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January 1st 2006
One resolution I have made, and
try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things.
John Burroughs
I cannot believe that
another year has passed so quickly, it is as though time has barely
moved as I recall sitting here at my computer on News Years day 2005
telling you why I find this day so difficult because of an OCD
superstitious fear. No I will not go over old ground, a tendency of mine
I know, if you want to read about this obsession please
click for last years entry.
There are positive things about this time of year for me and indeed
everyone and it is better to think of these more positive aspects. At
this time of the year we are more than half way through the winter, the
winter solstice has passed and the days are getting longer, the long
dark nights are on the decline and things are beginning to grow and we
can look forward to the spring. I image that for most sufferers of
anxiety and depression the winter with it's short hours of daylight and
dull overcast days makes our lives more difficult, as the dismal aura of
winter enhances our depression even if we do not suffer from Seasonal
Affective Disorder as such. Also at this time of year it is the
tradition to make New Years resolutions as the sun sets on the old year
and rises on the new. This time of year is seen as a possible turning
point in our lives when we take time to reflect on the past year and to
plan to change our behaviours, our lives in positive meaningful ways. It
should of course not be the only time of the year for such
considerations as of course changes can be made at anytime throughout
the year and we can resolve to turn over a new leaf as the saying goes
at any time. In fact most days we hope don’t we that the next day will
be better and despite our depression, our anxiety, fears and other
negative states we endeavour to find some happiness somewhere, it is an
almost innate drive, the search for happiness, contentment and
satisfaction and we should never give up hope even during the darkest
days of our lives.
Of course I realise that for some of us our lives may be filled with
a profound and deep depression and the black hope of despair offers no
hope. And during such times it is indeed irritating, even depressing to
hear talk of hope and endeavour and altering our lives for the better
and being more positive when we feel that all hope is gone. l of course
understand such profound sorrow and do not wish to make light of anyone
with intractable depression and deep sorrow, as I understand so well that for
some of us there will be circumstances in our lives that will be perhaps
beyond healing or accepting.
But for anyone who feels they can improve their lot in life hope
remains and this is a good as time as any to try and improve our
situation if such is at all possible. Even if we do not keep our
resolutions it is good to make them as it focuses our intent and often
something changes even if it is not of earth shattering proportions. For
me personally if is difficult to do something really dramatic and make
plans to make unrealistic progress with my OCD as it is quite severe
right now and I also feel profoundly saddened by recent events, and
there are on going worries and problems which seem insurmountable. But
for me there are small areas of my life that I can resolve to bring about some
positive change - at least for now. I must admit that I fear even trying
to be positive as right now I am overwhelmed by misfortune and dread the
possibilty of a another negative event.
One of these areas of change is to try to learn to slow down. Driven
by stress, anxiety and the shortness of time to accomplish much because
of its absorption by OCD and other matters I tend to rush everything,
driven relentlessly to accomplish too much in too little time. I get
irritated often to the extent of setting off an headache, the
frustration is awful. I set myself too high a target and try to achieve
far to much and as a consequence I become dissatisfied, no matter what I
accomplish it is never enough, Right now as I sit here typing my fingers
cannot keep up with my mind as it races trying to compose too much too
quickly and my fingers can’t keep up, there is anger and frustration as
the page is filled with those horrid squiggly lines that indicate
spelling and typing errors. As a consequence of my impatience and stress
I become irritated and go round like bear with a sore head being
irritable with my family. Perhaps I can do something to slow down. Many
years ago when my headaches first started I tried this, I tried to do
everything more slowly, taking time ,not getting irritated and for a
while my headaches seem less severe. For many people these days life
seems one whirl wind of rush here there, do this do that, and by the
end of the day we are exhausted and life passes us by. Last spring I
failed to notice the beautiful bluebells which grow outside our house
until they had died off so absorbed in this or that. I have to accept
that I have number of incapacitating illness and while it is good to try
and live as good and active a life as possible working round these
disabilities it is quite another matter to run myself ragged trying to
achieve the impossible, as this of course has a detrimental effect upon
all my illnesses.
I wish everyone a more positive, healthy and happy new year. I hope
even those of us deep in depression will find some peace if such is
possible. Often such words seem hollow but in Tibetan Buddhism there in
a meditative practice called tonglin, this practice is based on the idea
that the giving out of positive thoughts to a suffering person in order
to effect positive changes may bring about benefit to that person and
also the practitioner. It is much more complicated
than that and this I will try to tell you more about perhaps
another time. It has been suggested that positive thoughts bring about
positive changes and even if wishing someone to be happy and healthy
seems rather futile maybe on some level in some small way such positive
thoughts may bring about positive changes. Wishing one another happy new
year seems not as common place as it once was, I do not recall anyone
wishing me either a happy new year or a happy Christmas. In fact I have
become anxious about doing so because when you impart such wishes to
another these days people are so surprised and it can make you feel
uncomfortable, which is so sad is it not.
Any way happy happy happy new year to everyone !
Cheers to a new year and another chance to get
it right
Oprah Winfrey
January 4th
We having rising damp! Does anyone recall the film The Money pit. The
film about the couple who bought a house that needed constant repairs it
was meant to be humorous, a comedy, an exaggerated scenario of one
costly catastrophic event after another. Well it feels like this here
with our house, it is for me an absolute nightmare of misery and
frustration. Our house is partly made of stone it was constricted
towards the end of the nineteenth century with an added extension in the
1960s. And I wished I had never ever laid eyes on it. We bought it in a
hurry having sold our previous house so we were under a lot of pressure
from the buyer to move despite the fact that we had given this person
six months to raise the cash to buy our house. Yes these were special
circumstances as such is not normal but we as usual were naive and
taken advantage of as is the case again here when it is now quite
obvious that many of the house’s faults were carefully disguised.
Yes we
had a surveyor but most of the problems were "minor" and, with the
exception of the gable, would be easy inexpensive fixes . However there
now seems to be problems that had either gone unnoticed or they were
cleverly disguised. The front gable of the house had signs of erosion
which we were told by the surveyor would be problem in a few years time.
We had the house rendered and we assumed after discussing this with the
builder that this erosion had been taken care of, however such appears not
to be
the case as water streams down the font facing gable. However the
moisture is in fact coming from the roof rather than the erosion from
the gable - the roof was not mentioned as being a problem either now or
in the future. Also patches of
moisture are appearing on the walls in intermittent places, it seems the
stone has cracks and even minute cracks can allow moisture to seep
through. There is moisture
seeping into the bathroom seemingly through the floor yet when the
carpet is removed the moisture cannot be located. Moreover there is a
leak in the upper corner of the bathroom wall which is part of the brick
built extension which causes damp, the source of this leak has been
difficult to locate let alone fix. It is a long story and might be better
saved for another time, suffice it to say this is not our ideal home the
only thing that attracted us to it was the large windows into which
poured sunlight from an elevated position; our former home had been dark
and gloomy, tiny windows overshadowed by trees.
