Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
I have sat down to write this I don’t know how many times. Why it’s happening at the crack of dawn today I have no idea but here it is. Three of the four house pups are rallied around me as I write. Ok, they aren’t so much rallied as bribed by rawhide chews to keep three of the four most co-dependant dogs busy while I attempt to write. They are the reason I was up at the ungodly hour of 5am when I didn’t have to be in the first place. Instead of being upset about that I am attempting to see it as divine canine intervention.
I have OCD.
Or as a friend and I like to say: CDO. Because all the letters should have been put in alphabetical order!
Unless you have OCD is really no way for me to be able to convey to you in a realistic way what it is like living with a wild brain. Most people have this idea that if you have OCD that you are completely organized, your house, car and pets are spotless at all times, your kids all match, your partner always has everything they need going out the door and you are never late. Um yeah, not so much for all of us gifted with OCD.
Most mornings I wake up with my brain already in high gear before I open my eyes fully, much less get a mug of tea in my hands and get the dogs out. I will be plagued by some weird, repeating non sequitur that will not leave me alone or I have to run ABBA and the entire cast of Mama Mia out of town. If you had any idea how many mornings I woke up with a former Secretary General of the UN’s name running through my head you would not believe me!
Living Uncomfortably – OCD Edition
There are so many opportunities to live uncomfortably; all you have to do is just be open to them. I know some people have certain things in mind for living uncomfortably. For myself, there are a few specific things but more than anything it’s about taking the opportunities as they come. I have one such opportunity come to me yesterday afternoon. This is something I have been working on for almost 10 years, and now that it’s here are it seems quite terrifying… but in a good way?
I joke pretty freely about my OCD with people I know and even those I don’t. I’ve worked hard over the years to overcome some of the difficulties I faced because of OCD. I learned a long time ago to make peace with my demons invite them in, give them a cup of tea and get to know their story. What’s the old saying? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Because my OCD is the butt of many jokes, from myself and others, many people don’t really understand the day-to-day battle that I face. And in truth, I make sure a lot of the time that people don’t because of the way that I grew up. Now days people don’t think so much about it because doctors know more about OCD, have treatments and therapies and the mainstream populace is familiar with it to some degree (though most of that seems to be Jack Nicholson’s character in “As Good as it Gets” and a few other such movies).
The problem that I have faced over the last decade since coming to terms with the fact that I do have OCD, is that if you aren’t locked in your home checking all of your windows and doors 25 times every hour doctors tend to blow you off. They see you as highly functioning and therefore not in need of as much attention, if any. At least that has been my experience. And yes, I’ve talked multiple doctors about it though admittedly in the last few years I had pretty much given up hope. Our Western culture wants to treat symptoms rather than root causes very often and that was the case with me. I am very proactive in my own healthcare, spent a good deal of time researching my condition, and went to the doctors fully armed with the intent of being an integral part of my own treatment. Doctors don’t seem to like this idea very much…perhaps it threatens their God complex. Who knows?
I grew up with a father who has OCD and other members of my family as well; when you’re surrounded by that those behaviors don’t seem odd. It wasn’t until my 20s that I really started to get a taste of the fact that those behaviors were very unusual. I’ve spent a great deal of my life camouflaging those behaviors so that no one ever saw them because I constantly got in trouble for many of them even within my own family and especially in school and other public venues. I learned very quickly that being the odd one out can really suck and so I did everything I could to minimize that. However, in my 20s I discovered that I was going to have to do something about this order was going to make me crazy. So, I did what I always do I started reading I started researching and I started looking for answers. I began on my own and through some assistance in therapy to modify the behaviors that I could and let me tell you I’ve come a long way baby! But also to do all of these things without the assistance of medication and behavioral therapy has taken a great deal of energy, time, blood, sweat and most definitely tears.
I’ve known for a while now that it was time to take it to the next level, I have reached a plateau that I was not going to be able to pass on my own. So, back to the doctors I went. Once again I met with apathy for the most part or an unwillingness to allow me to be a partner in my own healthcare which I will not abide. I had almost given up. I had an appointment scheduled at the beginning of January for one last go round and some things happened that were unavoidable I canceled the appointment and did not reschedule. However three weeks ago I knew that I had to reschedule the appointment, I had to push myself out there in live uncomfortably in this just one more time. My point was yesterday morning at 11 AM at 10:30 AM I was seriously contemplating canceling the appointment. I just didn’t think I could go in there and have the same type of conversation will more time. However, I forced myself out the door, got there on time and proceeded to wait for an hour and 15 minutes…it is the doctor’s office after all. Lol
The fact is that it’s been a very frustrating journey for me to even get a doctor to have an intelligent conversation with me about it. Well, yesterday that finally happened. I don’t know what was different but the doctor finally listened. I found myself wanting to rush forward to make sure I got everything in so that she had all of the information that I wanted to give to her while she was in the space to listen. I had to really pace myself, calm myself, and try to be clear. It was almost a little bit surreal to finally have someone actually talk to me about it rather than down to me and to work with me in a way that I am comfortable with in my own healthcare.
