She Believes I Can.......

On a day that we celebrate Dads, I would like to write a post celebrating my mom. Weird I know but my biological father has never been in the picture and the most hardships of raising me for many years, solely fell to my mother. I can not imagine the frustration, the agony, the devastation she must have went through....raising me. A good kid. A smart kid. A sensitive kid who suffered from severe OCD. It was hard to deal with, especially in a time when OCD was not well known or diagnosed. As a parent I can now understand more the trials she went through with me because no loving parent wants to watch their children suffer and I suffered everyday.

It is like having an invisible beast living inside your head. The fear and anxiety it drums up are insurmountable. We know, as the sufferer, that what we are afraid of makes no sense and yet the fear is so very real. Palpable. Tactile. You can almost taste it. You can feel it physically and we know that is not possible but yet here it is. Making us feel like our skin is covered in it or worse.

As I got older the symptoms changed from the usual ones associated with OCD to more terrifying and more hard to understand pureO symptoms. What must have it been like for her to watch me turn from touching doorknobs twenty four times a day to me jamming my fingers in my ears with tears in my eyes asking her why I should continue on living when my life was pure hell? It must have been totally devastating. I can not imagine what it was like for her to watch her child be in so much pain.

And although I got therapy, there was no CBT at that time. Very little understanding of treatments for OCD except  drug trials and therapies that often times didn't work. I kept wondering when I would get over this curse. This hell I called a mental disorder. This life altering, painful, life stealing mental illness that was slowly sucking away everything good in my life.

School became almost impossible. Some days I would make it to the car. Some days even to the school building. Some days I even made it inside only to have a panic attack and go home after lunch. And those were the good days. The days when I wasn't washing my hands till they bled or praying to God to fix me while rocking back and forth on the floor in desperation. I just wanted to be normal like the other kids. Why did I have to live like this? What could I have done to deserve being punished by my own mind this badly? How was this fair?

Having no CBT meant I had to do my own form of it. Baptism by fire, so to speak. We did all of the things I was afraid of. We even went to the school and I made myself go, even if I had to leave. Even if other kids didn't understand what was wrong with me. Even if I seemed like the oddity, the weirdo, the freak. I played normal well a lot of the time so some days it worked and some days it didn't. My poor mother would wait for me in the parking lot and watch me walk up to the doors. She would wait and pray that I could go inside the building but she would be there to pick up the pieces if I couldn't. She would be there to calm me when I would blame myself for failing to do yet another normal thing other people could do. She would be there to hold my hand. Wipe away my tears. Remind me that tomorrow was another day and we would try again.

God knows how many times I would ask her if I was still a good person, a worthy person, a lovable person. If I were worth all of this struggle and complication. How many times my OCD made me seek reassurances that I would be okay, that she would be okay, that she would not die from lupus when I was at school, or that the car wouldn't crash and kill us both when we were going to the store. Silly fears that to others seem unimportant, became breath stopping, heart pounding realities for me. How many times did I repeat my fears (and there were so many) to her over and over again. Ask and repeat, ask and repeat, ask and repeat....then came the medications and all of the issues that came with side effects. Drowsiness, mania, loss of hair and nails breakage to the quick, stomach pains, rashes, sometimes confusion. Many medications over the years with little to no success. That must have been hard for her as well. Always she was there to offer support. Never reprimanding me for being repetitive or scared. For being what I felt was broken. She never yelled at me or chastised me even on the most frustrating of days or the the most painful of nights. And looking back she must have cried, she must have been utterly dumbfounded and devastated. But I never knew, she never let me know....

As I grew I began to realize that my OCD was not going to go away. I would always live with it. I would not ,in fact, ever be like the other kids in my school I admired so much for their ability to do the normalist of tasks, without fear. Without that overwhelming sense of dread. This was me and this was going to be my life whether I liked it or not. Whether I was prepared to deal with it or not. I would always be a good person, a smart person, a sensitive person but also a person with severe OCD.  And I was blessed at the same time. Because although, I was always going to have to deal with fears and anxiety and intrusive thoughts, my mother was there to help me. To make sure that I knew I was worthy. I mattered. I had a place in this word, even when I was younger and I wasn't sure of that fact.

