Trapped in the Cockadoodie Car: OCD and Me Have a Sit Down

"I am your number one fan. There is nothing to worry about. You are going to be just fine. I am your number one fan."

Thanks to my unfortunate unemployment, I find myself with time to watch and re-watch a lot of my favorite movies...or at least the ones I still have and haven't sold to the video store. Among today's selections is Misery, one of my favorite Stephen King creations. For those of you who haven't seen or read it, it's the story of Paul Sheldon, a writer who has come to loathe his money-making romance series, and his entrapment by a crazed fan. He has a wreck, and Annie Wilkes, insane ex-nurse extraordinaire, hauls him into her home and...Well, I despise spoilers, so suffice it to say, Annie Wilkes is truly one of the craziest bitches to ever come down the pike. As in several of my favorite King tales, this serves as an allegory for what his addictions did to him (also see The Shining) and also how a writer's mind splits (see Secret Window and The Dark Half). Worry not, faithful reader, I do have a point.

Just as an addiction or the writing life can control and warp one's life and mind, so can mental disorders. OCD often acts as the monkey on my back that drugs and alcohol can be for those addicted to them. My particular OCD is absolutely not as life-destroying as any of these things on a regular basis, but it is for many. On my worst days, I feel trapped and held hostage by these ideas and worries that I absolutely cannot control, and always somewhere in the back of my mind, one of those nagging little voices says, "But your life would be chaos without us making sure the door was locked and the stove was off and the books are in order and the cans are alphabetized!" The worst of it is that some part of me believes that. Some part truly thinks I would likely leave doors wide open, burn the place down with forgotten stoves, and be living in filth were it not for these bizarre obsessions and compulsions of mine...when, really, we all know perfectly well that it is they who are the problem--not the solution to anything. I'm hobbled by my inability to go against them.

"WHAT'S THE MATTER? I will tell you "what's the matter!" I go out of my way for you! I do everything to try and make you happy. I feed you, I clean you, I dress you, and what thanks do I get? "Oh, you bought the wrong paper, Annie, I can't write on this paper, Annie!" Well, I'll get your stupid paper but you just better start showing me a little appreciation around here, Mr. MAN!"

In any case, the actual impetus for this blog concerns storage. I was sitting here watching Misery, and I happened to glance at the bookshelf to the left of the TV. For the most part, it holds my religion and women's studies books, but it also has our Sharyn McCrumb collection, my awesome Jim Jones snowglobe, and a few things "stored" along the top of the books on the shelves (a few notebooks, etc.). Of course, this drives me nuts. I don't like having the stuff stacked up there; it is certainly not an ideal storage location. I twitch every time I look at it, but I honestly don't have anywhere else to put it. So, I started wondering, "where does everyone else store their extra notebooks, pens, post-its and office supplies?" I pondered that for a bit until it dawned on me that most people, at least those who aren't students or the parents of school-age children, don't have extra office supplies stacked everywhere and don't need to have storage for them. It was another of those "we are not normal" moments that I seem to have more and more recently.

And my own personal "Annie Wilkes" came and patted my hand and said, "No, no, dear, it's they who are not normal. How prepared are they? And I bet their doors aren't locked and they're the ones whose houses catch fire from stoves. I keep all that from happening. I am the last line of defense between you and chaos."

Yeah. Sure.

Not Without My Books, or Change is a Four-Letter Word: Hoarding Rears Its Ugly, Cluttered Head

This afternoon Anna had a sudden urge to see what the living room would look like rearranged. So she found a program online, and I spent the better part of an hour or so calling out the measurements of everything. Basically, it all came to nothing because the stuff we have simply doesn't seem to work in any other configuration, but I do have a point to this...Afterwards, Anna was saying that we have too much stuff--primarily books. It isn't that she doesn't like books. Quite the contrary. She loves to read as much as I do, but she simply doesn't have the need to keep them once they're read for the most part. I like to keep a great deal of mine, mainly because I'm always certain that, at some point in the future, I will want to reread it or will need it for something, and therefore in order to save the trouble of finding and buying it again, I should keep it. In the past, I have been proven quite right in many cases. Some of my books show the wear of many, many readings. Some I may have only reread once or twice, but they are either difficult to find or simply things that I love and want around. Some are, well...

