And if I am not enough for them or they judge me because I am different, fuck 'em. I don't really need them in my life anyway.

I have spent way too much of my life blaming myself and I refuse to let anyone make me feel like I am nothing. I know who I am and I am more than enough.

Until Thursday...

I missed my last two posting dates because my grandmother is very ill and I have been beside myself with worry. It has taken a toll on me mentally as well as emotionally and I just haven't been able to get the gumption to write a post and be uplifting or even slightly happy.

I will be writing this coming Thursday and will have more time to dedicate to my posts then. I am sorry that I haven't been able to write but my OCD has kicked into over drive and I couldn't calm down enough to be productive.

Anyway, I hope you all are doing well this week and I am sending positive thoughts your way if you are struggling right now. Just know that you are not alone. You are worthy. You are unique. You matter.

Until Thursday,
Neurotic Nelly.

What It Has Done...

Talking about mental illness to the masses is hard. It is hard to deal with it's misrepresented preconceived notions and it is hard to deal with the media's silence. We are often times villainized or sanitized but very often totally ignored.

That being said, because my diagnoses is severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, I do not necessarily deal with as many of the violent misconceptions other mental illness diagnosis come with.

Many people have the incorrect idea that OCD is somehow less life changing or devastating than it actually is. We can blame many things for this but the biggest issue is the idea that OCD is inherently about organization and cleanliness. Leaving people to use the term OCD for things that are not actually OCD and that is a problem. Because if we desensitize the diagnoses to being more about how a person likes their morning coffee, we are saying that it is not a scary, upsetting, life altering mental illness. And it  minimizes the very real , very terrorizing issues people that actually suffer from OCD face.

Make no mistake, I do not want to limit people's discussions on OCD. I have no issue with people using the term OCD. I just want people to know what it actually stands for and the disorder it describes. I want open debates. I want people to ask me about OCD. I want people to learn. I want us all to educate each other.

OCD has devastated my life. People see me as a happy go lucky thirty six year old house wife. I am, in essence, an anxiety ridden thirty six year old hermit. I tell people that I am a house wife but I do not tell them the reason I am a house wife has nothing to do with my dreams of being a stay at home mother. The reality is that because of my severe OCD I was unable to finish high school. I was then unable to attend college and I am currently and have always been, unable to hold down a job. I say I am a house wife because I do stay at home and take care of my home and children but I do not go into the details that I do this because I am unable to do anything else.  I am for lack of a better description, unemployable.

I had dreams of graduating high school and my grades were very good. My panic attacks made my attendance extremely poor. I had high hopes of trying to get into Julliard. I wanted to sing on Broadway. I am talented enough to do so. I could have graduated and at the very least tried out, but this disorder prevented me from being who I thought I could be. Instead of me trying out for a musical college, I struggled to leave my home. Instead of me making plans for my future, I became unable to be in crowds of people without having panic attacks.

 Those options were torn away from me. Not in one fell swoop like other disorders but by little bits and pieces over time. One tiny fear after another.  Anxiety attacks on replay over and over again .

This disorder has damaged my relationships. It has made me hard to understand and harder to live with. I am under no illusions that being married to me is a cake walk. I know better.  I know how stressful it is to live with someone who is almost constantly stressed out. I am afraid.  I am afraid of everything, all of the time.

It has made me unable to do things that other people do on a daily basis without ever thinking about it. I have issues going to public places. I am unable to take medications to help because my OCD is medication resistant.

I am a thirty six year old hermit, with no diploma or higher education, who does not drive, who is too unreliable to employ, and who can not even make doctor appointments on the phone without fending off a panic attack. That is my reality. That is what OCD has done to me.

 We can discuss semantics and pretend that I have made a go of it and accomplished a great deal despite my anxiety but the reality is still reality and it has been my reality for thirty two years. I do not make excuses or shy away from the truth that this disorder, my disorder, has effectively unabashedly and irrevocably changed my life.

OCD comes with extra baggage. The kind of baggage you don't see on television or movies. The kind of ugly sludge green, hard plastic, Bakelite luggage no one wants to claim at the baggage check because it is unbelievably heavy and embarrassing to be seen with. It comes with hesitations and freak outs. It comes with phobias, panic attacks, devastating intrusive thoughts, and mental or physical compulsions. It comes with sexual, blasphemous, or harm fears. It comes with suicidal ideologies and avoidance behaviors. It comes with triggers and life altering consequences.

