Here's to all the first-day sucks

Normally, I do a first day of school photo, but not this year. 

This year I didn't care. 

Partly because my schedule this month is insane.

But mostly because I know this is a hard year for G since he started high school. Most people dislike change, but he REALLY dislikes change. And like his mother, his anxiety just becomes a horribly shitty mood. I'm old enough now to know that I need to shut the fuck up, but he is 14 and hasn't learned or instilled this habit in himself. 

G had a fairly horrible first day. Now, was it actually fairly horrible? Not sure. If 100 people had his first day, would they agree that it was horrible? I don't know that either. G is a bit of a drama queen and has a low frustration tolerance. 

But several things worked against him:

1--He dressed like he was going on a hike in Siberia when he lives in the South in August (despite his mother urging him NOT to dress this way).

Hoodie=check
Long pants=check
T-shirt under the hoodie=check

Plus a mask (since our area is in COVID red)

2--The bus was packed and it took a long time for all the buses to arrive.

3--Another kid threw up on the bus.

So G got a little motion sick and a lot hot and frustrated. (Although I told him his first day could have been worse because he could have actually puked on the bus like the other kid.)

And then he felt overwhelmed with the 7 classes and the new building and the syllabi and the "Here is what we're going to do this semester" which to G sounds like:

HERE IS WHAT WE EXPECT YOU TO KNOW RIGHT THIS SECOND AND YOU HAVE 10 PAPERS AND THEY ARE ALL DUE IN 2 WEEKS. 

During the school days I was wondering how he was doing, which caused me anxiety. And then after school, I had to listen to him complain and be out of sorts.

There is a saying that a mother is only as happy as her unhappiest child, which means my first three days weren't as stellar as they might have been. 

Letting traditions go

Last year, when my dad was going through his cancer and chemotherapy/radiation, I reached out to a former boyfriend who is now a chaplain and asked him to recommend some books to help me deal with my feelings. 

My medication keeps me on an even emotional keel, for the most part, but intense stress gums up the works. With the pandemic, my keel was wonky anyway; dad's diagnosis and treatment left me feeling way unmoored.

I read several books he suggested, including No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering by Thich Nhat Hanh and When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron. 

Between my own therapy and going through therapy with G, I've learned a lot about how anxiety and OCD work, and so I've tried to get better and more mindful about my acts of "letting go." I've tried to remind myself to feel whatever unpleasant feeling I'm having, hold it and sit with it until it doesn't hurt anymore (or not as much), and then let the desire to control the situation dissipate. 

I've also tried, in these past 20 months since COVID appeared here, to really not force myself to do things I don't want to do. 

Now, this doesn't mean I'm not working or doing the mom thing because those are things I need to do. Those are the tending to the tree work so that in the future of 10 or 20 years, I have shade in my garden.

But what I'm letting go of, and I've always been pretty good at this, is letting go of the stuff that really hasn't ever been necessary except that everyone else does it, and so we feel that it is required. 

I compare this to cutting back all the dead stalks in my garden each fall and throwing away all the dead leaves that fall on my grass. Someone, somewhere, decided this is what you do, and so everyone with a yard followed suit (in the same way that we all bought into the yard to begin with). In truth, cutting back stalks and removing every shred of leaves is detrimental to the health of the landscape. Birds and insects use those dead stalks and dead leaves to overwinter. The dead leaves decompose and provide nutrients to my flower beds. 

Essentially, going along with whatever every other homeowner does is extra work for me that harms my yard. 

We are going about our normal Thanksgiving which has always been okay with me because I've only ever had to make two dishes. When the day/time come when my MIL doesn't want to or can't do Thanksgiving, I do not necessarily think I will adopt the practice of bringing everyone together. I cannot say for certain. That could be next year or 15 years from now. 

But I hate entertaining. I really don't like to cook. And so I would have to find a way to do it that would not make me miserable. I know too many people, friends of mine and family, who do Thanksgiving (and Christmas and Easter) and stress about it. 

And yet, it is a holiday that we all do because someone, somewhere told us we had to. Did any of us ever formally decide, "Yes, I want to celebrate this holiday in this particular way?" Or have we all just done it because we've always done it. 

I have decided this year that our Christmas is changing. I am doing a long-term sub job until the district's winter break, and I am going to be tired. Subbing wears me the heck out. Plus, at the best of times, I hate shopping. So I have decided that I am not buying gifts for anyone. My children have everything they could ever want (and would rather have money anyway, I think). 

Our family is supposed to leave on a short trip soon after school ends, and this complicates the Christmas planning too, so I'm not planning. With airlines and delays being what they are, I have no guarantee that we will even get back when we are supposed to, so I'm not doing our "normal" at all. I'm not even going to try. While we are gone, if I feel inclined to buy someone something on our travels, I will get it. But I'm not buying everyone stuff just to have them a gift at Christmas. 

(I should say that this non-traditional Christmas is bringing its own OCD stress with it. The irrational part of my brain is pretty well convinced one of my parents is going to get COVID today at Thanksgiving and will be on a ventilator at Christmas, making our trip not happen.)

I am not putting up all the Christmas trees because the kids only help because I fuss at them, so I am putting up one tree that I will do myself and not ask them for help. I don't even care about Christmas, and I am sick and tired of trying to make my family a holiday that they don't seem to care about (although I suspect they will complain this year because it "isn't the same.") 

I feel like screaming from the rafters to every woman I know: STOP DOING THIS SHIT FOR YOUR FAMILIES UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY ENJOY DOING THIS SHIT FOR YOUR FAMILIES. IF YOU FUCKING HATE IT, then STOP. 