Anyway, during the course of the conversation, I burst into my usual frustrated tears. My immediate response was to go on the defensive. "I did good! I've gotten rid of a ton of stuff!" And I have been good and gotten rid of a ton of stuff. Our closet can testify to that. My gods the amount of crap we cleared out over the past few months, when one counts the storage apocalypse as well as the closet! But certain things, books in this case, I absolutely panic at the thought of clearing out. Take my "school" bookshelf for instance. There are things on there that I have used many times, and were I in graduate school right now, I would be using them again--books I have kept from various classes, some from my honors thesis, and a few (*cough* 9 *cough*) versions of the Bible for comparative purposes. The problem is that I am not in grad school and don't look to be for quite a while. I can't afford to retake the GRE without a job, nor can I afford the application fees. And besides all that, even if I got into a graduate school right now, we certainly couldn't afford to move to wherever it might be. But I just can't get rid of them. If and when I needed them, it would prove difficult and expensive to replace some of them, so I should keep them. Not to mention the fact that if I got rid of them, it would be like I was admitting defeat in a way, letting FSU's rejection decide that I'm not going to do what I want to do...

When really...it's just trading in or selling some books that I'm not using at the moment...I hate OCD.

Freaking Right on Out: OCD Deluxe Pays a Visit

Today has been the first really bad day since I stopped my meds. I mean, yeah, my usual twitches and tics have been poking me repeatedly, but I haven't had one of those "my brain is being shaken" days up till now. For some reason, when I woke up this morning, my insanity decided today was an excellent time to come out and play.

So, I put away all the clean clothes from yesterday and washed dishes (normal), and then I refolded everything in the dresser (not normal). All of it, underwear drawer and all. Yes, it meant I got to use my flip-n-fold, which as we all know is one of the Goddess' greatest gifts, but seriously? I made myself sit down for a bit so I could eat some lunch and play Zombie Lane (I had pumpkins to harvest after all.), and of course, I'm writing this. However, the entire time I have been quietly losing my shit and trying to figure out what else I can do. Too much more of this and there may be drastic things done to hair out of sheer insane need to do SOMETHING. On another meds-related note, I am still having DT's. Joy.

The Cleansing of the Articles: Hoarder Self-Intervention, Part Oh, Who Knows...

Well, I cleaned out the binders today. An entire bottom shelf of one of our short bookcases was lined with binders filled with articles from various classes over the past four years. I kept, well, everything; my justification was that I might need them again for a paper. I was right quite a few times, but not 16 binders worth. So, I made myself sit down and go through all of them this afternoon. There are now 4 with articles, 1 containing all my honors thesis stuff, and one containing a photocopy of a book I want to keep. Not too bad. Of course, the entire time in my head all I could hear was, "But you might need that article! Don't toss that one!" *le sigh*

I also tried to reorganize the bookshelves a bit, and that turned out semi-okay. I still have major problems letting go of books. You know, because I might want it later on...

"But I might need that later!": Ramblings of a Minor Hoarder with a Semi-Clean Closet

Guess what? I cancelled my last appointment with the head shrinker, and I quit taking my meds a little over a month ago. This was less a conscious decision about my distrust of the medical and therapeutic professions (though those do exist) than a reality check about the fact that I am still unemployed and my FSU health insurance runs out in August. (Of course, I have been having the attendant weirdness that comes along with dropping things like Zoloft cold turkey; the insomnia, general discombobulation, and minor hallucinations have been the worst.) Anyway, this means that I have been dealing with my OCD symptoms all by my little lonesome (as Mema used to say), and it has not been pretty. I've had some pretty gnarly mood swings from the manic depression, and my poor brain once again feels like it's being shaken around quite a bit. However, there's not a lot I can do about this. There are, as my former therapist mentioned, low-income helpers for people like me, but I've been through that before. It is not as easy or as helpful as she thinks it is, unfortunately, and I'm sure my low SES buddies with similar probs can back me up on that one.

In any case, the last few weeks have been exceedingly stressful, and all of this has been pushed to the front of my long line of worries/concerns lately. Today's particular mental discussion panel covered my relatively low-grade hoarding (partially because of a friend's blog, which can be seen HERE). A few weeks ago, Anna and I finally tackled the closet. Now, that may sound simple, but as my faithful readers will attest, not so. The last time was nightmarish (as can be seen here, and again here, and one more time in this one), and that closet was minuscule compared to this one. Here we have a walk-in closet, and it was stuffed to the rafters with decorations, clothes, general crap, and also several large plastic tubs from when we raided the storage back home last year. We could barely get in and out to dig up clothes, and a small but noticeable mountain had begun to form in the back. Every time I opened the door, I felt the panic rising, so I knew it had to be done. However, knowing this and actually doing it are two different things. My poor Anna suffered through a two-day ordeal in which I managed to purge WAY more than either of us ever thought would be possible, but still not enough, says the responsible monkey in the back of my mind.

