In Which The Picture Says It All

Okay... so not the best picture of me (and God knows why I decided to tuck my paper napkin into my top) but check out the knife in my hand...

Yep, I reached my goal - I ate Christmas lunch with a sharp knife.

And I'm bloody proud of it.

Obsessively compulsively yours,

Bellsie

Lies, Damned Lies (but no statistics)

I am swiftly becoming a master of deception, a fount of knowledge when it comes to deceit and dishonesty, and do you know what? I don’t like it.

When I was diagnosed with OCD, my mother was warned about the fact that the avoidance, the hidden compulsions, the endless loops of worry would be on a far greater scale than she would ever be able to guess. She was also told that I would do anything to get out of doing my exposure therapy, that I would manipulate situations in order to avoid facing my fears. And they were right.

I will arrange to not be in the kitchen when the cake is ready, I will tell my parents that my bedroom is messy when it is not, I will “forget” to do an exercise, I will pretend not to count as the figures march through my head, I will pull my face into what is supposed to resemble a nonchalant smile (but is probably more like a squinting grimace) and try to look as if I am letting the thoughts pass through instead of wrestling with each one until we are both beaten.

I am not proud of these actions. I do not like this manipulating or the outright lies, but sometimes the fear is just too strong, the doubts just too powerful, the worries just too real.

So this is a sorry, I guess.

Obsessively compulsively yours,

Bellsie

A Load of Old Bollocks

I am starting to see the light, it is starting to occur to me that these thoughts that march through my mind are exactly that, just thoughts. A thought is different to an action, and thinking something does not equate to doing it.

I have made huge progress with a fear that has gripped me for so long – I am now able to hold a sharp knife in the same room as my brothers. I still have the overwhelming anxiety that comes with the utter certainty that I will kill them, that I am actually a horrible, terrible person and that I have no desire stronger than that of stabbing them to death… but I haven’t done so, and surely that says something?

I suppose this is the point of the exposure therapy – I am testing out the hypotheses that the OCD has forced me to put in to practice, and each time I realise that they are a little more, well, wrong. I have messed up my shoes, and yet nobody has died, I have kissed my brothers just once, and yet they are still all in one piece, I have passed a knife to my mother and yet she is not lying in a pool of her own blood – something is not right here, and I’m starting to think that the bugger that is OCD has been tricking me all along.

I’m starting to think that it’s a load of old bollocks.

Obsessively compulsively yours,

Bellsie

Living by Numbers

The human heart has four chambers. There are four horsemen of the apocalypse, four gospels, four points of the cross. It is considered as unlucky in Oriental cultures, as it sounds like the word “death”. In the English language, it is the only number with the same number of letters as its value. There are four movements in a symphony, four seasons in a year, four suits of playing cards. It is the smallest prime and the first positive non-Fibonacci number.

Four, eight, twelve, sixteen.

Four. The only thing that makes sense in this mess. My back aches and my eyes sting, but still I stay folded over the table, numbers pouring through my head and rice pouring through my fingers. I am hungry and I am tired, and yet I cannot be sure that I counted right, I cannot be sure that I did not make a mistake, that I am not putting someone’s life at risk through my actions.

Forty eight, fifty two, fifty six, sixty.

I am stuck in this loop, caught in the thick, sinking dread and drowning in the anxiety that fills every tightened muscle, every chewed fingernail, every wrinkle of worry. I have been promised a way out, I have been entranced by the magic pills that they throw at me, by the tricks of the mind that they try to show me, but at the end of the day I know that this is it.

One hundred and twelve, one hundred and sixteen, one hundred and twenty, one hundred and twenty four.

A self pitying sob catches in my throat and I hold my breath, sucking in the toxic thoughts that seep through every pore, the waves of concern that radiate from my frazzled mind, the shards of shattered beliefs and the pungent stench of doubt that surrounds me. I am nothing but a shell, a stage upon which the catastrophes and terrors of the world perform their well-rehearsed dances of despair, and yet still I count, pulling the numbers around me like a safety blanket.

Two hundred and ninety two, two hundred and ninety six, three hundred, three hundred and four.

They want me to let go, to release the last, fraying piece of power that I hold. They tell me that I am not responsible for them all, and show no gratitude for the protection that I offer. They tempt me with tales of unthinking frivolity, they lure me with talk of a future, they entice me with wonderful snippets of a reckless existence, and yet for them I grip tightly, refusing to let go. For them, for their own good, I let the numbers soak through my skin and into my veins, I let the rigid rules dictate the structure of my life. I hear their desperate pleas, and yet still I count.

Three hundred and eighty eight, three hundred and ninety two, three hundred and ninety six, four hundred. There.

And yet still I count.