This year, I am listening to the crazy screeching lady in the rafters. 

How the virus is like the yeast (an OCD saga from long ago with reverberations today)

When N was around six months old, I developed mastitis and then a thrush infection. 

Now, if you've ever been a breastfeeding mother and develop thrush, it 1. is painful and 2. sets you off on a course of fighting an invisible enemy. 

Maybe things have changed and the instructions for how to mitigate thrust differ now, but back in 2004, I went down a rabbit hole of crazy trying to fight thrush. I tried to follow everything I read. Boiling N's pacifiers and teething toys (she will probably develop cancer from all the leached plastic from that). Using paper towels for months in case I was getting anything from multi-use towels (like in the powder room). Trying to wash everything that came into my baby's mouth. NUTS, I tell you. 

This was one of the things, besides my hormones, that led me deep down into the pit of OCD where I'd never visited for so long before and seen such icky sides to it. 

It felt like I was never, ever, ever going to win.

How, exactly, do you fight something you can't see?

This is what I've been thinking about since M's COVID diagnosis yesterday, especially as it concerns keeping the rest of us "safe." 

My OCD wants to go bonkers trying to keep everyone away from each other and all of us wear masks nonstop and clean, and clean, and clean. 

But then I think back to what my mental health was like fighting that invisible yeast. I was fucking insane and as miserable as I can remember being my whole entire life. I stopped eating and sleeping and started crying and waking up in full-blown panic attacks.

Sure, it was hormones, but it was also a lot of feeling completely and totally out of control and not being able to handle it.

I'm medicated now, but I also don't think it is wise to intentionally poke the OCD bear if you can help it. Especially when under stress. Stress brings out the worst in OCD. And I've been stressed (like everyone) for the past 18 months with additional stress for all of Dad's health issues last year. 

So we're taking some steps to try to keep the four vaccinated in the house "safe," but maybe not as safe as we could. 

First of all, M is 11. I'm not locking him in his room like a pariah. If it was me or D, we'd lock ourselves away and try to keep the kids safe. But the most vulnerable person in our house is sick so what is the point? 

G is sleeping on a mattress in the living room (which in some ways is kind of stupid because he slept in the same bedroom with M the four nights between M's negative COVID test on Friday and his positive COVID test on Tuesday). 

We're keeping the ceiling fans on where M is to move the air around for when we are near him. 

I changed the filter in the HVAC system, and we're keeping the house fans running at all times (although this may be the worse thing to do because of circulating the virus). 

I brought a box fan upstairs to circulate the air in the kitchen and office since there is no ceiling fan. 

I disinfected the remote control because M was using it yesterday.

But I'm not wearing a mask inside my house, and I'm not making my sick kid do it either. 

We did a shit ton of things to keep "safe," and it didn't keep us totally safe. I don't for one second regret any of those things, but I think it is kind of absurd now to try to put the cat back in the bag, especially since we don't know when between Friday and Tuesday that M became contagious. At what moment did he officially become contagious? We will never know. 

I may be walking around today, right this minute, positive with COVID. Just because I was negative yesterday does not mean I am negative today. 

For my own sanity, I cannot allow myself to engage with this invisible enemy the way I did in 2004.

I hope if the four of us who are vaccinated get sick, it is mild. But ramping up my anxiety and destroying my mental health in the effort to stay physically healthy may not be the best choice at this time. 

My reality is not THE reality

Since my OCD diagnosis some 15 years ago, I have spent a lot of time trying to clean up the mess of my mind, trying to determine what is real and true, like some kind of objective reality, and what is my brain's perception of what is real and true.

I spent the better part of 30 years thinking that catastrophizing was normal and logical and made perfect sense. If someone didn't answer the phone and my brain told me they had DIED or were in the process of dying, I accepted this without question. If I thought it, it had to be right. 

It is a hard pill to swallow when you realize you've never actually been the captain of your ship but only played one on tv. 

The more I think, the more I come to the conclusion that there is no definitive real and true. I am limited by my brain and my sensory perceptions. I'm listening to an audiobook now that talks in part about how our memories can't even be trusted. What we remember may only be a tiny sliver of what actually happened. 

Somewhere along the line, my brain told me that adults knew what they were doing, and I accepted this belief as reality. 

Pretty soon after becoming a mom, I think I realized that adults are winging it. We don't know what we're doing but we're just better at pretending or not caring or simply being used to the status quo than teens or young adults. 

Because I'm diligent about replying to emails and getting things submitted on time or not showing up late for work, I have assumed that the reality is that other people do this. As time marches on, it is evident that I have been wrong. 

When people have lauded me with praise about things, I don't know if what I did was actually good work or if it is because I show up and have a pulse (which is beyond the scope of some others). 

Sure, there are some folks who have this same "be dependable, follow-up with people" approach as me, but the world is big...bigger than I can usually wrap my head around most days. 

It is a borderline miracle that any business or organization functions with anything resembling efficiency at all, ever. That anything gets accomplished is a win. 

Over the years, I've definitely chilled out and not expected as much from myself or others. Recognizing that my reality isn't everyone's is both disorienting and freeing. The longer I live and the more I think (which is a lot since we're still lying low due to M's lack of a vaccine), the more I recognize that I will continue to go through these periods where I reconsider things that my brain told me, things that I believed for a long time. 

Post pandemic (even though it's not over) ennui

Ennui is often thought of as boredom, but I define it more broadly. 

