Foreign exchange

I've been thinking about a particular disability trope which has always bothered me:  Person X may have a disability, but they're just like everyone else. They're no different from you and me. I really loathe that. You hear it from, say, movie producers or PR people who want to cash in on the inspirational-overcoming version of the disabled character. Sometimes you will also (even) hear it from a person with a disability, said about him or herself. 

The thing that bothers me about this statement is it's falsely reassuring, gooey-sentimental, and just not true. But... I think I get it now. 

I mean, I'm not suddenly in favor of this wording. But I think it's badly executed shorthand for: although I have a thing with my mind or body which may be initially offputting to you, person who lives in the land of Normal, you should examine that opinion. This disability, though it comprises part of my character, does not exclude me from also possessing character traits that you, Normate, can identify with. Maybe we can have coffee or something. Even though we are from different countries, let's have an exchange. 

This trope is on my mind because I'm here today to blog about OCD. It's not my favorite topic. I want to keep my mouth (hands?) shut. But I haven't been blogging a lot recently, and although my pageviews are way down for August, I'm assuming some of you might still be reading and maybe wondering what's up with me. What's up is OCD badness.

I've been having a cumulative amount of stress through late July / early August, none of which I can write specifics about. I'm hesitant to include the personal details of my friends and family in the blog. The biggest stressor is a family thing that I don't want to talk about in the great open space that is the internet. 

Setting that stress-ball aside for a moment... know, reader that I've had OCD --the serious full blown after-school-special with tics and checking and counting and weirdness-- ever since I was small. Somewhere between age 4 and 6, I started noticing the rituals. Of course, I didn't know they were rituals at the time. Although my rituals were quite overt, I wasn't diagnosed until I was 17 or 18. 

I still wonder about the late diagnosis. Some possibilities: unmedicated OCD can relapse and remit. A few bad months, then one good. Some tics were obvious but some were secret. My parents didn't want to / understand / have the time to deal with this strange behavior. I was always strange. I was born strange, and this was another manifestation of my strangeness. When your marriage is falling apart in vivid and messy detail, it's more concrete and more compelling than your kid doing a weird thing. 

So after the diagnosis there was medication: first Zoloft, then Luvox, then back to Zoloft, then another brief flirtation with Luvox which suddenly started giving me heartburn and I would have to give up my BELOVED coffee and fuck that, so back to Zoloft, and finally onto Cymbalta, which covers both my OCD and the nerve pain of my fibro. It really covers my OCD... better than the Zoloft did. About as well as the Luvox, without the heartburn. 

I'm interested in my hesitation to tell you about the OCD. I've already revealed the blindness, the fibro, the PTSD. And I believe disability is my country, my political party, my crew, my crowd, my proud-to-be. So why the coyness about OCD? I feel like it's worse somehow, comes with a stigma.

Idealized OCD, on tv for example, is often portrayed as comic relief. Or OCD gives you supergenius powers of observation. 

But when one considers the reality, it's more particular, more individualized, far less glamorous. 

I have heard lots of people say "oh I have a touch of OCD," when what they mean is, "I like to alphabetize my books" or "I get finicky when my collectable figurines are out of alignment in the curio cabinet." 

It's not the same as the all-out counting-checking-ticcing-can't-help-it variety that I speak of now, that I hesitate to speak of.

Wikipedia, prized source for all my students' "research," says:

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry, by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing the associated anxiety, or by a combination of such obsessions and compulsions....[Symptoms] can be alienating and time consuming, and often cause severe emotional distress. The acts of those who have OCD may appear paranoid and potentially psychotic. However OCD sufferers generally recognize their obsessions and compulsions as irrational, and may become further distressed by this realization....Roughly one third to one half of adults with OCD report a childhood onset of this disorder, suggesting the continuum of anxiety disorders across the life span.  

OCD is my brain's favorite torture device. It's there with pinchy calipers to pull and poke at my rationality, ubiquitously. It makes my thoughts race. You really wouldn't know it to observe me though, unless you lived with me and caught me doing a series of tics. 

The medication aids in a popular coping mechanism of "saving" the tics for an appropriate time to discharge them, i.e. not in public. 

So the OCD was exacerbated by the cumulative stress-ball rolling itself bigger and bigger since late July. 

August is inflammation, fire, anxiety. August two years ago was when I got the shingles. I once wrote a poem about August called "Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified." It's in my chapbook, Borrowed Bodies.