I spend most of the morning
obsessing on the net about rising damp, what to do and where to go and
not be ripped off. An increasingly difficult problem nowadays. The
guarantee after further enquiry is useless, the firm which installed the
damp proofing has gone out of business. This is of course is so typical
these days as small business become swallowed by the larger ones leaving
consumers with less and less choice and at the mercy of possible
exploitation, as of course with the resulting decrease in choice of
suppliers, retailers and service providers big business, and
corporations can charge you whatever they like and you have no say
whatsoever and you either end up paying or going without. Yes maybe it
is not quite that bad yet but it is getting there. The situation today
reminds me rather of popular science fiction scenarios where a single
company seems to own everything. In fact it reminds me of the following
quotation from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four: "The capitalists
owned everything in the world, and everyone else was their slave. They
owned all the land, all the houses, all the factories, and all the
money...”
Doesn’t that remind you of Britain today and the Western world in
general where those able to work do so for minimum wages out of which
they pay exorbitant prices for goods which are useless and breakdown in
a short space of time. These same people are enslaved by the burden of
huge mortgages or high rents from private landlords. They are
furthermore enticed into parting with more of their wages by the
temptation to use credit cards enslaving themselves still further into
accepting low pay, long hours with less and less rights in the work
place. Yes there are cheap things to be had, cheap crockery, bed linen
and so on, we have seen them on the selves in most supermarkets, a
shower curtain for 99 pence, a duvet set for £5, cheap cloths £3 for
blouse as little as £1.50 for a T shirt! But such products are produced
by exploitative virtually slave labour, sometimes by children, in the
developing world to satisfy and pacify those of us who cannot afford
much even though we work long hours. Such gives the illusion that one is
better off than one actually is even though we increasingly pay more for
services and other products, more expensive products such as electrical
goods which as I have said are useless within a very short space of
time. My printer just broke down after less than three years! Moreover
the use of credit cards also gives the impression that we are better
off, it blankets the fact that we actually do not have the ready cash
as we hand over our credit cards to pay for increasingly
smaller and smaller expenditures, cloths, books, meals in a restaurant,
holidays, things that years ago you would not have got credit for. Now
anytime someone is trying to sell you something, and this may even be in
places such as the opticians, and you say you cannot afford it the
response is
often : “ well we do take credit cards!” People have a good
standard of
living - at least they appear to, but in reality most people
own very little and all the high tech equipment, the fitted kitchens
and so on are all on credit and their home is mortgaged.
I know I have been there done that and got the T shirt as the saying
goes. My husband’s wages never allowed for repairs of our house without
the necessity to have huge amounts of credit and because we were not
keen on having such large amounts of credit at the levels needed to
maintain our old cottage in the South east, it fell to rack and ruin.
Yes we had credit but for silly things, little things that imperceptibly
rise the bill and you end up with nothing to show for it. Such items
were bought to alleviate our depression and our anxieties although such
negative behaviours and the reasoning behind them are usually seen only
in retrospect. We only had one major repair or improvement done at one
time such as a shower or work done to the roof when it was of dire
necessity, it was not until it was nearly time to sell the house that we
decided we could cope with the credit to have a fitted kitchen and we
had lived there for twenty plus years. Nowadays anyone setting up home
expects to, as my estate agent put it: “rip out the kitchen and
bathroom.” All on credit of course and that plus a massive mortgage,
yes even here in the north east houses have reached outrageous prices
and to live in a fairly decent home you would now expect to pay over one
hundred thousand pounds and often much much more. Yes there are people
who have good wages, even people with huge over the top wages but most
do not, most subsist on basic minimum, and often those who do have a
good wage continue to spend more than they earn and still end up
enslaving themselves to working long hours to pay those debts in much
the same way as those on a basic minimum wage. The foolishness of that
is another issue for another ramble.
Years ago when I first went out to work in the late sixties everyone
looked forward to payday, you received your wages in a little brown
envelope, and you had money to spend, real money in your hand. It was
not borrowed money, you did not put all your wages in the bank and find
yourself still in the red and no money to spend, nothing to show for all
those long hours you worked. This was the case for my husband when he
worked, for years we lived on the overdraft, prices rising higher than
earnings, each month his pay went into the bank and nothing remained,
this happens to many people and not always because they use their credit
cards unwisely, as I have explained in comparison to many our borrowing
was modest. Moreover you did not work all those long hours and your
wages were more in line with the cost of living and you had money to spend
and save. Admittedly you did not have a luxury fitted kitchen or
bathroom suite but you were not in debt. Furthermore you had rights at work, your trade union looked after
your interests and you're employer did not get all his own way. Your
trade union negotiated your wage, your holidays, you where not told by
your employer: “sorry I can’t give you a raise this year” or “I can only
give you one per cent” as was the case for my husband and his co workers
for many years and there was nothing he could do about it, nothing! And
he was one of the lucky ones. I know of people who did not receive a
rise for years. Rather like the aforementioned quotation from Nineteen
Eighty Four it does increasingly appear that the capitalists own
everything; today people own very little, they have few rights at work,
not even the right to earn a decent wage - who can buy a home and raise
a family on basic a minimum wage of. £5.20 ( in the USA is just over $5,
impossibly low) let alone provide yourself with a
pension! Many are forced into accepting low paid jobs working for long
hours simply to meet the ever increasing cost of living and to pay their
debts, is that not enslavement.
Yes indeed most people actually own very little, most of the
world and its resources are in the hands of the few, the few who exploit
the many for their own greedy selfish ends whilst destroying the environment for
now and for future generations.
The postal service, telephone, gas electricity, council housing all
owned by private individuals, companies and corporations , what is
owned by the state, by the people, nothing! Yes the capitalists own
everything and eventually all that choice you think you have now will
become less and less as more and more smaller businesses go under and more
businesses amalgamate. Not only will you have no choice but you will pay
exorbitant prices for shoddy services. This is happening now to some
extent. However the main issue of concern here is eventually we
will have no choice, we will not
be able take our custom else where so we will have to accept poor service and
increasing prices. And this of course will happen right across the board
as more and more businesses and corporations amalgamate until everything is
owned by the few the result being that with less competition prices will
rise, services and goods will be shoddy.
