OCD Saved My Life...

As annoying, frustrating, and agonizing OCD can be, it literally may have saved my life last night. I won't venture far enough to say OCD is my hero but this is one time I am thankful I just can't stop obsessing about stuff.

Earlier this year we had a total of four gas leaks.....yes I said four. The first two were from my faulty and old water heater which we had replaced. Let me just say, that I have one of those incredibly sensitive noses. It has been a bain of my existence that some small smells literally drive me insane but one of the things my senses pick up on is natural gas. I am not sure if my sense of smell is so uncanny because of my OCD or because of my bad eyesight, but I can smell a gas leak, even the tiniest of gas leaks from far away.

The furnace went out right after winter this year. I smelled gas outside and called the energy company. My husband at this point was sure I was crazy as he didn't smell it. He thought I was imagining things, even though I was right the two times before with the water heater. The energy guy told me someone's furnace was about to go out.......sadly, I found out three days later it was mine. Yay me (sarcasm). My furnace was over thirty eight years old, so it wasn't a huge surprise. I went down to the basement and and sure enough, I smelled gas and it was bad. The energy company had to get come out and turn off the gas running to my then defunct furnace. It was scary and I decided that this was just not safe. We had to get a new furnace before this winter. Especially, since last year we had temps of -20 degrees Fahrenheit. This year is predicted to be worse. Most of it was arctic blasts from Canada......thanks Canada......I love Canada but it was sharing a little too much last winter, if you ask me. It's beautiful there and the people are wonderful but in the winter it can be frigid. Please for the love of God, keep your arctic blasts up there where they belong...brrrr.

So, a new furnace was put in two weeks ago and for the first time all year, I finally felt like the leaking gas debacle would be over. My family would be safe. My house would be free and clear of noxious and poisonous air......I was finally able to rest peacefully that we would be safe sleeping in a house that wasn't a virtual death trap. In fact, the furnace installer had told us had we continued to use the old one, we would have gone to sleep one night and never have woken up.

As for the two carbon monoxide detectors we have, never once has either one of them gone off. Sure the hybrid one will scream at you if you try and cook a hamburger patty on a skillet and declare that your house is burning down around you but have four gas leaks in a six month period and it is bupkis. I am not saying they don't work...I am just saying I don't fully trust them. I mean, if my nose smells gas shouldn't the detectors?

Which leads me to how OCD saved my life and my family's lives. Last night...err early morning, about 2 a.m. I remembered that I had forgot to switch over the laundry so my youngest would have pants to wear to school today. As we all know, pants are kind of important for leaving the house. I went down to the black hole (the basement) an started to switch out the clothes and BAM....gas. It was more of a strong grease odor at first, with a tiny sliver of gas smell underneath. I thought I was going insane. I mean, it is a two week old freaking furnace for God's sake! How in the hell could we have yet another gas leak???!!!

I decided, as I sniffed around like a bomb sniffing dog, that maybe just maybe it was all in my head. The smell had ceased so I went back upstairs. Where I sat and obsessed. And worried. And freaked myself out only to decide to go and sniff again to make sure....Something I don't normally do. I usually refuse to give into my OCD reassurances. But in this case I decided that I would not be able to sleep if I was laying there pondering whether or not gas was filling up in my basement making my house into a poison fueled, ticking time bomb.

As soon as I opened the door and went down three steps I smelled it again. It was faint but obviously there. I went to the new furnace and bent over and sniffed. The smell of natural gas was so strong that it made me light headed for a nano second. Thankfully, the new furnace people had made shut off levers on my gas lines when they installed the new furnace for me, so I went up stairs, woke the hubby and we turned off the gas...again. Ugh...did I mention how much I fucking hate having natural gas as a fuel source to heat my home? Well, I do, I hate it passionately.

The furnace people will be here soon to see why I have a leak and maybe just maybe I will finally be able to get some sleep because I haven't slept since last night. Even with the gas turned off I am paranoid about it.

And although, I hate having OCD, I am so thankful that it made me go back into that basement last night. Otherwise, I have a strong suspicion that we would have had a much bigger problem than a restless nights sleep.

So OCD, I sometimes hate your obsessing, compulsing, anxiety ridden guts....but sometimes, like last night, I am thankful that you are an actual thing and not just something I made up in my head. Thanks for bugging me relentlessly and making me go back into the basement to check for the second time.  Thanks for saving me and my family from carbon monoxide poisoning or from being blown to smithereens. Thanks OCD, thanks. My family and I appreciate it.


OCD saved my life, so today I am a little more thankful for it and just maybe, I hate it just a little bit less.

Neurotic Nelly

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