One of my big things is office supplies. I love pens and pencils and notebooks, and if I find them cheap, Katie bar the door. So, when we were purging, you would not believe the number of journals, notebooks, pens, pens, and did I mention pens. Clearance is a beautiful thing just after school starts in the fall, and so very many places hand out free pens. I had at least 20 of one particular free pen. No joke. But I cleared 'em out. I still have a drawer with a basket o' pens, and there's a storage bin under the bed with a good number of journal and notebooks type lovely things; but all in all, I did good. I got rid of a lot of random crap I had been hanging onto for no discernible reason, and a good (if dusty and panic-stricken) time was had by all. Friends dug through some of it like ferrets, and then a junk-buying lady from craigslist took the rest. We were both quite proud of me.

BUT, and there is always a but when my OCD is involved, I still think I could have done better. At the same time, I know that if I had gotten rid of too much more, my brain would likely have liquefied and come gushing out my ears. I did well considering my issues surrounding stuff in general, but today I sat looking at our bookshelves thinking that I intentionally avoided them. Yes, we do purge them every so often because our apartment is too small to support the book habit we have had for so long. But school enabled me to hang onto extra books--"I'll need them later." I would say, and most of the time, I would be absolutely right. I used them for papers and my thesis, and was proven absolutely right. Now that I'm effectively thrown out into the world, I can't really claim that for a chunk of them. Oh, I plan on getting into a grad school eventually (I hope) and continuing some of my research interests, so a part of them need to stay right where they are. There are others, though, that I know I will likely never use again, and if I do, it will be years and years away, making the space worth more than the money I might save by not buying it again later. Other books are simply hanging around because I love them. I won't get rid of certain things EVER, but some are peeping around double stacks of overflow and I know I will likely never read them again despite the fact that they were wonderful or entertaining. But I panic worse at getting rid of books than almost anything else in the world.

And so, you are wondering, where is she headed with this long, rambling post? I absolutely hate the hoarding part of me. She drives me nuts when she starts mumbling about "keep this. We might need it later." and "For Goddess' sake, don't throw that out!" I know I don't need fourteen of the same pen or every single cute notebook I see. In fact, since I am floating in a non-academic limbo right now, I don't even have an excuse to buy them anyway. But I still do it. I still see stuff and want to take it home when I know that a) we don't have room and b) it serves no purpose at all. As many hoarders do, I say it's collecting, and some of it is; but not nearly all of it. Another case of I know it's nuts, but I can't do a damn thing about it. I'm staring at a row of binders stuffed full of articles, and hoarder Dawn is whispering, "don't even think about it. We'll need those later."

Book Life 16: Love Letter to a Fiction

Natalie: "I am [your friend], Ambrose."

Ambrose: "No, you're a black widow, wooing men to their doom with your feminine wiles."

Mr. Monk: "You wooed? With your wiles? What are you doing waving your wiles around?"

--Mr. Monk on the Road

(I reeeeaaaallllly want the snowglobe and bobblehead that USA used to sell...they are so awesome. The only thing better would be getting my books autographed or getting a signed pic of the cast *swoon*.)

For anyone who knows me or reads this blog, it should come as no surprise that I am in love with the Monk series (book and television). Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out and Mr. Monk on the Road have been glaring at me from the book shelf since the latter came out in January, but schoolwork kept me from them. I finally got to read them over the last couple of days, and as usual, I was blown away. Couldn't put them down. It's hard to discuss plots of Monk books without accidentally giving too much away, so I'll leave that alone. However, I have to applaud Goldberg's depictions of anxiety disorders once again.