In some ways, I have been in a state of ennui my entire life---a listlessness brought on by near-constant existential crisis. Having children and being busy and medication have lessened it, but that feeling doesn't ever fully go away. 

For the past several weeks, that feeling has worsened, and I have been trying to figure out what is going on. 

It is pandemic-related and OCD-related, but the specifics are a bit fuzzy.

There are several subtypes of OCD, and there can definitely be overlap between them. For me, contamination OCD is primary (with forbidden thoughts/ruminations secondary). This means I was totally prepared to live through a pandemic and completely unprepared to re-acclimate myself to life post-vaccination. 

My sweet spot in life was wearing a mask, not socializing, keeping my distance, and having hand sanitizer EVERYWHERE. 

Now, as I write this, everyone is acting like the pandemic is over and done with, but I have my suspicions as to what will happen. There remain a whole lot of unknowns. What will the fall and winter look like, for example?

For me, the biggest is when my youngest child will be able to get his vaccine. While I trust the vaccine to work as well as the flu shots I take each fall (or better), I also recognize that no vaccine provides 100 percent coverage. And if one of us in our house gets sick, will M get a rougher case because he is, due to his age, unable to get a vaccine? 

That worries me (even though my rational brain can totally understand that the risk to M of being harmed in a car accident driving to the vaccine is higher than his risk of getting COVID and dying from it.)

But clearly, rational thought hasn't ever been my strong suit. The blog is mood-disordered mama; not totally rational mama who keeps her wits about her. 

Then there was the announcement by the school district that kids in schools will no longer have to wear masks which seems to me to violate the "unvaccinated people need to wear masks" policy, especially at the elementary level. I would be hesitant to immerse myself in a vat of liquified bacteria or virus without a wetsuit, and that image in my mind is what I picture walking into an elementary school will feel like in the fall. 

Of course, subbing in an elementary school has always been like immersing oneself in a vat of disease, mucus, and slobber.

And then there's the general people factor. 

I didn't love people before the pandemic, but being away from people has made me even less eager to be around them, especially in large numbers. 

I recently read a book that mentioned Dunbar's number, which I had never heard of. It is a theory that the most social relationships an individual can have with anything like stability, based on evolution and our tribal history, is around 150. Research seems to suggest it isn't completely accurate, and I would say that is true. 

My Dunbar's number is around 5; possibly 10 if I'm in the right mood. 

So I'm meh about people, and I'm meh about everything else. 

I'm not bored but I am completely unmotivated. 

There are things I think I'd like to do but I haven't the desire to do them.

My impression, which could be wrong, is that other people are boldly going back into "real life." And that may be ok for them as so many lamented the pause of pandemic year 2020. 

But I liked the pause for the most part. Not every second of it, of course. But on the whole, I liked the simplification of everything. 

I liked, for once, having an actual excuse (THERE IS A FUCKING PANDEMIC) for social activity besides "I don't want to" or "I don't like people" or "I don't have the mental energy to keep up with surface-level conversations."

The pandemic made it easy and acceptable for me to keep my distance...both physically and emotionally. The pause meant I didn't have to deal with involvement in school and planning with acquaintances and putting on the mask of caring about things I truly care nothing about (player packs, for example). 

I enjoyed the disengage. 

So now that things are ripping back into "normal," I'm forced to re-engage myself. And I'm having a hard time. 

A reason I'm not sending my kid back to IRL school now (that hadn't occurred to me until recently)

Every parent is having to make decisions right now that both they and their kids can live with regarding in-person school. 

I made the decision to not send my kids back to school for the remainder of this school year.

At its most basic, this decision is about the virus.  

But the decision is about a lot more than the virus, and it took me a little while to see this. 

My basic argument in my head was that all this seemed like an awful lot of work and struggle (especially for teachers and staff) for what will ultimately amount to 12 days of in-person school per child (due to the hybrid scheduling). 

In "normal circumstances," the first six weeks of school in August are aimed at establishing routines (that is 30 days of consistent 5-day-a-week school). To me, starting IRL school in mid-April (after Spring Break when everyone is mentally done with school anyway) seemed like an effort in futility. 

But it dawned on me (finally) that my feelings about this futility had a lot to do with what the virus did to all the work G had done pre-pandemic (starting in November 2019) to manage his OCD. 

He had been going to therapy once a week. 

He was dealing with his uniform and his shoes.

He was going to school ok and managing his anxieties.

And then COVID hit. 

No IRL school; no uniforms; no shoes; nothing normal.

No being around unknown people and having to manage his anxiety in the face of them. 

So a lot of those things that set off his OCD haven't been there for a year. 

Which is EXACTLY the wrong thing when you're doing exposure therapy. The goal is to EXPOSE yourself to the things that cause anxiety. COVID made exposure not happen. 

(If I was a better person, I would have forced him to wear his uniform and put on his shoes, but given all the pandemic and all my dad's stuff and all the STUFF, I didn't have the mental energy to fight with my child constantly.)

And part of the therapy is the consistent practice of managing your anxiety in the face of exposure. Consistent being the operative word. 

To send G back to school now for two days a week in a hybrid schedule means to force him to deal with all of his OCD issues for six weeks inconsistently and then have a huge summer break (again, no consistent practice). 

It means to send him back to deal with all his old OCD issues and all the new anxiety issues from the virus. 

Prior to COVID, G would experience anxiety seeing his classmates and peers act out in school and not do what they were asked to do by teachers. How will he handle seeing this happen with mask-wearing or social distancing? 