It is rather like this at the opticians concerning choice and being
forced into buying something that is not worth the money simply because
you cannot do otherwise. Yes there is still choice but all of the
choices are too expensive. Does anyone remember when here in the UK an
eye test was free to everyone; you could get an eye test no matter how
poor you where and you could buy very very cheaply frames subsidised by
the NHS and
lenses also - in fact I do not recall having to pay for lenses. Yes the
NHS glasses were not the latest fashion statement and if you wanted
something a little more stylish you could pay for a private pair
relatively cheaply, at least compared to today’s outrageous prices. Now
it’s outrageous that you 're charged over £100 and often much more for
frames consisting of cheap plastic and or wire ,sometimes frames consist
of little more than two handles and a bridge and for this in many
instances you can are charged over £100 and this of course does
not include the lenses. Yesterday I had to pay £180 to have the lenses
in both my reading and distance glasses changed! I do not work and
depend on a disability allowance, a very merge disability allowance. I
have no choice other than to buy these lenses which incidentally cost
£15 each pair of glasses to fit them. Admittedly for my
distance glasses I choose tinted lenses, but I have a difficulty with
light sensitivity which during the summer is a problem when the sunlight is so brilliant, so I have little choice as you cannot get those
clip on sunglasses anymore which you used to be able to clip onto your
glasses. You now either have to buy a separate prescription pair for the
same price probably more than your usual lenses or you have to buy the
type of lenses I have which become tinted when you are outside in the
daylight. I was and am indeed most concerned about what happens as time
goes on as one gets older and is reliant on a state pension. Moreover
the nearest city to where I live there are no NHS dentists. If I want
dental treatment I have to pay an inordinately expensive fee far more
than I or my family can really afford. I have had to pay an initial £25
just to register and that is each year, it does include an insurance for
emergency treatment abroad - mind who can afford to go abroad when you
have to pay exorbitant fees for everything. Certainly not the low wage
earners, pensioners dependent no a state pension or the disabled.
People do not see how their lives have been taken over, how the many
are exploited by the few. Often when filling in a form or doing a survey
you are asked if you own your own home and most of us answer yes. But in
reality if you 're paying a mortgage, you do not own your own home, the
building society or the bank does and if you lose your job and can’t pay
your mortgage you loose you home. Yes concerning mortgages it has always
been like that, however with some exceptions in the past the
payment of such mortgages was more reasonable and one had a very good
chance of meeting the payments and in twenty years laying your hands on
the deeds as did my parents who were quite poor. Now meeting the
payments of mortgages is a nightmare. How do people live with such
insecurity.
No matter how rich or poor you are there is someone trying to get
whatever money you have into their possession. Even if you have
paid your mortgage you cannot feel secure as you can never feel the home you
own is truly your home. Due to high prices to maintain property and low
low wages people borrow money to carry out repairs which if they than
cannot repay because they loose their job or become ill or are retired
they may eventually loose the home that they have struggled to pay for
for years. How on earth does anyone on a basic retirement pay maintain their
home, I image many have to borrow or hand over their property to one of
these home equity loan schemes which I will not explain here, I do not
know precisely the details of such schemes but sense from the
conversations of others that as usual it is only of advantage to
whatever business it is that operates such schemes, usually an insurance
company and whatever the outcome you do hand over the ownership of your
home.
What has all this got to do with OCD? Nothing really I simply felt
like a rant.
Yes I digress but this is more than a blog, this is a personal
journal and I have considered including my thoughts and feelings that
may not necessity be a result of OCD but than who knows often it is
difficult to separate the two. But this year I will include other
musings and ramblings about matters which interest me or about which I
have strong feelings. Often it makes a change to occasionally include
something else in a blog such as this otherwise people who read this who may seriously wish to find out about what goes on in the OCD mind
might get the idea that we are preoccupied with our OCD and that the sum
total of our thoughts, feelings, ideas, interests and so on are only
centred around OCD, and that we care for or about little else, and this
is not the case. Often sufferers of OCD care passionately about social
issues, the environment , animals rights, politics, philosophy religion
(all passionate interests and concerns of mine) and so on and have
intense and focused interests in all areas of life just the same as any
other person with the exception that the pursuit of such interests is
often inhibited by their OCD.
Yes certainly OCD rears its ugly head in every endeavour that we
undertake but are these endeavours undertaken by the sufferer as result
of their OCD? This is a relevant question, and one that I am of course unable to
answer so interwoven into my life is my OCD. However I would like to
think that there is more to me than my OCD, so I will share with you
just occasionally some of my ramblings on all sorts of social issues and
issues which interest me along with come entries about my pastimes and
so on. I may in time create a section for others to do the same as it
would be good from time to time to share other aspects of ourselves and
find the real person underneath all the debris of OCD.
Now with the this entry I do not intend to upset others with my comments and
certainly do not wish to argue with anyone and as soon as I can I will
endeavour to set up a section and I will include your thoughts even if
they oppose mine so long as such are not abusive, illegal, libellous or
likely to hurt other suffers in any real way. Although I am sure such a proviso
will be unnecessary for anyone with OCD.
January 8th
The problem with damp continues, each day I have to look at black
mould creeping up the wall. Yes my husband could wash it away, it is
health hazard but he seems depressed lethargic and tends of late to
ignore what is most certainly obvious unless I nag him - at least that is
what it feels like to him, nagging. He appears to bury his head in the
sand overwhelmed by the perversity of life. I consider that he like my
son is autistic, such behaviour I understand is a characteristic of
autism. As I have said also I believe that I may have autistic traits
- well I know I do but whether or not I have full blown autism remains
to be seen. Suffice it to say and the point is all three of us have the
tendency not to be able to cope with such issues, not wanting any
interference with our respective intense preoccupations and obsessions
(here I am not using obsessions in the OCD sense but to mean intensive
involvement with our interests such as for me the computer) we simply
find the whole situation irritating, frustrating and this is in addition
to our inability to know what on earth to do and where to go to get
someone to do the job professionally for a fair price. We have had a
builder to do couple of jobs but he is still on holiday and I am not
sure if damp problems are in his field of expertise and moreover I feel
as though we have been overcharged for work undertaken which has in fact
only produced marginal improvements.