We talked about options for treatment and the things that I will need to do to augment the treatment. Drug therapy for anything like this is very scary for me and not something I take on lightly. I am not of the school that a pill or an operation will fix everything. A happy little pill is not going to make this all go away, not by a long shot, but it will give me more of a fighting chance. I am simultaneously petrified and hopeful. This is a very scary thing for me to put out there on this level because I’ve worked so hard to camouflaging over the years and most people don’t have any idea. But if my putting this out there helps with one other person not feel so alone, not feel crazy, not feel like it’s their fault and maybe take one step towards helping themselves then I will take the risk of looking like a crazy fool.
This is not something I asked for, it’s not something any of us who have OCD ask for and it doesn’t mean I’m crazy. The fact is I have OCD and it is incumbent upon me to do to the healthy things that I need to do to lead a fulfilling and happy life that I want. Things will work out as they should, I always believe that’s true. They may not work out the way I want them to, but that doesn’t mean they won’t work out as they should. Lol
Having faith or being brave doesn’t mean that I’m not afraid, those are myths. The truth is having faith and being brave means that you turn towards those fears and on some level you know that once you face them and walk through them is going to be better on the other side. The anticipation of the fear is always worse than facing it. So, here I am turning around facing the fear that if I am open and honest about this people are going to run for my life in droves. In truth the people who are closest to me already know and I know they’re not going anywhere. It the people that I am not close to and don’t really know the day-to-day turn away from me and run then I know where I stand. Where I stand will be surrounded by the people who like me and love me for who I am and where I’m at in my life just as I do the same for them. In the end no matter where I end up standing the important thing is that I will be stronger for this experience. It doesn’t matter if I end up standing completely alone: I- will-be-stronger.
Overcoming Fear and Rediscovering Myself
So, this past weekend at Frolicon I found something that I had lost. I wasn’t really clear that I had lost it before I found it again. Anyone who has spent five minutes around me is going to probably laugh their ass off when I say what it is and I am totally prepared for that reaction.
I decided in my early teens to live my life as much without regret as possible. Back then, that took a very reckless, self-destructive form. Then I got clean and I got more, um conservative. Yeah, that’s even funny for me to say; much less I am sure for anyone to read. Conservative and my name are rarely used in the same sentence. Sometimes my insistence on personal responsibility makes people think I am extremely conservative…however, I digress.
So, I don’t like living with regrets but when I got clean I was told that many of the things I liked to do were not good for my recovery. I won’t go into the whole laundry list of them, let us sum it up by saying that many of them are on the list of things that a lot of us kinksters love to do. I knew that my life had to change or I was going to die so I believed what was put in front of me. Let me say here that those things saved my life and for that I am forever grateful.
I walked away from the life that I had known since I was a teenager. I walked away from my submission, my masochism (though I found new outlets for this but that’s for later), my free spirit, my dreamer, my artist, my spirit. Oh sure, those things were always there in some measure, I mean I didn’t die for cripes sake, but I did close off some important areas.
For the first time in my life I was so afraid that I couldn’t bull my way right through it. That’s not to say I had never been afraid before, trust me I had been, but I had always managed to hide it, camouflage it, and deflect people’s attention from it. I grew up in an environment that weakness was exploited and used to grind you down so I learned to hide any small thing that I thought might even have the tiniest potential for someone to use to harm me.
Now I was in a place in my life where those old tools failed me in a way that they never had before. I was lost, not completely alone but too scared to reach out and ask for directions. (I am SO a guy in that regard. lol) I spent years trying to learn new tools while simultaneously throwing away the old ones. That’s not to say I am completely done with this process, I don’t know that I ever will be and that’s ok. I am so far ahead of where I came from that I am ok with learning more about it and me until the day I die.
I have worked hard these last 15 years to transform who I am. I have taken so many risks in my life and lived in a way that made the old me’s skin crawl just to think about it. I am a better person for all of it too.
I like to live my life without as many regrets as possible.
I like to learn about myself.
I like to grow.
I REALLY like to grow.
To grow I have to do things that make me uncomfortable. In many ways I tend to walk right toward what scares me and grab it and say “Let’s get comfy and get to know each other my fear!” Hell, sitting in an electric chair last October is a prime example of that.
