A Hermit With A Mustache...

   
        I am tired of the OCD pushing me into a dark corner. I want to shine and feel the sun on my face again. I want to taste the air and feel it on my skin. Sink my feet into the dew dampened earth and breathe in the warm scent of rain. I want to appreciate the silence of winter only broken by the eerie skeleton bone sound, the ice covered tree limbs make whilst clinking together in the wind. I will be damned if this mental illness is going to steal one more thing from me. I don't care how small it is. I can do this. I will do this. I am doing this and my OCD can go to hell, where it belongs. I am stronger than it ever thought of being. I just want my OCD to know that I am still here, standing, climbing, crawling, and fighting even though that's not what it wants. I am not going anywhere and I clearly am not going to bow down to it. I am the warrior of my own mind and I will NEVER give up.


       My son jokingly called me a hermit last night.... I have yet to bloom into my full hermit mode, in my opinion. But as I told him with a strong sense of self assurance, I fully expect to get to that point by my mid sixties. I also plan to get one of those mustache tattoos on the inside of my pointer finger so when I put my hands a certain way on my face, I can look as if I have a handle bar mustache. No, I do not care if that is cliche. It's gonna happen....

        I guess I am closed inside my home more than most people, but I have been slowly working on it. I now walk outside for around four miles every other day for exercise. I sometimes sit on my front porch to read. I even went to the grocery store all by myself the other day. I dressed up a bit to go, so I felt good about myself. It was kind of nerve wracking but I didn't have a full nuclear meltdown. I was pretty proud of myself. I am thirty six years old and that was the first time I remember going anywhere completely on my own in the last few years. It wasn't too bad. I may do it again sometime. In all honesty, I was more worried about the fact that my dress was shorter than I was used to and I was afraid one wrong move could show the world my rear end. It didn't but I can't be sure if it was because it was just me being afraid of something new and well fitting or because I did some side ways calisthenics to get the things from the bottom shelves without bending over,  just to be sure. All I can say, is no hind ends were shown and that is a win for me.


           I also have been trying to broaden my horizons with my writing. I was actually terrified to write my piece on the Willard Suitcases. I was afraid that it wasn't good enough or that I would fail and let everyone down. I was afraid it wouldn't read well or that my opinion wouldn't come across. I not only second guessed myself, I third, and fourth , and one hundred and sixty eighth guessed myself. But I think when you have a passion you have to be willing to try even if failure is an option. Thankfully, it was readable and became a post I am very proud of. I got nothing but positive feedback from it which assuaged away any fears of what I sometimes see as my own shortcomings, whether they be real or imagined.

            Last year, I pitched a writing piece to an online magazine hoping they would publish it. They didn't and I shouldn't have tried at that time, anyway, because I wasn't really ready. It just reinforced my OCD negative thinking.  I want to keep trying  new things and sometimes when I have gotten an opportunity to be a part of something small,  I get scared and end up not doing it.  That has to stop. I know that I am a decent writer and that just because something I write does not get picked does not mean anything more than it was not what they were looking for. All of the "I am not good enough", "I am a failure", "Who would want to read something a thirty six year old high school dropout would write, anyway?" OCD thinking can not be allowed to take over my life. I don't need to listen to the lies I tell myself because of my OCD. I am capable of anything I put my mind to, including writing.

            To prove to myself I am at a better place mentally, I sent in a writing piece to a different online magazine. I don't feel worried about it. If they don't choose it, I am not going to be upset. I know it has nothing to do with me personally, nor does it speak of  my skill set. I have to keep trying new things. So, I am going to, and see what happens. If it doesn't pan out, who cares? It is not the end of the world. Publishing doesn't define me, I define me. Getting printed doesn't make me any more or any less talented. I am secure enough in myself now, to have a to hell with it attitude. If it works, awesome, If it doesn't, I will keep trying.

             I am afraid of rejection but I can't let rejection make me fear living my life. Hell, I am afraid of a lot of things. You can't live your life if fear controls it. The worst thing that could happen from this is people saying no. I mean, big deal. It's not like I have never been told no before. So, here I go slowly putting my toes in the water. I hope that it all goes well, but if it doesn't I can handle that too.  My OCD isn't going to be allowed to drive me around anymore. This is my life and I aim to step out of the backseat and actually live it.