So you see in a way perhaps the above rambling session in the
previous entry does have some connection with OCD, anxiety, depression
and so on and reflects how difficult life is not only for everyone
nowadays but more particularly for those of us who are disabled in some
way, and just how frightening it is when you cannot really support or
look after yourself and neither can your family. And you' re left to
flounder trying to cope with what appears to the exhausted and over
wrought mind of those who suffer the way we do to be insurmountable
problems with which you seem unable to cope, huge frustrating expensive
problems which are increasing difficult to find solutions for. Moreover
you do not know who to trust anymore, a sad state of affairs for both
the consumer and the honest trades men who must feel most maligned by
the growing anxiety over finding someone to do a job honestly and
professionally.
Such problems as we have with our house and all the others mentioned
are of course common to everyone, it is our inability to cope which such
that makes them feel perhaps worse for people like us who perceive
everything negatively, catastrophising about the simplest of issues
turning molehills into mountains.
Often we simply do not know what to do about anything. Can you
imagine how difficult it is for those of us who have difficulty
communicating, just pricking up the phone trying to find someone to come
and look at the problem and give us a fair price for a fair days work
and knowing what is a fair. Often also when you have an anxiety disorder
and suffer from depression all of life’s frustrations, problems and
adversities grow in size and become exaggerated and appear
insurmountable. The other day when I noticed the damp creeping up the
walls I felt sick with dread, anxiety and overwhelming depression, a
sense of despair borne of what appears to me to be unremitting misery. I
could not sleep worrying all night. Later in the day although the
problem has not resolved and we haven't a clue what to do or where to go
my anxiety lessoned somewhat.
But right now I feel so overwhelmed with the difficulty of life that
my mind seems to find itself something to worry about and even the
smallest problems take on huge
proportion - not that I think rising damp
is a small problem.
Just lately all three of us feel like clearing off somewhere for some
peace and quiet . I can hardly wait for our annual holiday, to be away
from the clamour of life, from societies pressures and all the
difficulties of day to day living. That was one thing I liked over
Christmas and that was you where left alone and where not pestered by
either the post or the telephone. There seems as though there is always
someone pestering you about something. No one seems to understand
anything you say to them, neither the letters you have written nor what
you are saying on the phone. We are ex-directory however people you do
business with and others who have somehow got your phone number pester
you at all manner of inappropriate times A bank telephoning in the evening , a
phone company telephoning on Sunday morning and so on. Sometimes I just
want a bit of peace and quiet. Has life become more complicated or is it
just that my inability to cope is not what it once was.
January 9th
I can’t throw away either the plastic wrapping or the old ink
cartridge from my printer. The label says Dispose of carefully. What
does that mean? I decide to take it down the council disposal yard next
time we have things like left over paint which you should not put into
your dustbin or down the drains. Fair enough wise precautions. However
disposing of anything is getting more difficult for me but all these
rules and regulations add to my own over cautiousness about the disposal
of toxic items and become distorted and exaggerated in my mind because
of my OCD, sometimes I can‘t even throw away disposable towels which I
have used to clean up after a painting session.
The packaging which contained the ink however is another matter, a more obvious OCD matter,
it is has been near the ink and I worry should it be contaminated by the
ink. I just can’t force myself to put it in the dustbin, which is
what I know others would do, others who do not have OCD, without about
the least degree of hesitation. I know this yet anxiety seizes me and
depression and misery settles over my heart so great that I have not the
strength to ignore these powerful OCD borne incapacitating inhibitions
and anxieties. I screw up the paper and put it in a draw in the kitchen.
This of course cannot go on or my home will be like that of a former
neighbour’s, seething with rubbish and clutter, a nightmare of misery borne
of OCD. I can feel this obsession and it’s consequent compulsion growing
as more and more I experienced great difficulty when trying throw anything away.
As I leave the room to go downstairs to hide the plastic packaging I
notice my sister’s plastic cotton reel box, one of many that she owned along
with some very pretty basket work sewing boxes and a set of draws. I was
filled with regret now seeing this reminder, I have profound and deep
regrets for the necessity recently to have to part with my
brother-in-law’s and my sister things. Thoughts come to me that I should
have kept this or that, my sister sewing boxes ,all of them not just the
ones I have, my brother in law’s old computer outdated now unworkable.
But both are part of them and the disposing of these precious items
haunts me and I feel as though I have given part of them away. Sewing
was my sisters passion, all the threats, bits of left over material,
cottons, pins all were her tools, the tools that helped her create all
the lovely patchwork she made, all the things that gave her life meaning.
Her patchwork was her crowning achievement after so many years of
incapacity due to agoraphobia and anorexia nervosa. My brother in law's
old computer a Mac was his first computer, we chatted for ages on the
phone about computers, it was his passion his hobby. I kept his new one but did not have room for the
older one, nor all my sister’s sewing stuff. I know that it is not
normal to keep such things, but I am not normal right?
And besides who gets to decide
such things, who decides what is normal and what is not in such
situations. Yes all these reminders of my
sister and brother-in-law touch me with sadness whenever I see them, which is
most of the time, but such sadness is normal and it will never entirely
go away and in some ways I do not want it to. I do not want to forget them
or the other members of my family who have died. Had I had the room in
my home I would have kept everything, the pain of parting with the
things that gave their lives meaning is a very sorrowful experience for
me. I have bought home many of their things that will be of no real use
such as all my brother-in-law’s Mac software, it was, I told my husband,
bought home for sorting but I doubt I will ever be able to part with any
of it.
January 10th
I sit here today all that fungus is still growing on the hobbies room
wall. The builder who is really only a roof specialist is astounded that
our house has so many problems. Did not the surveyor notice this? he
asks. Well apart from the gable, no he did not, but surely it is now
three and a half years ago, perhaps these problems where not there than,
but I am not so sure. I think a lot of the problems were disguised and
he missed a lot of the others or he at least missed a lot of potential
problems. Or it simply could be that we just failed to understand the
significance of some of the comments in the report. The surveyor did
call and talked to my husband over the phone but somehow we may have
missed something . Often when you 're as sick as I am it takes time to
understand and comprehend anything and when one has to make rush
decisions it is even more difficult. According to our understanding the
house had minor faults easily rectified, the only major fault was the
north gable which we assumed would be fixed without much ado. However
after reading through the surveyors report it would seem that we did
indeed miss something. We did not fully understand the seriousness of
not, for instance, having a damp proof membrane and the expense of
getting one put in and so on, I will not bore you with the details. Our solicitors were supposed to ascertain that
there was a guarantee for damp proofing, surely this check should
include an investigation into the validity of such a guarantee.