But my old friend fear has still been with me over the years even though I have sat down with it many times and told it that it wouldn’t rule me again. Fear is a sneaky fuck though and I have recently unearthed some groundwork the twerp laid and has been using that I didn’t even see. It was so slow and methodical that I never saw it coming. I have always told people that if they didn’t like something about me, were angry with me, had something to say that I would rather they come at me head on with the baseball bat than stab me in the back. (Sadly, many rarely take me up on this.) Fear isn’t much for the whole head on thing either…stealthy fucker. While I was facing it down on bigger stuff it was eroding me with the small underpinnings in my life.
Here is where folks who think they know me and even some who do are going to probably laugh out loud when I say this.
I lost my voice.
I didn’t know it was gone.
I had no idea fear had stolen it away while I was busy screaming at it.
Somewhere along the way I lost the ability to really say what I wanted, needed, desired in my heart of hearts and ask for those things, tell people exactly what I thought without trying to make it all ok for them at my expense and speak my truth completely and from the depths. Does this mean that the things I have said are untrue? Nope, not at all, they just may not have been the entire truth. For someone who is mostly an open book I was playing a lot of cards close to the vest.
I reached a point where apparently I cared too much what other people thought of me and my path. Hmmmm….that’s not completely true…I cared that I didn’t want to get hurt. Hell, who does? Even we masochists don’t like every single kinda pain. I was tired of getting hurt, being disappointed, getting left out in the cold, and feeling like everyone was getting their needs met and I wasn’t. (Nothing new on the human spectrum of feeling I am assured. lol)
So, I stopped asking, stopped saying my truth, stopped reaching out for what I wanted, needed and desired. *sighs* I fell into the oldest trap that fear can set…the false feeling of security in isolation. Even surrounded by people I had become isolated by not speaking up for myself on some levels.
This wasn’t an across the board thing as anyone who really knows me can attest to. Most notably it is in my personal needs in relation to kink and relationships to/with others. I know what I am supposed to do and in a lot of ways I do them. There are a few small areas where that hasn’t been true and that is what was made abundantly clear to me at Frolicon.
I opened my mouth, I spoke and things happened. So simple, so very simple and yet sometimes so hard.
Well, as part of my continuing to live an uncomfortable life this shit is changing! I found my voice and my groove and I am not giving them up again without a fight damn it! So, that means that if I am interested in something/someone I plan on telling them and/or asking for what I want/need.
Because, here’s the thing…what do I have to lose? Really lose? Nothing, that’s the thing: NOTHING. I lose nothing in the asking. I do this in SO many other areas of my life and many of my kink and it’s time to make it unilateral. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
So, look out, here I come! LOL
Risk & Gain
I woke up a couple hours ago from a nightmare and have not been able to go back to sleep because of it. It wasn’t about monsters or dying or anything like that; those I can survive. It was about betrayal of a dear friend; being casually thrown away as if I was nothing but a footnote in their life. That I had simply been there for their use to further their life and really meant nothing to them. I woke hurt, angry, scared and crushed all at the same time. I reached over and flipped on my light rapidly in hopes to shove back the darkness that was encroaching on my heart. It did not work. The longer I lay there, the heavier my heart and the worse I felt.
Yes, I knew it to be a dream but how often do our dreams speak snippets of truth to us? How often does our subconscious reach out and tap us on the shoulder while we sleep and we wake thinking it only an ephemeral nothingness once we are conscious? Is my unconscious mind trying to save my tender heart from another lashing? I find myself on this pillory again and again in life. I think it rather normal if we are to interact on deep, intimate levels with other creatures. We have to bare parts of our hearts and souls to the ones we want to have a genuine connection with. To know someone intimately we must give what we ask for in return I believe. To do so comes with a deeper risk than those we keep on the surface.
Nothing worth having comes without some inherent risk, whether it be to us physically, emotionally or to some of our basic level of needs. Am I willing to risk a piece of my heart to know someone better? Am I willing to risk a little sleep to answer my id’s concerns at 3am? Am I willing to step out on that limb and risk it breaking beneath me so that I can have a breathtaking view?
I absolutely am willing!
Should I fall, will I blame the other person? Will I castigate them? Will I shame them and point fingers? Will I bemoan the outcome, wailing and gnashing my teeth?
No, I shall not. I will nurse my wounded heart back to full health. To live life, to experience love, passion, tenderness, joy, ecstasy and suck the marrow out you have to take some risks. Taking those risks are my responsibility and it means that if I step out and take the chance then I am responsible for my part in the adventure.
To set the record straight, you can nurse your heart back to full health, you never lose those pieces completely. They come back to you in the lessons you learn, the experiences you revel in and take with you throughout the rest of your life. The pieces that you rebuild from may not be the same as when you gave them out. But, if you bring them home, clean them up and polish them, I find that they tend to be even better and stronger than when you sent them out into the world.