The seed of my annual August (Augustine? Augustian?) stress usually is familial on the maternal side. Mom stuff, to put it simply. This year my mom stress is unbloggable. I don't feel comfortable revealing her personal details which also trickle down to be mine. Maybe that there is part of my problem. N has said quite a few times that I need to mentally "let go" of "fixing" my mother. 

So. if Mom stuff is the seed to my stress-ball, then fleas are its outer coating. <-- Ew.

Our cats have contracted fleas. They don't go outside much, hardly ever really. But Ravi may have picked them up from his porch time. Or a human, including the humans he lives with, may have brought Flea Zero in on clothing or bags. Or Flea Zero just hopped through the hole in the screen one day. 

We've had fleas before, but never this bad. Admittedly, we don't use Frontline (or its competitors) all year round. I just have this "less medicine is best" attitude and it's cold most of the year really isn't it? and cats are so squirmy and I'm always fretting that I'm doing it wrong because am I really parting the hair at the shoulder blades and getting the product DOWN TO THE SKIN? If I don't get it DOWN TO THE SKIN I'll have done it wrong and omg, fretting ensues.

Bugs squick me. Biting and stinging bugs. Fleas bite. I"m not sure fleas have ever bitten me before now, before this August. But they've since attacked my ankles, my knees, the tops of my feet. My skin is extra sensitive to bug bites. They swell, get really red, itch like a motherfucker. I've scratched my ankles raw from these bites. 

So the stress had been mounting and I just didn't intuit where it was all headed. Bugs. Fleas. August. OCD.

Being an intellectualizer, I tried to sublimate my flea stress by doing research on the internet; always a good idea! Internet research did nothing except to amp up my obsession. Basically the conclusion I came to was a) they're nearly invisible to me b) they can live EVERYWHERE in my house in the absolute smallest places where I couldn't even conceive of before reading the horrible horrible internet c) they can lie in wait in egg sacks d) the Frontline alone won't fix it; we have to vacuum EVERYTHING EVERY DAY. All soft surfaces.

d) is practically a quote. 

So after amping up my obsession with internet research, I was petting Ruskin and saw two fleas on him. One was maybe dead? And one was moving... I saw it. Go in. Burrow. Into his fur. 

I SAW THE FLEA GO IN TO MY CAT. And then I lost my shit completely. 

Mike found me at home in the middle of the day, absolutely hysterical, unable to exit the shower. I was fixated on two objects, each about the size of an individual coffee ground, dark against the porcelain tub. It seemed as if they had come from my hair. 

Water running over me continuously seemed the only tenable state. 

I was like, in control of my body, but not. Words came out of my mouth...

We stayed in a hotel for a few days last week. For me. So that I could re-gain my sanity. My therapist was on vacation. I called her (she'd said I could) and we communicated about this issue. 

There's a new med, for the short term. 

Two days ago we came home. I was good for the first day and now bad again. Not hiding-in-the-shower bad. But... home is not a good place for me right now. 

I'm going to visit my folks for a few weeks. Their house is very clean. VERY clean. They have no pets. They have wifi and serious a/c to calm all my heat-related skin-flamation. And they are my parents, my dad-and-Pam who I haven't spent nearly enough time with in the past years. 

I look forward to many kitchen-table conversations. Now that I am older I can appreciate my family more, as individuals. Hopefully I'll get to see some of my extended stepfamily while I'm there. My nieces, with whom I've missed a lot of their growing up.

[........]

I brought up the trope, the "... and I'm just like everyone else" thing because I like to deconstruct these concepts but also, paradoxically, I find the need to say it to you now, when I haven't before. Like I have OCD but really I'm just like you. Even though it's a stupid thing to say. It's like I'm pleading. I have lovable characteristics you may recognize in yourself. 

How many diagnoses have I revealed in this blog? Not as many as I have. There's a need to say I'm not the sum of them. Mike says it's because you're an intellectual. Disabilities of the mind are more entangled with your self image. 

Maybe that's why I'm embarrassed. I feel the lack of control more acutely, when it happens. 

But also, you should know. I love the ocean, painting my toenails, eating cake for dinner. I subscribe to the NYT crosswords app for my iPhone, even though it's $20 / year. I sing to my cats. I do jigsaw puzzles. I grow cacti in my front window. A poem from my MS was just accepted by RHINO. 

And I always know where my stuff is, keys, wallet, phone, purse, coat. Because each item goes back in exactly the same place I got it from.