OCD sucks

Have you ever avoided posting personal content on your blog because you thought you might sound like something of a downer?

That would be me this week. I can’t pin down any exact causes, it just seems to be everything and I’ve avoided posting anything about it, because I didn’t want to scare anyone off with a doom and gloom attitude. But Kailani asked a question for her Aloha Friday meme today that really got me thinking. She asked, Why do you blog? I put down something about a means of communication with the outside world or some such. But as I gave it more thought I realized I started blogging mainly just to say what I wanted to say. To feel there was place outside of my own home where I could truly be me. And to find clarity on different things I was thinking about. You see, writing allows me to really understand myself. As I write down my ideas and feelings, I understand them more. Sometimes I don’t know what’s bothering me until I start writing and then it comes out.

Ah, so that’s why I feel like hiding from everyone. How stupid!

And then I feel better because I know what’s going on and I can fix it or change my attitude.
But lately I haven’t even been honest in my blogging or willing to use it the way I originally intended. I’ve found I’ve been hiding from myself, and just now as I’m writing this I figured out what’s going on.
If you’ve read my blog for long you know that I struggle with, oh, let’s see, depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder. The OCD is the main offender and the depression and anxiety usually stem from that. OCD takes many different, ugly forms, and I won’t go into details on how mine works, but when it’s at it’s worst I really would rather lay down and die than try to live with it anymore. Yes, I said live with it.
For so long, it was so natural to try to fight it, and yet fighting seemed to make it worse. I didn’t even know just what I was fighting until I was diagnosed and then I was told that I couldn’t fight it. That it was like some invincible dragon thriving off of every attempt to kill it. The more I fought, the more I fed it. I had to learn to accept it and then put it aside as a false threat. But the threat feels so real. When it’s at it’s worst I feel like I am desperately clinging to hope, to my beliefs, to my faith that I am a child of God and a good, sound human being. Feelings, even when we know they are false, are so difficult to ignore. But I have to do it during panic attacks and when the OCD rears it’s ugly head or I find my mind spinning out of control with terror and despair.

Then of course there is my unwillingness to accept the problem in the first place. Not only do I have to agree with the devil while in the way with him, I have to admit that I’m dealing with the awful disease in the first place. I want to think that every time I get a break from it, it’s gone for good. I don’t want to accept that it is slowly making it’s way back into my head, and when I don’t, it usually culminates into a melt down. Me ignoring what’s going on until it’s so bad it all falls on me at once and I’m left sobbing and praying for relief.

I know that without this God forsaken illness I might not be able to feel the kind of empathy I do for others, I might not be as accepting or understanding of the strange things people do, I might not have such a wild and crazy imagination. I know that without this illness I wouldn’t be who I am today, and as much as I hate this illness, I sort of like, me. So no, I would never change the fact that I’ve dealt with this since I was twelve. But if I could just up and get rid of it at this point, I would. Until it retreats into the shadows for an unknown amount of time again, I’m glad I wrote this and figured out that it’s bothering me again and I’ve just been pushing it aside. Now to willingly accept it and live happily along side it. Easier said than done.