I always knew that my mother was a great mom, but I am not sure I understood just how great until I became a parent myself and was able to look at it through new eyes. The eyes of someone who would do absolutely anything to help their child and to take away any pain that they go through. I can now see how difficult and heartbreaking it must have been to not be able to remove my pain or even lessen it like a parent would wish to. I marvel at her strength and her love. I am humbled by her persistence. I am thankful that she is my mother because quiet honestly I am not sure I would have made it without her by my side.

I am not sure why I wrote this, except to say to those of you out there struggling with this disorder, it can be done. You can learn to live with it. It is hard but it is worth it. You can live a life with OCD and not just a life but a good one. Maybe you wont be like other people but you will be you and you are worthy of happiness and love. You do matter in this world. You are important and you do belong.

I guess I wrote this to honor my mom who has been my champion all of my life and to thank her. To thank her for inspiring me to keep trying even when it seemed impossible to try. For always being there for me to talk to and to offer me support. For always believing in me and remaining positive when I was not so positive about myself. She believes that I can use my hardships and pain from my OCD for good. That my blog can be helpful to others. I hope so. I hope it can shed some light on not just OCD but mental illness as a whole. I know that I try because she believes I can. Just like she always has.

Change The World....

 Thursday's post took a lot out of me. I have to admit that writing about some of the more painful things in life tend to do that. I think back to all of the painful things my mother has dealt with (sexual abuse as a child/ abusive marriages/ect) and I am reminded daily of her strength and compassion. She is a fighter. She is a hero. She is a living breathing inspiration. Not just because she is a survivor ( although that is heroic and inspiring and brave in it's own right) but because she keeps going and has always been very open about it. She through years of agonizing therapy has learned to place the blame on the abusers and throw the shame back at them where it belongs. She is truly just one amazing woman. And I truly hope that some of her wisdom and strength will rub off on me as I get older. Maybe some of it already has. After all, she is the one who taught me to never hold back and always be honest and open. To believe in myself and that if one person tries hard enough, they just may change the world.

That being said, I am not self absorbed enough to believe that I will change the world all by myself. I do however, believe that if I can inspire others to talk openly than we all can inspire others to do the same and so on and so on until we effectively end up changing the world. I mean, that's possible right?

I believe that changing the world is inevitable. Many people have done it, most of them without the notoriety and fame that most celebrities have today. While most are familiar with the likes of Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton and their exploits. Their fame is neither earned nor deserved. Most people today, know nothing about  about the sacrifices made by amazingly brave and awe inspiring individuals such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Medgar Evers,  and Nelly Bly. People that fought for the rights of themselves and others. People that stood up to discrimination and bias. Just because their names are not as readily slipped from our tongues does not make their contributions any less magnificent.

Do you know one of the reasons I chose to write under the name of Neurotic Nelly? I chose neurotic because I suffer from an anxiety disorder and anxiety used to be deemed as neurotic behavior. And I chose the name Nelly because of a magnificent heroin that wrote under the name of Nellie Bly. Not that I am a journalist by any means(although that is certainly a dream job of mine) but because she did something so heroic, so unheard of  that she changed the way the world thinks and effectively  managed to change the treatment of mental illness institutions with one simple experiment.

Nellie Bly born May 5, 1864 – January 27, 1922 was the pseudonym of American journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochrane. Known was a ground-breaking reporter she set a record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days, in emulation of Jules Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg, and an exposé in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. She was a pioneer in her field, and launched a new kind of investigative journalism. She got her start as a reporter after writing a rebuttal to a piece written by  Erasmus Wilson, claiming that "women were best served in the home, conducting domestic duties such as raising children, cooking and cleaning, and called the working woman a monstrosity." Bly's rebuttal letter to the editor got her a position and the rest is history.

Although, I find her writing accomplishments to be ahead of her time and wondrous, what she did for the mental illness community is insurmountable.