Neurotic Nelly

Stressed

Stress is a constant in our lives. It is sweaty palms and feeling faint. Tightness is your chest and shortness of breath. The world spinning around and feeling drunk. Nausea and physical pain. It is panic attacks and depression. It is falling down the rabbit hole head first and ending up in wonderland. Except instead of happy bunnies and mad hatters drinking tea you are met with mad bill collectors and cranky telephone salesmen demanding information and explanations. Instead of potions that make you small and cupcakes to make you big, you are left with bills that make your wallet small and cupcakes you can't afford. Stress is the red queen and she wants to lop off your head. She wants your time, your money, and your fear. She revels in being sadistic and mean. She wants to harass and badger you to death. She sucks. I am really tired of stress.
Sitting here watching bad reality t.v. like Operation Repo, I have decided that I would like to repossess some of my sanity. Not all of it mind you, as I never had all of my sanity. Just the amount I used to have before I started to know stress at such a familiar level. I would like to lighten the load a bit. I have no idea how to do this as of yet. I am just trying to stay positive. Sometimes I find being positive almost impossible but I keep trying. I try because I want to be anything but sad and depressed. I try because I want to set a positive role model for my children. I try because I truly believe it will get better in time and with a lot of work. In a world of Alice's and red queens, we owe to ourselves to keep trying. To keep getting up in the morning and face the day no matter how stressed out we are. It's hard. It stinks, but it is necessary. Whether, it is stress because of bills, medical concerns, worries, family issues, or all of the above we can prevail. We can take back some of our sanity one grain at a time.
 So my blog today is a message to the stressed. We can do this. We can get up and face the day.Hard as it may be. We are worth it.

And on a side note I would like to wish George ST. Pierre good luck in his fight tonight. I do not know him personally but he is my favorite MMA fighter.

Adaptation

Yesterday, I fell down my flight of stairs. The result being that as I fell my hand got caught between the railing and the wall. I broke my right middle finger along with bruising my left elbow and side pretty severely. I currently resemble someone who has been attacked by angry, bat wielding leprechauns.  The downside being that I now have to see my local hand surgeon to make sure it will heal properly and the fact that it hurts unlike anything I have ever felt before nor care to again. The only upside, and I do mean only upside, is that I no longer have to express my feelings to people I am angry with because I now am inadvertently flipping everyone off when I wear the splint.( If you are wondering how I am typing this I am slowly stabbing at the keyboard with my left index finger.) Like most people who are right handed it has been difficult for me to function. I am now unable to zip up my coat, buckle my own seat belt, and open things. Having to have my husband do these things for me makes feel like I am five years old and  I hate it. What is worse is that I have now realized how important my right hand is to me. I am blind in my right eye. I was born that way. It looks like it works but the vision is so bad that my brain purposely ignores the vision from it when my left eye is open. My brain has adapted so that I can see well enough from my left eye to function. I have little to no depth perception. I can not drive. I am always falling or running into things. I can not see things when it starts to get dark. My right eye is only good for peripheral vision. And it sucks at that too.I hated being forced to play sports in school because as the balls would be kicked or thrown into the sky I would cover my face and not look up. I could not tell where the ball would come down at and I was terrified that it would hit me in the face. You only have to be hit in the face once with a ball to gain a healthy fear of it happening again. When I was six, an eye doctor instructed my parents to have me wear an eye patch over my left eye to force my brain to use the right eye.I remember that it was Summer and hot. The patch itched and was sweaty. I was even more clumsy than usual. I hated it and spent the whole summer feeling like a defunct nerdy pirate. Other than making me miserable wearing the patch did nothing to help my eyesight. I now realize that I adapted by using my right hand to "see" for me. That I use it to feel my way around. I clutch things tighter so not to drop them if I bump into anything, I put out that hand in front of me in the dark to find the walls so I don't run into them, I use my right hand to be my eyes. And for the next few weeks I am going to have to adapt and use my left hand to not only open and close things but to also "see" for me. Keep in mind that it took me five minutes to open the milk jug with it last night. I am a little worried I am going to become more familiar with the walls than I'd like to be. All of this came to me last night as I laid there trying to figure out the best way to prop up my hand to quell the throbbing  People with mental illness have an amazing ability to adapt. Now, that may sound crazy to some people, but it is the truth. Many of us with mental illness have had to learn to adapt to live. We adapt to be able to work, to go to school, to leave the house. Some of are not able to do those things but  adapt to living house bound. In a world that terrifies us we have made our home a sanctuary. Which is an adaptation of sorts. Many people with mental illness have adapted to become creative people. We not only suffer for our art but our art is so good because of our understanding of our suffering. Many of the most famous writers, poets, and artists of our time suffered from mental illness. Ernest Hemingway was a prolific writer that suffered from severe depression. Sylvia Plath was an amazing poet who suffered from severe depression also, Vincent Van Gogh is rumored to have suffered anxiety and depression although there is no proof of exactly which mental illness's besides depression he suffered from. I think we can all agree that if you cut off your own earlobe something is not quite right in your mind. These people adapted by creating some of the most famous and amazing works of art. Sadly, until twenty years ago mental illness mostly misunderstood and not treated properly. Had it had been, these amazing people might have gone on to create even more amazing works. They might have been able to manage their illness to the point that they could have lived out their lives with a lot less pain and despair.We that live with mental illness, have learned to adapt to our situations and be able to function. It may not be the way the other part of the world functions, but it is unique to us. It works for us.We adapt and learn to live. We all have talents and are passionate about them. Whether we are advocates, teachers, writers, poets, photographers, painters, or musicians we are using our adaptions for art. We are adapting our pain into beauty, understanding, and honesty. We see the world from a different view and that is exceptional. And as we keep adapting, we help the world to understand us. We are changing the world one song at a time. One book at a time. One picture at a time. One poem at a time. We are changing the world one post at a time.