We had been through so much to find a house and move quickly as we were harassed by the unfair
regulations concerning the house purchase. Everything had gone wrong,
the papers for us to look over did not arrive and we had less that half
an hour to make the final decision after discussing it with the
solicitor, a long story involving very complex issues. I feel as though
yet again we were taken advantage of and we should
have in fact made a lower offer in order to get this work carried out,
and here we are now with massive damp problems and faced with the
expensive task of getting it put right. This is further aggravated by
trying to find someone who will install a damp course, provide a
guarantee and still be in business to make good any claims on that
guarantee for at least thirty years. Without these guarantees in place
we will never sell our house. A building society would not in fact
have granted a mortgage to a vender without this work being carried out
or the correct guarantees being in place. Just before we moved we
received a note from the previous owner wishing us every happiness in our
new home!! Amazing isn't it wishing you happiness in a home which they
knew was not worth the money we had paid them for it, they must have
thought all their Christmases had come at once. I feel so
depressed by all this, my husband worked all his life and now we have
nothing to show for it and we feel so exploited and taken advantage of
just because we are ill and not able to cope with the complexities
involved in such matters, other people's incompetence and callous
unscrupulous behaviour. It is considered I believe fair game to try and
sell your house for whatever you can, disguising faults and out right
lying to whatever mug
comes along.
Sometimes I wander if anything nice will ever happen,
something to restore my faith that there is some goodness in the world
and everyone is not out to take advantage of their fellow men. I do not like
this dog eat dog society, a society were one feathers one's own nest, were
you exploit others to get what you want. I do not like the prevailing
economic system where every action endeavour and motivation is borne form
the sole desire for personal gain. I find life in the twenty first
century very frightening and
depressing.
January 11th
All I wanted to do was to buy a cactus, it was a real bargain about
three feet tall and all for only £10. I love plants, the bigger the
better, they add good vibes to a room bringing in a bit of the outside,
particularly on a cold, drab day in midwinter when much of anything
green has died down, the trees are bare, the grass brown and dry and
spring seems to be forever so far away.
Sounds easy doesn't it, you go into the shop, ask for the plant, hand
over the cash return home and display your plant and enjoy. But no not
if you have OCD, for when your life is so severely and pervasively
effected by OCD nothing absolutely nothing is easy or straightforward.
Moreover most activities, even those as simple as buying a plant to cheer
up your home and your soul, can become a nightmare of torment and you are
left wondering why you bothered in the first place. Why you bother to do
anything as everything becomes an Herculean task which appears to
increase in difficulty as your OCD becomes progressively worse.
I saw the plant when shopping for paint on Saturday; buying paint is
another ordeal of worrying fears of contamination but that is another
scenario for another time. I really wanted this plant, it was wobbling
to one side it needed potting and part of me wanted to rescue it as knew
in time that it would be thrown away. Yes I know it is only a plant but
I am hypersensitive concerning anything which is alive and besides who
knows that it is “only a plant” and that whatever life it has does not
matter. But we must not digress in to a philosophical issue. Such
contemplations have the ability to drive me just crazy!
Suffice to say I felt I really must buy this plant but before I was
able to do so I was seized by all manner of worrying thoughts;
scenarios of death and disaster. Would the sales person prick his or
herself and get septicaemia and die, would my husband, son or myself do
likewise. We could not move it from the display easily and would require
assistance. Would it get broken on the way home, it was tall and thin. I
feel guilty if it did because I had bought it and it‘s demise would
therefore be my fault and the guilt would not be mitigated by telling
myself that I had done so from the best of intentions and not from
selfish desires. Yes I wanted it to make me feel better, as we all do
don’t as we search to find some momentary pleasure somewhere, anywhere
from the misery of our existence. Would their be some kind of karmic
comeuppance or other superstitious consequence of having put other
people’s health and lives at risk; would something bad happen as a
result. Silly I know to a rational person but I am not rational I have
OCD, such thoughts take on a certain powerful reality and,
notwithstanding all the rationalisation in the world, such thoughts are
not easily dismissed. These and other worrying thoughts crowded my mind
and my son’s complaining that our house looks like the Arizona desert,
implying that we had more than enough cacti, did not help me to get past or work through all this negative irrational
thinking. I tired to ease the anxiety borne of such thoughts and arrive
at a normal perspective. In an attempt to add a more positive rationale
I considered the following : how many people do I know who have died of septicaemia
after getting picked by a cactus? If I did not buy it than someone else
would or it would be thrown away, either way a sales person could still
get picked by the cactus. The sales person would in any event wear thick
gardening glover to remove it and pack it up. If it was properly packed
it would not get damaged on the way and if we handled it carefully we
would not get spikes in our fingers. But no I felt anxious and undecided
and said I would leave it until next week.
But still the thoughts came over the following days and I endeavoured
to still their persistence in the way mentioned above, but no more
thoughts were added to the scenarios. Of course this is not the only
thought which occupied my mind, if only it was! But no it is but one
among many of a continuous stream of even more destructive thoughts and
is minor in comparison to many of the OCD intrusive thoughts that drive
me just crazy and make my life an utter misery, a continuous struggle
just to do something which normal people do without the least degree of
forethought or difficulty. If you do not have OCD you are probably
thinking: is it worth all this fuss and anxiety, it is after all no big
deal one way or another, isn’t it easier just to forget about it and not
buy the wretched plant. Yes if this was a one off incident, an isolated
thought that will never rear it’s ugly head again, but no OCD will
present similar scenarios that will interrupt each and every anticipated
endeavour, each action you take and each decision you make and the more
you give in the more your periphery of existence diminishes and you may
end up doing nothing, in theory you could become totally incapacitated.
The sad fact is the more you give into your OCD and the more you pay
heed to this tormenter the more these incapacitating thoughts intrude into other
areas of your life.
It is not an easy battle, you often give in just for a bit of peace
hoping it will leave you alone, but it does not and after a time you
grow weary of giving in and not able to do what you want for no good
reason other that the delusions that persist in your mind. Yes OCD
thoughts are mostly delusional or exaggerated thinking and the most
depressing part is that we know this don't we. We are not like the
psychotic who believes his delusional thinking is real and he therefore
makes little attempt to resist it, no we know our thinking is not rational or it is
exaggerated but sill we comply against our better judgment. Moreover you
feel depressed and frustrated because your life has
become so inhibited and restricted. You may also feel weak and defeated when yet again the OCD has got the better of you and you
deny yourself something or you are compelled to take an action against
you wishes; such compulsive actions as washing your hands if you fear
contamination or spending hours checking your door is locked if you re
prone to checking obsessions or you are compelled not to throw out last
decades newspapers if you have an hoarding compulsion.