That's right, she did an article about not only being mentally ill but the treatment the people received in an asylum. And to do that she simply acted like what the world then concluded an "insane" person looked like. And it worked.

Burdened again with theater and arts reporting, Bly left the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1887 for New York City. Penniless after four months, she talked her way into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, the New York World, and took an undercover assignment for which she agreed to feign insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island.

After a night of practicing deranged expressions in front of a mirror, she checked into a working-class boardinghouse. She refused to go to bed, telling the boarders that she was afraid of them and that they looked crazy. They soon decided that she was crazy, and the next morning summoned the police. Taken to a courtroom, she pretended to have amnesia. The judge concluded she had been drugged.

She was then examined by several doctors, who all declared her to be insane. "Positively demented," said one, "I consider it a hopeless case. She needs to be put where someone will take care of her."The head of the insane pavilion at Bellevue Hospital pronounced her "undoubtedly insane". The case of the "pretty crazy girl" attracted media attention: "Who Is This Insane Girl?" asked the New York Sun. The New York Times wrote of the "mysterious waif" with the "wild, hunted look in her eyes", and her desperate cry: "I can't remember I can't remember."

Committed to the asylum, Bly experienced its conditions firsthand. The food consisted of gruel broth, spoiled beef, bread that was little more than dried dough, and dirty undrinkable water. The dangerous patients were tied together with ropes. The patients were made to sit for much of each day on hard benches with scant protection from the cold. Waste was all around the eating places. Rats crawled all around the hospital. The bathwater was frigid, and buckets of it were poured over their heads. The nurses were obnoxious and abusive, telling the patients to shut up, and beating them if they did not. Speaking with her fellow patients, Bly was convinced that some were as sane as she was. On the effect of her experiences, she wrote:


What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment? Here is a class of women sent to be cured. I would like the expert physicians who are condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.


…My teeth chattered and my limbs were …numb with cold. Suddenly, I got three buckets of ice-cold water…one in my eyes, nose and mouth.

After ten days, Bly was released from the asylum at The World's behest. Her report, later published in book form as Ten Days in a Mad-House, caused a sensation and brought her lasting fame. While embarrassed physicians and staff fumbled to explain how so many professionals had been fooled, a grand jury launched its own investigation into conditions at the asylum, inviting Bly to assist. The jury's report recommended the changes she had proposed, and its call for increased funds for care of the insane prompted an $850,000 increase in the budget of the Department of Public Charities and Corrections. They also made sure that future examinations were more thorough so that only the seriously ill actually went to the asylum. 

_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly

She reported of people being unfairly committed.


Thus was Mrs. Louise Schanz consigned to the asylum without a chance of making herself understood. Can such carelessness be excused, I wonder, when it is so easy to get an interpreter? If the confinement was but for a few days one might question the necessity. But here was a woman taken without her own consent from the free world to an asylum and there given no chance to prove her sanity. Confined most probably for life behind asylum bars, without even being told in her language the why and wherefore. Compare this with a criminal, who is given every chance to prove his innocence. Who would not rather be a murderer and take the chance for life than be declared insane, without hope of escape? Mrs. Schanz begged in German to know where she was, and pleaded for liberty. Her voice broken by sobs, she was led unheard out to us.
---Ten Days in a Mad-House

And the treatment they received.

Just as I reached there Superintendent Dent came to the door and I told him how we were suffering from the cold, and of Miss Mayard's condition. Doubtless, I spoke incoherently, for I told of the state of the food, the treatment of the nurses and their refusal to give more clothing, the condition of Miss Mayard, and the nurses telling us, because the asylum was a public institution we could not expect even kindness. Assuring him that I needed no medical aid, I told him to go to Miss Mayard. He did so. From Miss Neville and other patients I learned what transpired. Miss Mayard was still in the fit, and he caught her roughly between the eyebrows or thereabouts, and pinched until her face was crimson from the rush of blood to the head, and her senses returned. All day afterward she suffered from terrible headache, and from that on she grew worse.