And yes, I am doing well for someone that lives with severe OCD but let's not pretend that it hasn't shaped the person I have become because it has.

It marks the things I do on a regular basis.
I cannot deal with certain things like germs, contaminations, or other people breathing on me or touching me. My life has become a life of avoidance. I avoid, it is the hallmark of what I do.

 This is the reality of what OCD has done to me.


I strive to continue to work on it. I strive to be better accepting of all that comes with having a mental illness. I am happy to be where I am today even if it isn't what I thought I would achieve when I was younger. I actually enjoy being a stay at home mom.

I do have family and friends and a fantastic support system. I do have really good days. I do know that I do not suffer alone. There are many people who suffer from OCD.

I am not bitter about how my life has been affected but I refuse to be obtuse and pretend. OCD is hard. Shit happens.

I also hold on to being proud of the things that I can do and the small victories I am able to achieve. Waking up and getting out of bed on a bad day is a feat. Taking a shower after I get out of bed on a bad day is a victory. Walking outside amongst other people and interacting with them after I have taken that shower, after getting out of bed on a bad day is a fucking act of heroism. I don't need the things I can do to be big to be proud of them. I just need to acknowledge that I did them and because I have done them, I get stronger from it.

Victories do not have to be big. They just have to be victories.


Neurotic Nelly

It's Us......Rant

  I am going to take this day to write about something that is a bit off topic because I can not understand how people in this country have gotten so ridiculous.

I read an article a few days ago claiming that Disney Princess's may be harmful to young girls development. Have we gotten so low that we now are looking to blame cartoons for our children's issues?

 Really, people, really?

These stories have been around for hundreds of years, albeit the originals tended to be more macabre and morose. Snow White came out in pictures in 1938 and I could be wrong but I don't remember reading that little girls were damaged by watching it. I didn't hear about how my great grandmother's ego was destroyed by a girl that ate a poisoned apple. She had real problems like living through the great depression and working hard all of her life just to put food on the table.

I grew up in the eighties and have seen almost all of the Disney Princess movies. I don't feel negatively affected by them although, I am sure some cockamamie article will claim I was permanently scarred by it and the pain is so deeply hidden in my soul that I just don't know it yet. I never felt stunted because Ariel lost her voice or Pocahontas sang the," Colours of the Wind". I mean, Sweet lord, this victimhood shit is getting a little out of hand if we are clinging to the desperate belief that Disney movies have scarred our children's future.

The problem isn't the movies. It isn't stereotypes portrayed in children animations. The problem is us.

We have strayed form being the parents we ought to be. We are too busy at work, at school, and on our phones. We watch too much Netflix and spend too much time writing tweets about how hard it is to "adult".

We do not spend enough time with our children and we don't really listen to them when we do. We are too busy, too distracted, and too self absorbed.

I see parents at the park with their children, not watching them, not playing with them, not interacting with them, but instead playing on their cellphones. They remain totally oblivious that little Jimmy is about to fall off the six foot slide face first. Facebooking, texting, or tweeting has become the most important form of communication in our lives. Go to the grocery store and look if you don't believe me. Hell people can't even drive their cars with their most precious cargo inside without fucking looking at their phones. They are putting their lives, their children's lives, and everyone else on the roads live's at risk for a text message they could have read when they pulled into their own driveway...

I don't know who they are messaging but I know damn sure, Princess Jasmine didn't send that omni-important text....

We send our children to school assuming that our children will learn what they need to strive in life but don't actually know what lessons are being taught. Most of us have no idea. That is the schools job so why should we be involved?

We don't realize that many of the children's books are not as factual as they should be. The history books may mention the Holocaust but doesn't explain how the Nazis were inspired by eugenics that was created by Darwin and perpetuated on criminals and the mentally ill in the states. It has little to no information of the Native Tribes that lived in this country long before the Europeans ever set foot here and lacks accurate descriptions of the hell holes they were forced to live on. There is no real discussion on the who the presidents were as actual people. Andrew Johnson was a drunk and Warren G. Harding was a man whore, not that anyone even remembers those two because we don't really go in depth about the people that have ruled this country.