Finally with much determination and attempts at reasoning my husband
and I went and bought it. Yes the sales assistant did get pricked she
wasn't in the least careful and did not wear gardening gloves. I felt
guilty the spike drew blood and I really began to wish we had not
bothered as I became anxious and ruminated about the sales assistant,
would she get septicaemia?. To make matters worse
we were immediately presented with another careless sales person, I had
actually to say “be careful!” She probably thought I was worrying about
the cactus and she would have been amazed to learn that I was in fact
worried that she could get septicaemia . I felt guilty and wished I had
not gone against my concerns in this regard, it appeared to me that no
matter what you do you will end up feeling guilty; it you confront your
thinking and what you fear transpires or other problems present
themselves you than wish you had just let the OCD have it’s own way
because in the end it just worry, worry worry. I even thought to go back
in a couple of days to see if the sales assistant is okay but of course
I will not recall what she looks like as I have no recollection of faces
unless I have known someone for years. When we arrived home I watched as
my husband as he brought the cactus indoors and put it in the window, and
thereafter I spent the rest of the time wondering if it would get a
fungus due to the damp in the window which collects on the glass . I
worried about some kind of karmic comeuppance as a result of buying and
endangering other people. So was I any happier. No. Sometimes OCD can be
a no win situation as your thoughts turn you attemps to confront it's
delusional torments to its own advantage.
My mind soon turned
to other things and I became really depressed, wrapped in morbid
contemplation and desperately missing my sister and brother-in-law and
feeling that I cannot ever imagine being happy again.
January 12th
The general root of superstition is that men
observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory
the one, and pass over the other.
Sir Francis Bacon
5.30 AM
Well I have just saved my work to a floppy disk, this action has a
somewhat obsessive quality to it as I become anxious if I do not, but
nonetheless it is a sensible precaution after all it takes me forever to
write anything due to the many reasons which I have explained before.
Now this entry is occurring in real time so to speak and I am writing
this entry in order to have more data to save on my floppy disk because
just now when I saved my previous entry to publish on
the net it saved with the total of...the number which should be inserted
here is the member which for me is unlucky, or rather I fear is unlucky.
No this anxiety should not be considered by normal standards of
comparison as many people have a mild superstitious anxiety concerning
this number. Most certainly this is an OCD problem as those of you who
have read my
memoir
and Shorter version
My story will know.
I can’t even write this number here now, although I did so yesterday.
I will explain later in this entry. But I cannot leave this data on this
disc with the total number of kilobytes set at this number. So here I am
in real time obsessing and anxious about this number and frantically
writing this now in order to re-save this data so it will not save at
the unlucky number. Because of all the dreadful events in my life lately
my anxiety concerning this number has grown, it is becoming more
incapacitating. The number is a familiar number associated with
superstitious belief so I imagine that if you are from the west
you will know which number it is. Yes I have wrote the number in both my
memoir and My Story but right now I can’t face writing it here. Neither
can I leave my floppy disc with this amount of data. I will save this
now and check that the number has gone past this unlucky number, Crazy I
know; just like the last entry I do know it is crazy but I am just to
overwhelmed with adversity and fear of more adversity to contend with
this problem now. Although I do know of course that the more I give into
this fear the bigger it will grow and the more it will present itself in
other facets of my life. If you do not suffer with OCD you cannot
imagine how this happens but it does in ways that I now cannot envision.
OCD is an insidious monster, it is covert and sneaky, it finds ingenious
ways to torment you, it is an adversary that you would not wish to
encounter in your worst nightmares let alone your waking reality.
Well time to check and I have now saved my data at 117 kbs Phew! Over
until the next time and there will always be a next time, OCD is
implacable it always wants increasingly more from you. For you see even
in this example the associations with this number has grown from the
number in it’s entirety to it being included with other numbers such as
one hundred and.... one thousand..... and so on. It can also make me
uncomfortable if it presents in multiples however I can at this time cope with
that
- just about. Nonetheless I do prefer to avoid even
multiples of this number if this is at all possible.
I should not give in I know but right now I do not have the energy to
resist. I will tell you about another situation concerning this number
later in this entry, a situation which I have resisted for a year and actually
forgot about, but now I have given in. But now I have e-mail to respond
to and I am stressed by the delay and the need to write more than I had
intended.
10.30
My anxiety concerning this number has increased along with what I
perceive as an increase in adversity in my life and the lives of those I
care about. Yesterday I e-mailed
OCD - UK.
a charity to support OCD sufferers. They have a selection of my artwork.
I sent it last year without checking how many graphics I had included
and in any case I did not expect them to include all of them. I was
rather horrified to find that the number of graphics I had sent to them
amounted in total to this unlucky number. I have now asked them to remove one
which of course they willing did. Yes I know I should not give in to
this because this is becoming a significant problem, it indeed has
always been very incapacitating particularly when reading or writing as
I have explained in many of my writings here on my website including
this blog. I even felt rather anxious about asking for this graphic to
be removed as I know it is silly and even though we all suffer from OCD
often the obsessions and compulsions of others can be difficult to
understand and vice versa. Although of course we understand the agony
and emotional pain that our fellow sufferers experience, so despite the
fact I was writing to a fellow sufferer who would understand I felt
really awkward. Needless to say the person I wrote to was very
understanding about it and removed one the graphics straight the way but
I still felt embarrassed.
There is an OCD book in the library, I cannot recall the title, but it
appears very comprehensive and informative and would be useful to me and
I would love to read it but guess what... the total number of chapters amounts to
this unlucky number. I have to check this each time I buy and read any book.
It is sad frustrating and incapacitating and I grow increasingly weary
of this battle which has entered every facet of my existence. And this
is no exaggeration
January 17th
At our local museum this afternoon there is a free origami and calligraphy
workshop organised by the Japanese university in the city just for
the one afternoon. I would love to go but know that such would be an
ordeal because of my social interaction impairments. At one time I would
have gone anyway and struggled through but now I have lost all
confidence and I find it increasingly difficult to be involved with any
kind of social interaction. The strain of conversation with strangers or
someone that I do not know very well is just such a nightmare now as I
feel that my problems in this regard are so transparent. I sense that
others know that there is something wrong, that I exhibit a certain
awkwardness and that I am uncomfortable with conversation and
particularly eye contact. I know that other people feel uncomfortable in
my presence, although not every one. There are people I seem to get
along with and with whom I feel more comfortable, but there are so few
people like that. I am quite lonely for company outside the home.
The computer club starts again and I wish I could go to that, but
there will be no more tuition sessions this time as the tutor has left
and will not be replaced, so it will just be members sitting around and
chatting about any problems which they have with their computers and
after a while it will digress into social chit chat and I will not be
able to cope. Yet I want to be able to do such things and interact
socially and all the while I avoid social contact the problem is
becoming more pronounced.