Last year, he rode the bus home. How will he handle that, being in obviously close quarters with other kids who may remove their masks and hide behind the seat? 

G could barely manage the uncomfortable feeling of his uniform so I'm not sure he could manage 7+ hours of mask-wearing.

I know there are lots of kids who need to go back and have some semblance of whatever they describe as normal. But there are, I suspect, an awful lot of kids for whom going to school before COVID was an emotional labor that they maybe aren't super keen to return to especially because all the COVID protocols will heighten their anxiety even more. 

My kid is one of those. 

OCD itself is tantamount to rolling a stone up the hill to only have it roll back over and over and over again. It is a labor at all times, and I really do not have the desire to intentionally make ourselves Sisyphean in April of the nearly over school year. 

Take your uncomfortable feeling and sit with it

Affrilachian poet Frank X. Walker published a poem this week.
Reading it made me feel uncomfortable.
That uncomfortable feeling was me recognizing that the poem's sentiment was honest and accurate.
What role do white women play in the raising of men who perpetrate brutality against blacks?

From my experience with OCD, I know that one of the ways to make it better or lessen its impact is to do what is called "sit with your anxiety."
Part of the reason people with OCD do their compulsions is to reduce the uncomfortable feelings they have.
The problem of giving in to the compulsion is that while it makes a person feel better for the moment, it makes the anxiety worse overall, which requires you to do more compulsions or new compulsions to make the anxiety go away.
"Sitting with your anxiety" is extremely uncomfortable but it is what is necessary to help truly master OCD and not be controlled by it.

I have seen at least two instances this week in which white women I know have posted their thoughts and/or feelings on social media regarding protests or wishing all this what they call "meanness" in the world would go away.
When their comments were challenged, they did not "sit with their feelings."
They deleted what they wrote and went back to "only happy, positive posts now."

While doing this may lessen their negative and/or uncomfortable feelings, it is indicative of white privilege.
They have the luxury of not dealing with the meanness of the world because of their color.
It is easy for them to slip back into the comfy, secure confines of whiteness where life is, perhaps not always easy or simple, but easier than if their skin color impacted how they were treated or viewed by others.

Sitting with the uncomfortable is, in my opinion, part of the hard work of understanding what your bias and prejudices are.
It isn't fun.
But it is necessary.

This week, a teacher friend posted the Harvard Implicit Bias Test.
There are numerous tests a person can choose, but I took the race one.
And before I took it I was scared.
I did not want to know what it would tell me.
What if what I thought I knew about my bias/prejudice was not accurate?
What if I had to look my bias/prejudice in the face and see myself for what I am?

And yet, that feeling of being scared that I felt was a luxury.
Feeling scared by what an online test will tell me about myself is so far removed from the feelings of fear that come from
driving while Black.
jogging while Black.
babysitting while Black.
eating ice cream while Black.
sleeping while Black.
bird-watching while Black.
kneeling while Black.

OCD really likes a pandemic / Thank goodness NTI has begun

G started his exposure-response therapy in December, and he had made significant improvements, but the COVID-19 pandemic has sorta thrown a wrench in that...as it has thrown a wrench in everything.

Everything has been thrown into disarray---
the routine,
the schedule,
the normalcy.

And if there is one thing OCD really, really likes, it is boredom.
Boredom means that OCD has an easier time breaking through.
There isn't enough to distract from the anxiety.

And so if you're my kid, you regress a bit, which is frustrating for you and for your family, who has seen you improve so much over the last few months.

We're doing telehealth appointments with his doctor, and I'm hoping non-traditional instruction provides him some structure that helps him level back out.

Speaking of NTI, it began today, and let me tell you, we are not gonna set the world on fire now or anytime.

But that's ok.

You know how you think that if you had all the chocolate cake you wanted to eat, you would eat it all the time.

But you wouldn't.

You'd eat it for a few meals and then quickly realize that having too much cake makes you feel sluggish and sick.

That's what all this free time has been.

It helps tremendously to have a little bit of structure back into our days.

We don't have to have our lives planned down to every second, which is how normal life often feels, but today feels like a gift to have something to be accountable for to someone who does not live within these walls.

Charles Dickens had it right in an age of anxiety

The first paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities are applicable to right this moment:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. We had everything before us, we had nothing before us. We were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."

These words have popped into my head amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We will see both the best in humanity as well as the worst. It will be a time of glaring selfishness (ALL the toilet paper) and a time of kindness that will make you cry.

Twice since Thursday, I have caught myself brought to a feeling of tearfulness over the kindness that someone has done or said. And I am in no way, shape, or form a tearful person.

We are currently seeing the wisdom and the foolishness--the people who are being mindfully aware and heeding scientists' instructions, and the people who think this entire thing is a joke.

Internally, I am struggling.

Although anxiety medication keeps me calm on the surface, I can feel a rumbling underneath.
I imagine it is what a volcano feels like in the days before an eruption.
From the outside, things appear calm; from the inside, there is much churning and roiling of hot liquid flames.

I suspect I am either experiencing a weird form of stress-induced neuralgia, or I'm having the early stages of a shingles outbreak.
A spot on my abdomen, which was fine on Monday, is now tingling and weirdly uncomfortable.

I am having to manage my own anxiety while trying to dampen my children's anxiety.

Trying to remind them that this is temporary; that this is one of those valleys that life throws you; while we may not be at the deepest part of the valley, eventually it will rise.

