OCD

It suddenly occurs to me, that I must have a good touch of OCD.

It doesn’t feel like OCD as explained. I don’t count things. I don’t check doors locks or even live neat as a pin.

But once I get a notion, or something gets in my noggin, I am hard pressed to let it go. Usually this has to do with feelings about men, or perceived threats.

Thing is, that due to the hypervigilance streak I have, these OCD paranoias most often come into a sort of fruition. It is a bit like having ESP, or foresight.

And once the paranoias come to fruition, the hypervigilance is reconfirmed and the cycle continues, and where my life is so small and my social structure so fragile, there is nothing to feel like a protective layer and nothing to shake me out of OCD thoughts or behaviors.

I need to get back to work, or take a trip or do some goddamn thing.

I managed to heal one friendship last year when I was initially feeling miraculously better from those first B12 shots.

I tried more recently to reach out to two other old friends that I had alienated.

There were a few corresponds of politeness, but nothing more. Part of me really can’t blame them. I can be a lot.

One of the friends was like a big sister to me most of our teens and early 20s and then we gradually grew apart but there would still be get togethers and dinners and occasional phone calls or emails.

From 2015 or so till 2018 a group of us had gotten in to the habit of having dinner once a week or at least twice a month. It was good for me, I think good for them too.

But I think, god, how much air I can suck up in a conversation with all the drama that has rolled through my life, how needy I am and have been, like a little kid.

How hard it is and has been for me to let go of things, to feel proper and grounded and sound.

Truly, the first year of this pandemic was like an elixir for me, a bit of healing and then in quick order family estrangement, loss of a sense of identity, laid off from a long time job that I actually half enjoyed. The continued confusion of the pandemic, the Ukraine, the fucking economy.

Even though I do not directly interact with broadcast news, I still doom scroll, the fear still trickles in.

But the first year of the pandemic, I was working from home and nesting and planning for what was to come after, and I really thought I might get out of it all generally unscathed.

So rare that I am hopeful, but up until March 6th of 2021 I had a good deal of hope.

Then April of 2021, a blast from the past sort of rocked my reality as well and further into the terror I went.

August 2021 I was told I was being laid off and replaced by someone more junior, but was kept on until October.

All summer of 2021 I was curled in a ball, working from my iphone, not eating, barely functioning. I actually thought I was going to end up hospitalized or dead.

My own therapist when I requested extra sessions said she didn’t have the bandwidth, and I just had the fairygod mother and two friends to check on me or encourage me to eat, get outside.

My hair was falling out and I was making felt balls out of them. I think I still have a bag of my balled hair some where. I remember vaguely keeping as proof of survival.

December 4th 2021 I had my first b12 shot and then all the fear and anxity started to melt off, and went up north and I think I must have been a bit manic, and I started a facebook page writing out into the either to find someone who had slighted me, and then the writing just wouldn't’ stop.

December 2021, January, February and March of 2022 I felt the best I had felt, in maybe ever. There was a calm, a bit of mania, but my humor was high.

Then March 2022 the air started to go out of the tire. I was eating again and my hair not falling out, but the lackluster was upon me, and fear.

I started a part time gig in May, and that was enough to get a bit of money in and keep myself a bit occupied. July brought an additional full time job, that I knew wasn’t a good fit, but I took it because the money and benefits were amazing, the best I have ever had in my life.

The part time job ended in October, they said they needed someone full time, and then I became a bit riddled with anxiety over that. Concerned with my form, fit and function, and started getting paranoid that the other job wasn’t going to work.

Last year my cycle had appeared to stop in entirety December 2021. Then the second week in November 2022 I had a huge anxiety wash come over me, and I could barely function, my appetite gone and bedridden.

I ended up getting a full cycle the week after and then felt semi calm again and also asked my Dr to up my anti anxiety, so I could function for work.

While I was able to function a bit better for work it was still a rough spot, the owner of the company was very demanding, texting me at all hours, and the woman that had hired me that was a semi friend, seemed extremely displeased with me, even when things were basically going well.

I panic quit the job January 5th 2023, they finally found a replacement on first week in March and my last day of work was March 17th 2023.

And now here I am, fretting, fretting, fretting. I am eating, I managed a bit of socializing and a walk last week and even managed to do loads of laundry and change out my bedding, but my energy level is just nil to none.

And my thoughts are on loop, and my fears as well and I am googling certain things over and over, and I am poking into things that do me no good, and I can’t stop, can’t seem to shake it off.

I remember stories about a crazy great aunt that used to beachcomb, for hours on her own, and was a bit of a hoarder, and then my own father towards the end of his life, I think he must have absconded with every moon shell from our local beach.

When cleaning his house for sale there were plastic tote bins and bags just filled with moon shells and his sand dollar collection was insane as well.

Just beyond what any normal person would have collected, it was as if he had stripped the beach of all the shells.

His sister that still lived, told me that she had OCD. She was in a wide range of 12 step groups, everything from AA to OCD to over eaters and PTSD. I think there were a few more that she mentioned.

She was certainly high strung, and I half felt badly for her and almost nurturing in a manner, but her cruel streak was undeniable and her love of stirring up drama was insufferable. Then she lied about stupid things while we were sorting my father’s illness and finances, and I said I would never speak with her again, and I won’t.

But the OCD thing, it hits me today. I have been buying things that I have no real use for, I have been hoarding these class jars that my instant coffee comes in, as well as keeping magazines and newspapers that I keep thinking a I am going to read but never do. And I keep mulling over of a past that never was and was certainly never going to manifest as I wanted it to.

And all the world is beautiful outside today and I want no part of it, feel entirely unwelcomed and afraid and stuck.

And I want so desperately for someone to help me fix it all, but there is no rescue team, no one is coming, not even my sister is available to me anymore.

No one is coming and it is all down to me.

At the least I will put the magazines and papers in the recycle bin.

Try for one thing a day.

Tomorrow I will sort the glass bottles, but they really are great bottles. . .I have such intent for them.