One of the problems other than not knowing quite what to say centres
round the speed at which people talk, often I can not follow what he or
she is saying, furthermore where we live now some of the accents are
very broad and this makes it more difficult for me. Moreover, not only
do some people talk too fast but they talk on and on and on and on
without pause and this exhausts me and I get overwhelmed and cannot
follow the conversation. The words and sentences running into each other
into a long rambling babble which is often uninteresting anyhow and
difficult to follow and often for which I have no point of reference.
Particularly conversations which turn to the person's relatives whom I do not know,
yet surprisingly people expect you to know even weeks afterwards as
though you have some super memory for people and events that mean little
to you . No not because you' re not interested, although to be honest
this is often the case, but simply because the events discussed have no
meaning for you when you do not know the person they‘re talking to you
about.
I often find such trait conversations boring and pointless. Often
such conversations are negative and involve backbiting . I like the odd
hour or so for chat over coffee and so on but hours and hours of
pointless meaningless conversation about people and places I do not know
or care about drive me crazy, cause anxiety and are overwhelming and a
mental strain.
The other day a visitor called and she just would not stop talking.
My son who has similar problems because he has Aspergers syndrome could
barely follow the conversation, which was often repetitive. She repeated
things she had told us before, after nearly two hours of this I was
shattered, at one point I had to shout to get a word in. . She even
talked about people who could not make eye contact saying that she
wanted people to look at her in the face and not look to the side or
stare at the ceiling. She was really quite passionate about this. After
which my eye contact went to pot as of course making eye contact is
enormously difficult for me and takes some effort. I was really quite
annoyed and tried to tell her that certain people have difficulty with
eye contact for a number of reasons. She would not feel uncomfortable
speaking with a blind person would she, who would of course not make eye
contact. So what is the difference. Often such problems as difficulty
making eye contact would not be such problems and one would perhaps feel
less conspicuous if other people had a better understanding of the
reason why some people cannot make eye contact. Perhaps a little
education in the whys and wherefores would bring about more
understanding and consequently more tolerance. I had told her my son had
Aspergers syndrome but she never asked what Aspergers syndrome was and I
know full well she has no idea. But that is often the problem now with
conversation, isn’t it. people just want to rabbit on and on about
themselves and have no interest in other people at all. She did not even
know what OCD was I mean surely now after the Aviator film you would
think she would have some idea. No not even after my saying well Howard
had OCD. I don't even think she knew who Howard Hughes was. Yes it
is time for a campaign to increase awareness of certain disorders and
conditions of which society is either completely ignorant of or has
erroneous ideas about.
I do like this lady but she does unintentionally make me feel rather
anxious from time to time although of course she is completely unaware
of doing so.
January 18th
Well finally I upload my new entries, my confidence is at an all time
low but I will endeavour to publish. Just lately my ability to cope is
verging on non existent. I have just spent the last hour writing
an e-mail only to find that when I sent it only half of it was
sent. It was an earlier version not properly checked. I was too
exhausted to start all over and feel really guilty and uncomfortable and
sent a further shorter e-mail with an explanation. But I am simply not
coping too well, life seems now enormously difficult and I feel as
though every endeavour is becoming increasingly more trying. Yes my OCD
has taken a turn for the worse along with my general tenancy to be
anxious and worry now about anything and everything. with one worry
rapidly replacing another, with the more anxiety provoking over writing
the less worrying thoughts and preoccupations. I have taken medication
for migraine but still a headace remains and I grow weary of the
struggle woken from my sleep in the early hours with awful pain. There
seems no respite from the misery of headaches and indeed the misery of
life as a sufferer of OCD and sometime I grow weary of it all and feel
as though I want to die, than sometime later often only minutes afterwards I will be
fearful of losing my life, if for instance I experience some pain or
another. I cut myself yesterday and worried I would get a blood clot
which would go to my brain and I would die and I was frightened. My mind
is so mixed up, my perspectives, thoughts, ideas and fears changing so
rapidly it is hard sometimes to keep up. How I long to be normal, live a
normal life, find a little happiness for myself, my son, my husband. I
just wish life would give us a break and that something good would
happen something positive to give us hope.
January 21st
Am I ever going to publish, it has been over three weeks, doubt is a
crippling condtion and thwarts any endeavour but more particualry so if
you have OCD, as your reasoning for much of what you doubt arises from
delusional neurotic thinking. Silly anxieties, worries, and concerns
either not founded in reality or are of little consequence. I have
read over and over all these entries, they will never be perfect for
various reasons which I have explained elsewhere in my blog. No
matter how many times I check them I will think I should not have
written this or that and I will break out now and again in the cold fear
of apprehension whenever I think about them and anything else that I
have written. OCD is indeed a crippling illnesses and lately it is
becoming more and more difficult to cope with anything that life
presents. Indecision is becoming a massive burden often as
incapacitating as the actual OCD from which it arises, even making the tiniest of decisions is enormously
difficult,
even upon such matters as what to do each day or where to go or when. Should I work on my
website, if so on what shall I work on, writing is often an excruciating
agony of torment of checking ruminating doubting, again and again months
passing still fearful to publish the many articles that I have written
and rewritten. Should I perhaps paint, draw if so what shall I paint.
Should I go out if so where how long for. Should I write a letter,
an e-mail to this
or that person. I have had letter now on my computer for two years I am
still undecided whether to post it or not.
And so on and on it goes switching often from one thing to another feeling as though little is accomplished, never
feeling much satisfaction no matter what I have done during the day.
Moreover when a decision is finally made I am invariably made to feel
that it is the wrong one as circumstances never work in my favour and
one is left with bitter haunting regret that makes the decision process
even more difficult the next time. There seems little that brings me much joy now, life seeming one long
struggle, dreading having to go out but feeling depressed staying at
home where thoughts seem more persistent and where decisions weigh
heavy. Neither my son nor my husband are able to help, neither can
decide what to do either from one minute to the next. Indecision is of
course borne of anxiety and depression and it is a vicious circle, the
more incapacitated you become by indecision the more depressed you get
and the more depressed you become the more difficult it is to make
decisions.
To finish on something more positive here are a couple of photos my
husband took on a recent day out to High Force in Teesdale Co Durham.