----
Soon after my advent a girl called Urena Little-Page was brought in. She was, as she had been born, silly, and her tender spot was, as with many sensible women, her age. She claimed eighteen, and would grow very angry if told to the contrary. The nurses were not long in finding this out, and then they teased her.
"Urena," said Miss Grady, "the doctors say that you are thirty-three instead of eighteen," and the other nurses laughed. They kept up this until the simple creature began to yell and cry, saying she wanted to go home and that everybody treated her badly. After they had gotten all the amusement out of her they wanted and she was crying, they began to scold and tell her to keep quiet. She grew more hysterical every moment until they pounced upon her and slapped her face and knocked her head in a lively fashion. This made the poor creature cry the more, and so they choked her. Yes, actually choked her. Then they dragged her out to the closet, and I heard her terrified cries hush into smothered ones. After several hours' absence she returned to the sitting-room, and I plainly saw the marks of their fingers on her throat for the entire day.
This punishment seemed to awaken their desire to administer more. They returned to the sitting-room and caught hold of an old gray-haired woman whom I have heard addressed both as Mrs. Grady and Mrs. O'Keefe. She was insane, and she talked almost continually to herself and to those near her. She never spoke very loud, and at the time I speak of was sitting harmlessly chattering to herself. They grabbed her, and my heart ached as she cried:
"For God sake, ladies, don't let them beat me."
"Shut up, you hussy!" said Miss Grady as she caught the woman by her gray hair and dragged her shrieking and pleading from the room. She was also taken to the closet, and her cries grew lower and lower, and then ceased.
The nurses returned to the room and Miss Grady remarked that she had "settled the old fool for awhile." I told some of the physicians of the occurrence, but they did not pay any attention to it.
------
Once a week the patients are given a bath, and that is the only time they see soap. A patient handed me a piece of soap one day about the size of a thimble, I considered it a great compliment in her wanting to be kind, but I thought she would appreciate the cheap soap more than I, so I thanked her but refused to take it. On bathing day the tub is filled with water, and the patients are washed, one after the other, without a change of water. This is done until the water is really thick, and then it is allowed to run out and the tub is refilled without being washed. The same towels are used on all the women, those with eruptions as well as those without. The healthy patients fight for a change of water, but they are compelled to submit to the dictates of the lazy, tyrannical nurses. The dresses are seldom changed oftener than once a month. If the patient has a visitor, I have seen the nurses hurry her out and change her dress before the visitor comes in. This keeps up the appearance of careful and good management.

--Ten Days in a Mad-House

And after all that she reported on and saw, her article helped force the health care system for the mentally ill to review their policies on both what classifies a person as "insane" and the treatment those persons get.

 Sadly, asylums continued and many became even more abusive and vile but Nelly Bly was able to shine light on how the system was dealing with undesirables and the mentally ill in the late 1800s. Years before the lobotomies and medical experiments started. Because of her courage people could no longer walk by an asylum and pretend these atrocities were not going on behind the locked gates and barred windows. 

I chose the name Nelly in part as an homage to Nellie Bly and what she stood for. I do believe that one person can change the world but I believe it is better to have the world join in and help change itself. The best way to do that is push through the fear and expose the truth about discrimination, stigma, bias and the ugliness those things promote. I believe that we all can stand up and change the way we are viewed and treated. We just have to push through the fear and stand up.

Neurotic Nelly

For more information on the expose Nelly Bly wrote look up Ten Days in a Mad House. It is a sad, disturbing, and yet interesting read.

What Matters Most....

I ran across a profound quote/ title of a book the other day that I would like to share with you guys. It stirred something inside me as poetry often does. It made me ponder. It made me think. Which could go either way on if that's a good thing or not.

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire....