 See if your child is reading Shakespeare, Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, or Fredrick Douglass. Go ask your fifth grader if they know who Napoleon was and what he did. Ask a senior in high school what the secretary of state does. Ask a college student which countries were the allies in WWII and who was our president at that time. Ask any of the children that you know to show you on a map where England, France, or Australia are located. Ask them where Brazil is. See if they know that there are pyramids in Peru.

I bet you most of them have no idea.


To the victor goes the spoils and the victors have given us such great things as Common Core. Our children learn about next to nothing and are forced to cram so much into such a small time frame they retain little to none of that knowledge. There are high schoolers who can not read nor write in cursive and we have allowed this to happen because we did not pay attention.

That wasn't Disney. That wasn't a girl wearing a crown in a fancy dress drawn with crayons and markers. That was us.

We tell little girls that they are princesses and should demand what they want and never be told no. We tell them they can wear what they want and not be looked at or talked about, which is not based in reality. We tell little girls that one day their prince will come and make everything better so pay attention to how you look and not what is in your mind or your education because to be a girl is to be above all else, pretty.

We sell make up to them with the pretense that they are not pretty enough without it. We tell them they need to be skinny to be beautiful. We tell them that when they get thin they must also have big breasts because that is how the ideal woman looks and we all must strive for perfection. We let magazines tell our little girls that they should be sexy but not whorish. That they should show their bodies off  but also be humble about it. That they should be worried about boyfriends instead of grades. We want to make sure they fill out that college application but remember to make duck lips while they do it...

 We bombard them with  advertisements that make women look sexual as they do the most mundane things. Sexy women eating hamburgers. Sexy women shaving their armpits. Sexy women eating  pieces of chocolate while moaning. What the fuck is this? Who eats like that? Who looks like that all of the time? No one. This is not reality in any sense of the word. It's ridiculous and yet our children are growing up thinking that this is the epitome of a real woman.

 We as women, talk about our own bodies with shame and disgust in front of our daughters and it teaches them to hate their own bodies. We are obsessed with looks and have taught our children that looks outweigh brains. That what is on the outside is more valuable that what is on the inside.

Cinderella isn't showing our little girls how to be disgusted that they don't look like Barbie, that is all on us.


We ask Facebook friends how to punish our children because we are unsure. We can't make decisions on our own childcare because we have been told by every online media source, baby whiner advocacy group, and news rag that everything we do is wrong and "damaging" to our children. We believe that we must not punish our children, we must let them have everything they want and never tell them no. We can not spank, we can not ground, we can not tell them what to do or it might hurt their feelings. We put feelings above behavior and we can't seem to acknowledge how stupid that really is because we make too many excuses and apparently we are fine with it or we would stop reading such tripe and believing it.

 Mulan didn't tell us how to parent so I guess we have to look at someone else to float the blame....

We have children that throw monumental fits and act like complete  assholes and the parents ignore it or make excuses for it. Our children are completely hopped up on ADD medications and because we don't know what to do with hyper kids that don't actually have ADD but just need to go play outside,  they get addicted to them and then move onto harder drugs. We scratch our heads and wonder how they got like this. Sure there are children that are autistic and do have ADD but lets not pretend it is every kid on the freaking planet because it isn't. There is no way in hell every child on the face of the earth needs to be medicated and sedated.

I'm looking at you, Sleeping Beauty...

We think the fits and alligator tears of a child going ballistic is cute. It's not cute, it fucking annoying and before someone starts screaming at me that I wouldn't know, I am a parent of two boys. One has an anxiety disorder and the other has severe ADD and they never acted that way in public because they knew I did not need to go to Facebook to decide a punishment.

And the public will get their pitchforks ready because someone is offended that I am telling the truth and they need to make excuses for their shitty parenting in....3....2...1.

If your child has special needs then this post isn't about you so sit down. This is about the parents that do not watch nor interact with their children. The one's who look at their phones instead of correcting their child's behavior. The ones that don't wipe the years worth of food off their child's faces nor wipe their snot covered noses. The ones that have no idea where their children are or what they are doing because they are too busy not caring nor paying attention. The countless parents that ignore their children and then have the audacity to pretend they do not know why their child is a little grime covered monster.