All the things I'm thinking about the pandemic

1. Now everyone knows what it feels like to have OCD. The panicky feeling of uncertainty. The catastrophic "what ifs." Imagine experiencing that for everything, all the time, when there is not a global pandemic. 

2. I have spoken to my doctor about COVID-19, and I know people who work in the ER. COVID-19, as Italy is showing us, has the potential to bring the health care system to its knees. While I am not necessarily worried about me catching it, or my children catching it, I am concerned about what it could mean for all the people who end up needing non-COVID care if the hospitals become overwhelmed with providing COVID-19 care. 

What I think about is that IF you experience a heart attack and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you are in a car accident and are rushed to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you have a kidney stone attack and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you develop appendicitis and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you are shot and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you have an accident with a tool or a kitchen knife and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you develop symptoms of a stroke and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you have an allergic reaction to something and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

IF you are pregnant, begin experiencing complications, and go to the hospital, your care could be compromised.

Even if your care isn't compromised, you could end up catching the virus from all the people at the hospital who have it, if it comes to that. 

Of course, those are a lot of ifs, but people need emergency or urgent care for lots of reasons all the time. Our hospitals can only handle so many patients with so many critical needs. 

3. The people who are blowing this off seem to lack imagination and empathy. 

4. The people who are blowing this off are also scared. Fear can make you do a couple different things. One of those things is FIGHT. In the case of COVID-19, it is taking precautions and doing everything possible to fight against getting it. The other thing is FLIGHT, which can be denial. 

"Oh, it's no big deal."
"It's just like flu."

"It's the media overhyping everything."

Maybe you think you are coming across as assured and confident, but I read it as FRIGHTENED, just like the rest of us. 

5. If this virus blows over, and the US doesn't experience a huge increase in cases and deaths, it will be because of public health experts and people heeding their advice. And possibly luck. 

I suspect that people who wonder why they had to learn about exponential change in math because they would NEVER need it in real life are finding out why they needed to know something about it. 

OCD is part of my reason

This past fall marked 15 years since I began treatment for my OCD.
It has taken almost that entire time for me to get comfortable with this disorder.

That diagnosis has changed my life in many ways.

It made me see the value of therapy and encourage it for others.
It made me vocal about the need for better and more mental health care.
It made me realize that having a mental health issue does not equate to being useless, crazy, or unworthy.
It made me better equipped to handle my own son's OCD and be empathic.
And beyond my son, it has allowed me to offer help and hope to other people.

A young person I know and see regularly was diagnosed, and her mom, who is also my friend, made sure to mention to her daughter that "Ms. V has OCD" to help ease her daughter's handling of the diagnosis.

It made me feel very proud to know that in some ways I have become a "poster-girl" for OCD among people I know.
Because when you have a condition that isn't going to go away and that can be crippling and embarrassing, you need to know that a person can have the condition and still thrive.
That a person can still have healthy long-term relationships.
And be smart.
And be productive.
And be cool.
(Ok, I'm not really cool except in my own head.)

It also makes me glad that I've been a bit of a loudmouth about my OCD, allowing others to feel comfortable enough to ask me questions and seek my suggestions and guidance. 

OCD treatment, Part 1

Along with my medication, I have found motherhood to be a pretty good way for me to deal with my OCD and its incessant desire to have certainty.

There is nothing certain about motherhood, which is why I nearly lost my mind 15 years ago.
You can do everything "right" and your kid is still a mess or gets sick or is an asshole.
Also, what is "right" when it comes to parenting a kid?
Who knows.
There are no guaranteed "rights" or "wrongs."
What I do that is "right" for my oldest is a definite "wrong" for my middle or youngest.
Or vice versa.

I have become much more comfortable with the certainty that I cannot control my kids or their outcomes.
The only certainty I have is that it is all uncertain.
I have to be ok with doing what was in my power to do, even if it is not everything and even if it doesn't work.
I have to be ok with saying "I tried."

I keep reminding myself of this as G and I work on his OCD treatment.

This past week was the first in which G had homework for his OCD, and it has been a doozy.
If G defined this homework, he would probably call it torture:
He had to wear pants for 2 hours every day and tie his shoes "the standard way" and wear them 2 hours every day. (The "standard way" is the bunny knot, possibly a double knot; not his convoluted tucked and rolled travesty of shoe-tying.)

He (and I) tried every day.
Some days he could wear shoes for 2 hours and some days he could wear pants for 2 hours, but he could only tolerate uniform pants for 20 minutes tops.
And he struggled with doing both at the same time.

For someone who does not have OCD, this all sounds absurd.
"Put on pants and move on with your day!"
But there are people for whom throwing on a pair of pants is like....an ordeal.

The whole not wearing pants thing and only wanting to wear one pair of shorts is a relatively new phenomenon; last spring and summer he wore whatever.
I think middle school had something to do with it--the uniforms, the new place, the weirdness of middle school boys in the bathroom, having to change clothes for physical education class.

Some of it is his changing body.
He is in that awkward stage where it is hard to find clothes that fit.

Unfortunately, in dealing with OCD, we are making it very unhappy, which means G has been having bursts of anger and irritability.
No one likes feeling anxious, which is why the compulsions begin....to make the anxious feelings go away.
But they don't go away for long, which means the compulsions get worse and more involved.

At the moment, we're pissing G's OCD off royally.

Seeking additional treatment for OCD

I have sometimes thought that G's OCD may require me to seek additional treatment for my own OCD.

I can feel my own internal anxious discomfort increasing when he does his compulsions.

