January

So I made it through the exams from hell without going mad. Cause for celebration I think. Unfortunately the lovely part of my brain that made me good at Physics appears to have fallen off whilst I was busy being crazy, but otherwise I appear to be in fighting form. Not pessimistic, just realistic about the results – I could have worked a lot harder and I could have worked a lot better but I made the decision that being in a healthy frame of mind was more important than coming top in everything… and I stick by that.

I have a plan… if Medicine doesn’t work out at the end of this year (I shall spare you the explanation but the French medical school system is fairly ruthless – out of the 1300 of us sitting our first year, only the top 200 will get through) then I will go to study Psychology. As I once said, it’s the blind leading the bloody blind, but I am fascinated and passionate about the subject (and God does it feel good to be enthusiastic about something again)

So that was the preamble that it took to get around to talking about what I wanted to – January is looming. The advent calendar is gradually revealing all of its secrets, the tree is waiting to be decorated and copious amounts of food are sitting in the freezer… and I find myself thinking about January. Although my OCD started when I was still at school and I was diagnosed and started on medication before I went to University, my first few months were okay. Not great, and I was still struggling a bit, but they were do-able.

Then Christmas came and I was pulled up in a whirlwind of revision and festivities (we don’t do Christmas by halves in my house), flying through into January and sitting my exams at the beginning of the month. Then came the turning point – a two week holiday where everything just seemed to fall apart. It’s funny – I can pinpoint the fortnight where my OCD stopped being an annoyance and became something that was ruling every part of my life. Suddenly I was plunged into the never ending cycles of doubt, ritual and fear, unable to do the simplest of tasks and literally a shell of who I once was.

We all know what happened next – how I gradually got worse and worse until taking the decision after my exams in May to drop out of University and (and in my head this always has a capital letter) Get Better.

Last night I lay in bed stewing in the exam flavoured juices, worrying about January coming. That I might start to lose my grip, that I might start slipping back down. Today, in my post-exam euphoria I know that I won’t. So this post is for me really, to prove to myself that there is something stopping me from falling back under the spell of the OCD. And there is – I have so many more tools to cope with this, I have better medication that is keeping me strong, I have a better understanding of how it all works and most of all, I am happy.

Because that’s what it comes down to in the end – the depression and the OCD happily chase each other’s tales, a dizzy loop of hopelessness and fear. But without one, the other is weaker, and now that my mood is so much better I feel so much more able to cope with the thoughts, to resist the rituals.

So wish me luck.

Obsessively compulsively yours

Bellsie

Because I haven't really forgotten you all...

Well… shall I just apologise for that little hiatus or carry on as if nothing has happened ?

The answer is that a lot has happened and there are not enough words to express how different things are, a full spectrum of emotions have been played through and I find myself in a very different place to where I was a year ago.

So, I should stop being obtuse and come out with it – I am so, so, so (note that there are three there) much better. It hasn’t been simple, it hasn’t been an easy ride, but it has been worth it.

It didn’t happen overnight, it happened slowly but surely, bit by bit until one day I went to bed and realised that my day had not been ruled by OCD, that the horrible thoughts had not bothered me and that I know longer lived from ritual to ritual.

When I look back a year, to when I first started really addressing the OCD it all seemed entirely impossible. I screamed and I shouted my way through exposures, I cried and cried and thought that there was no way out, but with the encouragement of my family, of my friends and of my doctor, I carried on. Bit by bit, slowly but surely, the compulsions melted away and the intrusive thoughts bothered me less and less. You see (and I didn’t back then) I now understand OCD, I now get what everyone was telling me again and again – these thoughts are normal, everybody has them, it’s how you react to them that counts. It isn’t the thoughts that are the problem, it’s the meaning that you attach to them, it’s how hard you try to push them away, to stop them becoming real.

I’m human, I still have bad days, but I know that they are just that, a little blip and not a long, snaking slide down to the bottom of the playing board. I still have times where I worry obsessively, where I catch myself slipping into comforting rituals, but I feel as though I now have the tools to erect that ladder to clamber back up before it is too late.

I know there is a chance that I will relapse, that I also have to put the success down to the medication that I am on (and I’ll talk about them in different posts, this is my jubilant post, the one I’ve been waiting for) but hey, I still got here. I am back at University with a head full of ambitions and projects, no longer afraid of the shadows in my head and able to look forwards rather than back. And hey, I know I shouldn’t say this, but I’m proud.

Still yours, if a little less obsessively compulsively,

Bellsie