Living with mental illness is like living with a little monster. Not a cute monster like in the cartoons, but a mean, heartless monster who knows all your weak spots. I have several of these monsters in my life: there’s the anxiety monster, The OCD monster, the monster who likes to panic, the insomnia monster, the monster of phobias, the borderline monster and the biggest one of all… The CPTSD monster.
The one I have been having the hardest time with lately is the OCD monster. He follows me everywhere and judges my every move, thought and decision. He screams at me to not touch the doorknobs, even in my own home. He tells me I will get sick if I touch them with anything other than my shirt sleeve. I spend countless minutes every day washing my hands like I am scrubbing in for surgery. If I slip up and set my purse on the floor, I must put it in my closet and not use it for at least a week so whatever germ is on it will die. I spend a lot of time at the hospital from my many physical health issues and that creates its own set of problems. I always carry my own pen, so I don’t have to use one from the desk to fill out paperwork. I can’t read any of the magazines sitting out on the tables. No shaking doctors’ hands. I scan the exam rooms over and over to make sure they have been cleaned and to determine what I absolutely will not be touching. Did I mention that I put on a mask as soon as I enter the hospital? Down the hallways, about every ten feet are these little stations that have an automatic hand sanitizer dispenser, tissues and masks. I use hand sanitizer from every single one of them on my way in and on my way out.
I miss having visitors and would love to invite my neighbor over to talk or play a dice game, but I can never get past the fact that then my home will be contaminated. Anything she touches will need to be cleaned and don’t get me started on dry skin flakes, dandruff or loose hairs. So, I have learned to accept that I cannot have people over.
I lay awake some nights, thinking of the slight crookedness of something hanging on my wall or fridge. I will lay there for hours, trying to convince myself that nothing bad will happen if I just go to sleep and don’t fix it. Then the anxiety gets so bad that I must get up and straighten it out until it’s just right. I crawl back in bed and start second guessing if I locked the front door, turned off that one light and then begins my nightly routine all over again. As I lay there, running all my actions from the day through my weary head, hoping that I have done enough to protect my loved ones from germs, sickness, unfortunate accidents and break-ins. I want so desperately to go to sleep and have my brain shut off for a while. All those things are easier to deal with than the intrusive thoughts. As I begin to finally feel sleepy, the next set of thoughts begin… the thoughts that tonight, I will surely die in my sleep. I have had that thought, every night before bed, since I was 6 years old.
The other intrusive thoughts make me believe that if I don’t do or say a specific thing, something bad will happen to someone that I love. If I forget to tell a loved one to “Drive safe!” my brain screams at me that now they are going to die in an accident. My brain will play this whole scene out in my head in graphic detail of them dying in a car accident, it’s so real I begin to cry. All this happens in a matter of thirty seconds. I frantically call the person back and tell them to “drive safe” and “make sure you are wearing your seatbelt”. After hanging up the phone, I think about whether I said it correctly, whether I did it in time. I will think about this for how ever long it takes to hear back from them that they made it safe.
DoomedFromTheWomb 