After watching him straighten and fix something repeatedly, I have to fight the urge within myself to start fixing things in the same room (albeit things he wasn't fixing).

Partly, I stop myself from fixing the armchair covers when he fixes the couch cushions because of the mental picture of the two of us in my head. It just seems absurd...us OCDing in circles around each other.

I also have to say to myself, "Fixing stuff is not going to restore order into your life or his. You just have to feel the discomfort and deal."

G has been on medication for his OCD since he was 6-years-old.
While his dose has increased over time a bit, I'm not 100 percent convinced that his dose shouldn't be increased even more, but his psychiatrist has seemed hesitant to up it.
I like his psychiatrist, but I got the feeling that since G's grades are ok, everything is ok.
As if grades are all that matters.
But G's issues have never affected school, really.
While this may not always be the case, G has always struggled more with functioning at home.

School provides more routine and structure than what life outside of school provides, which might be one reason why I always loved school.
The whole reason I wanted to be a teacher is that I liked the idea of organized chaos---there was a bit of unknown but there was a whole lot of the same old stuff happening.
I sometimes wonder if the same isn't true for G.

My feeling that we were missing something that we could be doing for G led me to discover that there is a clinic locally that deals with nothing but OCD.
I took G for a consultation after he asked again when he could see the psychiatrist because his symptoms (like rewriting his "rs" and "ns" on his schoolwork) were driving him crazy.

Today, he did the first part of the assessment to determine his OCD subtype, and he will soon begin exposure response prevention therapy.
It is hella expensive, but I'm hoping that seeking treatment at a place that does nothing but OCD will help him (and us) find more peace.

("The Types of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder," Owen Kelly. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-are-the-different-types-of-ocd-2510663)

Anxious mom sending her anxious child to middle school

Here is what rational brain keeps saying:

You worried about how he'd do in preschool, and he did great.
You worried about how he'd do in elementary school, and he did great.
You are probably worrying about how he'll do in middle school, and he'll probably do great.

Irrational brain, however, is over here beating this drum:

He's going to be miserable. His OCD will go off-the-chain. He is going to start failing classes. It is going to be an even bigger vat of suck than what middle school already is. 

I think part of the reason I haven't been crazy gung-ho for school to start is because of G starting middle school and just not knowing what this is going to mean for him, for me, and for our family.
This year I have been happy to live in a little bubble of avoidance.

G's modus operandi has always been to do great at school, to hold it together there, and then lose his freaking mind at home. Become tantrumy and belligerent.
This is not unusual for kids with anxiety.

He had gotten to a point where this wasn't happening other than a rare episode.
I don't want to start this again, even though I know we have a physician in place now to help us.

So with this school year, I'm not over-the-top exuberant to have my house to myself again because even though I have been able to clean with the peace of knowing that it will stay clean until approximately 2:45, I'm an anxious pile of goo at the prospect of how G is, how he's feeling, and how he will react or decompress when he gets home. 

My semi-addiction

I know that at some point, probably sooner than later, I'm going to have to forego adventures.

We've got two more boys to get into braces, a girl that will be driving, and a furnace that is coming up on 20 years of existence.
One car that is at 185,000 miles, and another that is 18 years old.
We will soon have to spend money on boring, adult(ish) things.

So, I'm seizing the day by taking lots of trips.
We just returned from spring break to Atlanta, and I've already booked a short trip in the fall.

Now, I tell myself that these trips are ok, and I guess they are since we're not going into debt to do them, and we're not foregoing things like food and medicine in order to do them.

These trips make those long-ass days of substitute teaching a little more worth it.

Of course, I worry about my obsessiveness.
That feeling of "needing" to get something planned.
Like I can't settle down until I've got something booked.
That isn't very healthy.

On the flip side, I've obsessed about having tonsilar cancer...when I didn't have tonsilar cancer.
And I've obsessed about people dying...when people weren't dying.
And I've obsessed about the end of the world...when the end of the world isn't happening.
And I've obsessed about food....when I should just eat a healthy, balanced diet.
And I've obsessed about exercise....when I should just do 30 minutes a day and forget about it.

I'm really, really, REALLY quite good at obsessing.
That's my mo.

And considering all the things I've obsessed over...these little adventures are the least damaging.
At least for now.

The voices inside my head

A perfect storm of stress and hormones made the voices appear again, those insidious thoughts that come from the depths of my id, the thoughts that make me cringe because they are so not me.

When I say "voices inside my head" someone might erroneously think of a schizophrenic who hears voices and thinks they are real. The horror of intrusive thoughts for me (and other people with OCD) is that they appear and I know good and well that they aren't my intentional thoughts. But they are in my head, nonetheless, so I worry that they ARE my real feelings and that I'm so dense that I'm not even aware that that is how I must really feel.

At least for me, the voices sound like me except more rough and angry.

What "the voice" says are things that are the horrible, nasty, cruel things I might say if I had no conscience or empathy or concern about hurting others. Basically, it is like having an anonymous disgusting person launch Twitter attacks inside my head all the time.

That may be the most troubling thing of all.

If you cannot imagine what these voices sound like, I can give an example:

Me, seeing a classmate of N's who just happens to walk by and for whom I have no real opinion whatsoever:
My thought: "Oh, there's so-and-so."
The voice: "What a bitch."

Such a comment by "the voice" might be ascribed to potentially any female who just happened to walk near me in the grocery store. No one has to "do" anything to me.

There are worse things that "the voice" says, but I try to dismiss them very quickly by reminding myself that those are nonsense thoughts.