I've had a couple of conversations in online OCD groups about Monk, and the reviews are somewhat mixed. Most people I've asked like the show, but there are always a few who have issues. I've never understood why those few don't like Monk. Yes, he is slightly exaggerated at some points, but for crying out loud, it's a television universe. TV always exaggerates, even if just a little. What the Monk books and show manage to do is mystifying to me. OCD is never treated as a joke in itself (like Monica in Friends); there are characters here and there who consider Monk's issues to be a joke, but that's how it is. I can tell you from plenty of experience that a good number of people think OCD is not even a real disorder, that those of us who have it are simply looking for attention or are inflating our claims. Monk is as real a fictional character as I've seen in quite a while. His disorder does not disappear when he needs to catch the bad guy; in fact, it has prevented the catching of the bad guy in several instances. He gets better and worse depending on stress and situation, and that's definitely true. Almost better than the realistic OCD is the fact that he is not a saint. Television sometimes likes to paint those of us with mental disorders as innocent victims of circumstance who should have halos. Well, victims we may be on occasion, but innocent with halos? Definitely not. Monk has figurative warts (literal ones would obviously have to be removed immediately), and the show does not hesitate to show that he is not perfect or a saint. He's just a guy who happens to have OCD, albeit a much more severe case than many, and he's brilliant. I'm woman enough to admit that I miss him between books now that the series is over.

Fixing Samantha: Beauty, Imperfection, and Cowardice

Seven-year-old Samantha Shaw of South Dakota recently underwent cosmetic surgery to "fix" her ears, which stuck out a bit and one had a small fold. Her mother claims it was to prevent future bullying. There had apparently been comments made in front of the girl by kids and adults about her ears, and her mother decided it would be a good idea to alter the "problem." As cosmetic surgery is rather expensive, the Little Baby Face Foundation covered the cost, and the doctor who performed the surgery was quoted as saying Samantha's surgery was not cosmetic but necessary. (If you go to Little Baby Face, the "deformities" they usually cover are listed, things like cleft palettes, for instance. Not usually ears that stick out.)

Am I the only one who sees a serious problem with all this? Her mother has, by doing this, stated unequivocally to her child that anytime the outside world finds fault with her, she should alter herself in any way possible to "fix" it. This sort of belief system is the basis of eating disorders and women who stay in abusive relationships. The problem is not the girl or her ears. The problem is the bullies.

Why is it that we are so ready to alter the world to suit those who are in the wrong? Samantha Shaw should not be made to feel that she is somehow defective because others find her imperfect. The defect lies in the bullies and ignorance of the people who made her feel this way. Instead of seeking out the surgery, maybe her mother should simply have stood up for her daughter when these comments were made instead of taking the coward's way out. Catering to the ignorant will only make it easier for them to operate. She should have taken the opportunity to teach her that no one is perfect, but everyone is beautiful in some way--even the bullies.

Speaking De-Motivationally: Poverty and Random Disorders Take Their Toll

I tell people I'm medicated--for my safety and theirs: 100 mg of sertraline (which is just the generic form of Zoloft). While I absolutely hate medications and have my issues with the traditional medical and psychological professions, it actually helps. On my meds, my brain no longer feels as though it's being shaken all the time, and I can usually find the wherewithal to do things that need to be done. However, when other disorders are added into the equation....

I have some odd thing, related to narcolepsy though not the same, that means while my body is awake, my brain has not yet gotten the total message. Therefore, I am always tired. Always. No matter what I do or how much sleep I manage to get, I feel as though I just got off a 12 hour shift unloading trucks or something (which I have done before, so I know whereof I speak). Luckily, there is a medicinal fix to this problem. It's called Provigil and is in the same family as but is not actually a methamphetamine--non-addcitive, even. And it works. However, even with decent prescription coverage (decent meaning my other meds--all generic--are less than five dollars), my co-pay for it is forty dollars a month. Compared to many other people's prescription costs, this is insanely cheap, and in that sense, I am thankful for the coverage I have. But we simply can't afford it right now. What this means is that though my brain in one way says, "Hey! That needs straightening/cleaning/whatever! Let's do it!" The rest then says, "*Yawn* Nap first, clean later." I have no motivation to do anything whatsoever. Therefore things are not as clean as I would normally have them, and that in turn makes my brain feel all shakey, regardless of the 100 mg of Zoloft.

In fact, we have friends coming over tomorrow afternoon, so I have to straighten and clean. I know this, but what have I done? I took a two and a half hour nap, after which I was supposed to go ahead and finish Latin homework and find an article for a paper I have to write this weekend. Didn't happen. Nap, sandwich, and now this blog. And I am still tired. I will still be tired in the morning after 7 or 8 hours of sleep. I will be tired the next morning no matter how much sleep I get.