This speaks to me. It is a low pitch hum that rolls under my feet. It ignites electrical sparks in my brain. It breathes new life into me and yet steals away bits of my soul. It makes my mouth dry and my voice weak. It is truth and lies and everything in between. It says to me all of the fears I have are pointless. It reminds me that it does me no good to fret if I refuse to walk over the coals in the first place. It makes me feel strong and weak at the same time. It makes me rethink my past and comb it over like Donald Trump's bad hair.  Excavating each piece and examining it. Am I doing all I can? Am I giving myself a chance? Do I give myself enough credit for the things I have managed to accomplish or maybe too much credit? Am I over analyzing again? Of course I am, I have OCD. I over analyze everything, myself, my day, the lines in the grass....

And what does this simple phrase mean to me or rather about me?

Everyone walks through their own personal hell. Their own fire that singes and burns. Everyone has issues and problems. Some people choose not to face them. Some people pretend nothing is wrong. Some people don't know what to do and panic and some people just look the other way. At some point all the king's and horses and all the king's men can not stop all of the castles from falling. There is always a stopping point, a place of no return when you either jump or fly, sink or swim, crawl or walk.  Everyone will have to walk across the fire.

I have accepted that I am walking. I have accepted the pain, the burns, the soot covered feet, those awful smudged black footprints stamped all over my life. They are a real pain to try get out of  the carpet.  I have accepted that life is a learning experience and been reminded over and over again that learning can be agonizing. I have accepted that my struggles are long and my issues are many. I make no excuses for that. I see them clearly. And so what? My whole life is a fiery ravine to be crossed. It has been fraught with issues and obstacles. I can't let that stop me. I can't just sit on the side lines and be stationary. I don't have the luxury to simply look the other way. I never did. I am forced to walk through the fire and you know what? I am determined to do as good as I can. I am determined to be a walking, talking wave of positivity. Not because I am a naturally bubbly person but because I believe that I deserve to be happy. We all deserve to be happy. So yes, the fire burns and it is extremely hot but that doesn't mean I have to be angry or sad about it. Everyone has issues. Everyone has pain. Everyone else's fire is just as sweltering and painful. I am no different just because my fire is because of OCD or mental illness. Fire is fire and pain is pain.

So you see, it doesn't matter why I have to walk through the fire or what caused the fire in the first place. What is most important is what I do with it. How I choose to walk through it. How I hold myself. How I treat others. How I present myself to the world. That is what matters the most.

So I have decided that since this is my fire I am going to walk through it with a smile and an open hand. An open heart filled with compassion. Only nice remarks on my lips for those that need a kind word. Ears ready to listen and not just hear. A mind ready to learn. Making sure I never cease to tell people that they are worthy no matter what size they are,  they are beautiful no matter how broken they feel, they are valid no matter how often they have been told otherwise.  I will not just walk across the fire I will dance through it because life is hard and painful and yet so very very beautiful at the same time. I will walk through the fire singing opera and folk music and rock and country, and oldies, and Christmas carols, and even rap ( although I have terrible rhythm and you might want to wear ear plugs for that one). Simply because music binds us all together and it is magnificent, all of it, in it's own way. I will walk through the fire offering friendship and acceptance and empathy. I will walk across the fire wearing broken in cowboy boots, my grandma's gaudy jewelry, my favorite jeans and sweater, a doctor who scarf and a top hat. Because I love top hats and Doctor Who and being comfortable and my grandmother and this is my life. I will walk through that fire being totally, completely me and make no apologies for it.  Yes, what makes you have a fire to cross is important. Yes the issues you deal with mean something but what is most valid, what is most important is how you choose to deal with those issues. How you choose to behave and hold yourself. How you choose to either help along the way or ignore as you walk by. What is the most important is how you use your knowledge, how you love, how you guide, and if you can learn to love and accept yourself  each step at a time. To always be as kind as possible, as confident as possible, and most importantly to remember to always be yourself. You are magnificent and you can rock walking through that fire like nobody else.

It doesn't matter where you have come from, what you have been, or where you are going. How sad and broken and scared you have been. How scarred and damaged you have felt. How lonely and anxiety prone you may be. How dorky or cool, or strong you think you are.


What matters most is how well you walk through through the fire.....

I'm not going to just walk through that fire well, I am going to walk through it exceptionally.

Neurotic Nelly