When I noticed these thoughts, I was reminded of John Green's interview about his latest book, Turtles All the Way Down, and his interview about his OCD. He said he's a terrible detective because he is so in his own head all the time that he can't notice much in the world outside him.

I have not read the book yet, but I have to wonder about the title, which is based on a philosophical and cosmological concept which goes back to Anavastha. Although it can relate to God, I think it is meant to describe what it is like to have OCD. 

Anavastha means unstable or absence of finality, hence the turtles standing on turtles all the way down, forever and ever. What I visualize when I picture these turtles is what I imagine my mind to be when I am in an obsessive rut. There is no bottom to obsessive thought.

This concept relates, too, to the fact that scientists still don't really understand what causes OCD, although they know it is in the deepest parts of the brain. What is the cause? On what does OCD stand?

Turtles all the way down, of course!

Cool as a cucumber EXCEPT when it comes to back-to-school shopping

People with OCD are often accused of being particular, but I have found that they often aren't any more particular than regular people. They have their oddities, for sure, but these are generally not of the "shallow stuff variety" like M&M colors or which way the danged toilet paper roll goes on the holder, which is what regular people often get their panties in a twist about.

I mean, there are freaking memes about that junk.

I do not have to have M&Ms sorted, and I am just glad someone other than me PUT the toilet paper ON the holder so I have never understood how these things are attributed to OCD-ness.

I'm sure having children has led me to become more relaxed about things.  I don't care what my kids' hair looks like provided it is trimmed and clean (and clean is a relative term). I don't especially care what they wear provided they and their clothes are clean (or relatively clean).

Twice this past year, I have had two people refer to me as being "cool as a cucumber," which I think is both HILARIOUS and appropriate.

I have never thought of myself as a cool as a cucumber-type person because I tend to be pretty excitable, but it is over weird stuff.

One time I was referred to in this way related to how I am as a substitute teacher, and this is probably true. I try very hard to stay completely unflustered by students because that is exactly (especially if they are of the middle-school persuasion) what they want. It is better for me to look bored and ask, "Are you done?" than to get myself all in a kerfluffle. Whispering in their ear, I've found, is far more effective than making a scene which gives them no choice but to make a scene back.

The other was in reference to VBS. My motto is, "Unless I'm getting paid for something, I am not going to worry about it too much." It will all work out, so I'm not going to sweat it much.....or at all.

When it comes to school supplies, however, I am fairly laid back and always have been. I never cared (and still don't) what colors and kinds of notebooks or folders or pencils my students use...whether they are my actual students or my children who are students and for whom I purchase the supplies.

Perhaps in some parallel universe and in some naturally highly organized Earth children, they say, "Oh, blue folder goes with blue notebook," but my experience is that kids are generally idiots who have to be savagely beaten into noticing stuff like this. Any old pencil, notebook, and folder will do when they are asked to get out a pencil, notebook, and folder. I wanted to utilize every second of classroom time and not waste it dicking about with colors of notebooks or whether someone had a pencil.  Find a friend or write with a crayon, but let's go--we got shit to learn.

I have learned to not buy N anything until after the first day of school. When she began 6th grade, I purchased from the "general supply list" and then had to go back out again and purchase plastic folders instead of paper ones since her teacher didn't like that the paper ones fall apart.

Where I am not as cool as a cucumber is on the purchasing end of the school supply thing. I get immensely aggravated at other people's persnicketiness that I have to deal with in a store. I find myself wandering around Staples mumbling things like, "Why don't they just ask for chartreuse notebooks?  How impossible are those to find?  And what is wrong with BLACK notebooks? Is everyone prejudiced against BLACK notebooks?"

I CANNOT HARDLY WAIT for N to start high school so that she can wear regular clothes and I no longer have to drive to every store in town to find uniform pants that fit her in the legs, are not so low-waisted that they ride up her nether regions, that are also the "right" shade of khaki that do not look like jeans, and do not cost $40.

Of course, just as she is getting out of uniforms, G will soon be moving into them which will be an entire blogging thread of disgust and non-cucumber-like behavior. 

OK, and so......

If you live in my house, the above phrase lets you know that G is in an OCD groove.
His needle is stuck.
As M says, "G is being sensitive....again."
G is usually straightening something and this is his repeated phrase that he says as he is checking and rechecking and rechecking something.

We see the psychiatrist later this month, and there will almost certainly be a medication increase.

When I think about how I was as a child, my condition was either not as bad or I was just very, very good at hiding it.

Because of my own OCD and just my personality, I have worked to be very open and honest with G about his brain, at least in terms that a 9-year-old will understand.  I strive to be very accepting.

While I think this is the best way for his emotional health, I'm not sure it is the best way for him to understand that he is kinda weird.

I guess what I mean is that as his family, we accept him however he is and try to be understanding.  But the world at large is not as accepting, and if he feels comfortable to be in his weirdness without trying to tone it down a bit, I'm not sure he will fully understand that sometimes you can't let your freak flag fly as loudly and proudly in some places as you do in others.

I mean, he probably understands this on some level.  He doesn't seem to do this stuff at school much but I think that is mostly because his mind is occupied at all times.  There are plenty of distractions to keep his brain from getting in a rut.  This is why I loved school, and probably why I became a teacher.  Intellectual activity takes me out of my own brain, out of my vat of anxiety, and makes me feel calm.  Since I started subbing, I've noticed that some of my worst days are when I am home without much to do. Even though one part of my brain "needs" those days, another part of my brain just struggles.