Your children who think they are special snowflakes are brats. Spoiled rotten, attention seeking, brats steeped in the victimhood that is today's excuse perpetuated by the media that everyone has an issue and everyone needs a fucking pass for their bad behavior because their life is traumatizing for having just been born.

And because Belle got to dance with a talking clock and chipped teacup and they didn't we should all cry and throw ourselves on the floor and bitch about how unfair life really is....

Someone told us that Disney Princesses are ruining our children and we are so desperate to believe that it wasn't our fault that we eat that ridiculous notion up. So we can firmly lay the blame on the devices our children use, and the games they play, the youtube they watch, the cell phones they have, and the Disney princesses they idolize

....but...

who bought those things for them, who gives them the money to purchase the games and cellphone apps, and who turns a blind all to all that they do on those devices because they are too busy being wrapped up in their own shit to spend any actual time with their own children?

I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure it wasn't Tinkerbell.

 We don't want to look at who is really responsible because then we would have to shoulder the blame and take the responsibility that we have failed because we are too wrapped up in things that do not matter or at the very least, should not matter as much as the raising of our children.  Children that one day will be adults raising the next generation and won't know how to do it because all we ever gave them was poor excuses and a ripe sense of victimhood.

We don't want to admit that we are failing our children because we have gotten adept at not seeing the truth. It is easier lie to them than to admit our own shortcomings. We tell them that it is okay not to follow the rules. We tell them they can do what they want when they want. We tell them not to have their own opinions or beliefs and to believe that everyone else's opinions are more important than their own. We tell them history is not important and is perfectly okay to bend to their ideals and to erase. We tell them they don't need to know who they are as a person as long as they look good and take lots of pictures while doing so. We tell them minds are not to be fed and educated but to be indoctrinated with complete and utter bullshit. We are responsible for this. We and only we.

We lie to their faces and pretend that we aren't the ones making their lives impossible to navigate when they become full grown adults without the tools to do so because they have been treated like a victim all of their lives because it was easier for us to do so......We lie to them as we tuck them into bed and tell them just how much we love them, right before we look down at our cellphones and hit the like button on a Facebook cat meme.

But sure, let's blame Rapunzel for that too, if it makes you sleep better at night.

Neurotic Nelly

OCD Explained By Fairytales ....

 I have been dealing with some massive writer's block lately and it is annoying me. It has caused me to struggle in writing posts like I would like too these last few weeks. My mind is completely left me. I hate having nothing to post. So, I decided that instead of beating myself up trying to force myself to write when my mind refuses to cooperate, that I would just share one of my best and most read posts from a couple of years ago. I believe in this post and I feel it represents how I feel right now. I hope you all like it....

OCD Explained By Fairytales by Neurotic Nelly


Have a great weekend guys and I promise to be back and writing something new next Thursday!

Neurotic Nelly

Staying Positive...

     Staying positive doesn't mean pretending to be happy all of the time. It doesn't mean stuffing down your feelings and ignoring what is going on your life. It simply means knowing that things might be going really badly right now, but things will get better at some point.

That is how I get through my bad days. I remember that I also have good days. That these bad days will not last forever. My depression will ebb away, my OCD will calm down, I will not always feel completely emotionally inept.

Sometimes, I still feel defeated but I know that there are times that I feel victorious. I feel vindicated. I feel healthy. Those days are what get me through the gloom and doom. Those days are my inspiration to keep going, keep fighting, and keep staying positive.

Staying positive to me is knowing that I matter, that I am worth the fight, that I am unique, and I am loved. It means knowing that I am not what my mental illness tries to tell me I am. I am better than that, worth more than that, and I refuse to listen to my mental illnesses's lies.

My post today is just a reminder that we are all better than our worst days. We are strong. We are important. We matter and we will get through this. We can stay positive and know that there are better days ahead, even if they seem far far away. They are there. They will come.

Here is hoping you all have a great weekend and are staying positive because each and every one of you is worth it,
Neurotic Nelly