No Tears
I am on the verge of tears this morning and they just won’t spill over and come out. I don’t know why, I really want them to. Maybe that’s the problem: I want them to. I never imagined that one day I would think my not being able to cry was a problem and it would frustrate the hell out of me! I have tried so hard my whole life to keep the tears in and not show what is considered weakness by my family. I need to really sob it all out and get this shit out of my system and break loose the backlog and I just can’t. I get a few tears out here and there but it’s like as soon as I realize I am doing it my subconscious flips this switch and I can’t keep going. I don’t know what I need to push me over that edge and make me just let it go.
It’s All About the Journey
I love the journey of my life! Sure, there have been bumps, pitfalls, wrecks and bad calls along the way. There have also been triumphs, ecstasies, moments of pure joy and pleasure as well. The down times are hard and there are some times I have wondered “Why me?”. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t. The thing is, even with all the truly horrible things that have happened in my life I would not go back and undo them if I could and I mean that with all my heart. To go back and change those things would be to change who I am and even with all my foibles and stuff I still have to work on, I like myself. Been a long hard road a lot of the time but it’s what has made me who I am.
Holiday Mood – Double Time!
So I have been very excited and working on the scarf I started last night and am about halfway through! While I was sitting with my leg propped up I was talking to a friend today about some things going on in her life. As we were talking about things she could to do help support herself emotionally through this time I remembered a little thing I have used for years and shared it with her; trouble dolls from Guatemala. That was when the inspiration struck me: I can make these little dolls very easily! I have all the supplies, other than the little boxes to put them in and that I can figure out somehow. I have already sent out e-mails, IMs and texts asking if folks have small cardboard jewelry boxes laying about that they don’t need (I can paint them and there is a ready made “home” for the dolls).
I got to thinking that in this economy and the way things are for many people these days that just about everyone could use a set of worry dolls. I have had mine since high school I think; been so long I don’t remember any more! Those little dolls have given me peace of mind so many times over the years and that is a priceless gift.
Some people will probably balk at them or think they are silly; that is ok. The thing is that I take the time to put love and energy into whatever I make and that it does no harm. Beyond that I can’t engineer how people will react and I do not want to. I want to give to those that I care about in hopes that they enjoy it and see it for the gift that it is and not how much it cost or what store it didn’t come from.
I am really excited about this even if I only have five days to make these!
Holiday Mood
For me the things that people talk so much about when they are discussing the “holiday mood” rarely get me in the spirit because it’s about so much more than that for me. Shopping, wrapping presents, going to see light displays (which mind you, I do love) and so many other things of this ilk are just not what it means to me. For me, the holidays are about giving of time, love and service.
Some years ago I stopped buying presents and began making them, when there was nothing I could make I offered my time and my strength to those who needed it. I have no money but I always have me and of that I give freely. This has been a tough year for many of us and I think that not many people really are “feeling it” this year. I have not been feeling the holiday spirit because this year I couldn’t even make presents for those who are most dear to me. I love the making of things, the time that goes into them, the love they are crafted with and I realized today that I was sad because I could not do that this year. I am so broke I can not even make cookies or the like because I honestly can’t spare what little money I have.
Today was a really tough day; my car had to go in the shop for long overdue repairs that were going to cost me more than I have. It had come down to whether or not to pay the power bill or fix the car. Well, if I didn’t fix the car, I had no way of potentially making money when the opportunities arose. So, I fixed the car. My ex husband was here helping me do a couple things around the house, which was really nice of him. Long story short, he was playing fetch with the dogs and I got caught in the cross fire and taken down by two 75lb dogs broad siding my left knee. He felt horrible even though it was no one’s fault and it was just a stupid accident. After hobbling back in the house I had to cancel the visit from a friend today and it turned out he couldn’t make it after all (nothing like a clogged septic to wreck your Saturday plans). This meant that I also couldn’t go to the house warming party for a friend that I had really wanted to attend because I was without a car, I didn’t have a ride and he has stairs in his place and with the rapidly swelling knee; no dice.
My ex kindly brought in some firewood for me and banked up a fire before he headed out to check the progress on my car. He had arranged to have it fixed by a mechanic friend so that it would at least not cost me a kidney. The only down side to the friend discount in cases like this is that you are a slave to their schedule and you really do not want to complain due to said discount. Every silver lining has a cloud it seems when you are doing the friend discount.
So, at this point in the day I was really starting to feel like utter crap. I scanned my movies and settled on Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer because that always makes me smile at the least! I went looking for something to occupy my hands while I sat and found a stash of yarn I had forgotten: score! I settled on the couch with the greatest of care with my icepack was already on the chair. I can’t do a lot with the yarn I found but I can make a couple presents for those who I know can use it, who will love it and that is perfect!
Suddenly my day is looking a whole lot better!
Free Range Brain 