He doesn't "OK AND SO" at school not because he realizes it is strange but because his brain is so busy he doesn't feel the need to "OK AND SO."

One of the things I've just begun realizing is how much G's OCD affects the other kids.  It drives both of them nuts when he fixes and re-fixes and gets upset when they accidentally move something he has placed "just so."

I sometimes feel badly asking them to chill about issues when I give G more leeway.  Because they don't have his problems and are naturally less tightly wound, it is easier for them to chill so I often ask it of them.  Asking G to chill is like asking an oven to become a freezer.  Chilling is just not how he is wired.

Whenever I begin to stress that G will never be a successful, "normal," productive adult who lives in my basement, I try to remember that I am a fairly successful, "normal," productive adult who doesn't live in my parents' basement.

In the grand scheme of things, having OCD is probably a walk in the park.  

This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful that the medication seems to be helping

G is 8-years-old, and I have to remind myself, when he is being a pain-in-the-tail, teasing, annoying, talking about poop every 29.5 seconds kid, that medication will not change that.  Sometimes it is hard to tell how much of a kid's weirdness is actual, potentially diagnosable problematic weirdness and how much is just being a kid.

I sat with a class of 8-year-olds at a theater performance today.  It was a nice reminder that all second graders, and not just my kid, 1. can't sit still for long, 2. talk very loudly about all manner of random sh*t, and 3. look like ragamuffins.

We are at 2 weeks of Celexa use for G's actual, diagnosable weirdness.  So far, so good.

What I noticed almost immediately after beginning it is that he started falling asleep without his verbal repetitive loop of worry, even when he doesn't take melatonin.  He began the medication on a Monday.  On the following Friday and Saturday nights, he fell straight to sleep and didn't wake during either night.  He has stopped freaking out over every single thing.  If something gets moved, he expresses his displeasure, but he just says it.  He doesn't scream it or cry or otherwise throw a tantrum.

I have noticed that he is saying, "I love you" more to me than he has in a very long time, which makes me wonder if he was just so busy trying to contain worry that he couldn't bother with affection and communication.  That makes me sad.  And it also makes me very glad we took the steps we did.

I wish I could say that I am without worry over him, but I can't.  He has had a runny nose, so my mind immediately went to, "He is allergic to the medication," although nasal drippage is not a side effect I can find anywhere in the literature.

He threw a gigantic fit the first night we gave him the medication, which had me convinced that he would end up homeless, schizophrenic and suicidal, and that worst-case scenario remains at the back of my mind.  I think he thought he would take the medicine and wake up a different person. He kept asking, "Will I still be me?"  He and I are now taking our "brain" medication together every morning, which I think helps him, as did the realization the next morning that he was the same.    

He got a haircut today and didn't cry afterwards, which had started happening with great regularity and led me to start whacking at his hair myself to avoid an actual salon.  He would have preferred to leave it longer, in his eyes and untouched by the stylist, but he was ok.

I don't want perfect or spectacular or amazing.  I'm thankful that my kid, for right now, is doing ok.

Dear son, I'm the OCD tree....you're the nut

Imagine you get a new picture and hang it on your wall.  You like the picture.  You wanted a change.
But every time you walk in the room, your picture is no longer a picture.  It is a giant, hot pink elephant that is engulfed in flames.  It isn't dangerous;  it will not harm you or burn your house down. You just cannot ignore it, no matter how hard you try.  Everyone else sees your new picture and enjoys it.  You cannot enjoy your picture because it refuses to just be a picture.  It is now a disturbance and may feel that way for weeks.  Or forever.

Imagine you are doing your work.  Out of your head pops the "Waiting for someone to call me back" blob.  It sits on a stool near your desk and throws tiny spit balls at your forehead.  They don't hurt.  The blob doesn't speak or make mean faces or feel threatening, really.  But your concentration sucks because of the spit balls.  You can't ignore the spit balls.  They won't stop pinging your forehead.

When I was a child, around age 10 although I could have been a little older or a little younger, I remember doing the following:

*staying up every night until after my parents went to bed and checking all the locks on the doors. I didn't disturb my folks.  They probably didn't know I was still awake, but I was.  When I heard them breathing deeply and/or snoring, I'd come out of my room.

*I had to have one ear covered in order to sleep (after checking the locks).  It was even better if I could put a cotton ball in my ear and then cover it with the sheet.

*If I called a friend, (in the days before answering machines), and no one was home,  I let the phone ring a hundred times.  (It occurred to me that I might be elaborating.  Maybe it wasn't a hundred.  It was probably only 50.  But then I decided that allowing the phone to ring even 25 is probably excessive.)

*As a teenager, if I went out and used hairspray or styling products on my hair, I could come home and go to sleep.  But the next night, if I didn't change my sheets, I could feel the hairspray and styling products on my face when I put my head on the pillow.  I could not sleep on those sheets.

Over time, my symptoms, my oddities, changed.

What I can only assume is happening to G is that he is confronted with inflamed elephants and hairspray sensations and pinging spit balls, and he can't cope, so he cries and shrieks and throws tantrums.

The added issue is that he is egosyntonic---he doesn't see this as a problem, even though it is a problem for our family.  This is why CBT doesn't work for him.  CBT only works if the person sees a concern/problem and is motivated to address and change it.

The psychiatrist is hopeful that because I have had a good run with Lexapro, G will have good results with Celexa.

I very rarely have "Please, God" thoughts, but I am very much hoping that however G can be helped, healed and supported, he will be.