Yes we made a decision to go or did we... Rather we went because we
couldn't cope with deciding not to go having made the decision a week
ago. Yes once having made a decision to go somewhere I have than the
fear of altering that decision should it change fate and bring about a dire
circumstance. My husband simply can't change decisions even if it is
perhaps appropriate to do so for reasons difficult to understand. So
there we where on a cold and very wet day, rain purring down standing by
this the highest waterfall in the county all alone, no one else seemingly
keen to brave the abysmal weather - which is just how I
like it, it is one of the advantages of a trip out on a cold miserable
day in winter. No crowds of people, no noise except the roar of the
water as it cascades into the river below. I do not have to keep looking
round for dogs although of course that fear remains even though no one
is in sight, I can never feel entirely safe that a dog is not going to
come bounding out of the undergrowth.
The photos are sized for desk top wallpaper. Click on size
required size to download.
Please download to your own hard drive do not link to these graphics.
January 26th
Another week has passed and still I cannot publish,
I feel so very anxious now about doing so that if I do not do so
soon I never will, this of course is now major obsession. If you
suffer with OCD you will have noticed how it changes and focuses
it's attentions onto whatever is important in your life at that
particular time. If I did not need to write so much and I did not
have a problem with accuracy for whatever reason, ADD or whatever,
which precipitates part of my checking compulsions my OCD would turn
it's attentions elsewhere. If I decided I was not going to write
anymore and I abandoned this endeavour and seek another my OCD
would immediately turn its attention to my new pursuit. Yes such
personifications when referring to OCD do sound bizarre do they not,
after all OCD is an illnesses it is not an intelligent being, it
does not have a life of its own, it does not think. No of course not,
such an idea is ridiculous, yet at times it feels rather like it
does have a mind of it's own, a very destructive and
malevolent mind that focuses its attention on your destruction as it
appears to know where to strike in your life in order to inflict the
most damage. It is an insidious monster it has ruined my life
and intends to continue to do so.
It is now ruining my sons life - at least it's
relative: an eating disorder. He has relatively mild OCD but he does
have an eating disorder although he will argue otherwise.
Eating disorders are I believe related to OCD and seem to appear in
the same individual
co-morbidly or within the same family. I fear he has a newly
identified eating disorder called
Orthorexia nervosa . I
have mentioned this before in an earlier entry, it appears to me that
he has an eating disorder which can be just as life threatening as
anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa if left untreated or
undiagnosed. Instead of his focus being on weight reduction his
attention has turned to healthy eating. Yes it all started with the
most rational of intentions. After a diagnosis of Aspergers syndrome
and IBS he embarked upon a gluten, wheat free, lactose free diet.
This is of course is quite normal, many people with autism and IBS do
likewise and I have done this also. But it has gone on from this
albeit difficult but manageable diet to increasingly more and more
dramatic reductions in the types of food he consumes and he is
restricting is diet quite alarmingly now. First it was organic food
- yes a good idea but not when you are not able to work, organic
food is expensive but even that is of less importance it is the
increasing limitation of certain foods from his diet that is the
worry. Now he will not eat yeast. He will not eat cake no matter if
they are gluten free of not. He cannot have bread for his breakfast
anymore, he
now has two rice crackers, you know those things that look like
polystyrene and taste about as good.
Maybe in isolation these
restrictions do not seem that big a deal however combine all
the prohibitions and you can find that instead of improving your
health your eating habits become a detriment. Moreover not only does
your health suffer but so does your social life an aspect of living
which is in any case difficult for people with Aspergers syndrome.
Sufferers of all eating disorders find eating out difficult as of
course it is virtually impossible to eat in a restaurant as such a
restricted choice is not available. I recall that in order to go out
to a restaurant my sister would order salad and cottage cheese
determined to appear to be normal enough to at least go to a
restaurant but not determined enough to make a
single compromise just for one evening. I can see the signs of the emergence of an eating
disorder in my son as he reminds me so much of my sister who had
anorexia nervosa, the anxiety, the careful selection and preparation
of food to exacting standards with no compromise whatsoever. It is
worrying, eating disorders are so difficult to overcome as the motivation
is not so strong as for the OCD sufferer as the sufferer of an
eating disorder derives some satisfaction from the obsessions, such
as weight loss for the anorectic and health for the
sufferer of Orthorexia nervosa, although of course the opposite is the eventually
outcome of Orthorexia nervosa
Orthorexia
Nervosa.
January 26th
I have recently finished reading a book my son gave
me last Christmas entitled : Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon.
This book was not only a good read but good food for thought, verging
as it does on the philosophical, it questions normalcy.
"If I had not been what I am, what would I have
been?" This question is contemplated by Lou, the protagonist of
Elizabeth Moon's insightful Si Fi Novel . How many of us have asked
this question? I know I have.
The story is set a few decades into the future, the
central character is lou Arrendale an high functioning autistic, his
special skill is pattern recognition. Because of new therapeutic
techniques and advances in learning methods people with autism in
this futuristic scenario have achieved a higher level of
dependency. Lou is able to live on his own, he interacts socially,
he goes to church, to fencing classes and is romantically attracted
to a normal women, he drives, goes shopping - albeit with the rigid
routine characteristic of autism. He however retains many autistic
characteristics such as obsessive behaviour, adherence to routine,
inflexibility, intense focus and so on . He along with other autists
works for a large pharmaceutical company which benefits from his
special skill. The company recommends, or rather in the beginning
attempts to co hearse its autistic employees to undergo a new
radical treatment which will rewire the circuitry in their brains
and make them function as normal. Lou questions this treatment and
it’s outcome: will be loose his sense of self, after the operation
what of Lou will remain, what part of Lou is essentially Lou and
what part of his personality is due to his autism. He questions and
struggles with the possibility that he will loose his identity, his
special skills, that which makes him who he is. He has to decide if
the benefits of being normal are worth losing the benefits of being
autistic, such as his special abilities. Yet on some level he wants
to be normal although he has been taught to behave normally and he
can interact quiet successfully in both aspects of society; both
with normal people and autistics.
I find it difficult to read fiction these days as
sometimes it seems pointless, trivial and time wasting unless there
is something to learn from it as is the case here in this novel,
which is not only entertaining but also informative and thought
provoking.
The book views the normal world from the perspective
of Lou and gives insight into what it is like to be autistic. The
book looks at normalcy through the eyes of an autistic person
trying to understand the complex and often confusing nuances of
normal behaviour
Besides the question of the nature of normalcy the
book explores what is autism, a disease, a disorder or simply
another type of personality. Is an autistic person simply a
different kind of individual from the majority, a variation rather than
a disability. The book gives insight into autism and what it is like
to be autistic through the eyes of Lou who could be compared to an
high functioning autistic.
For me personally the book made me consider similar
concepts, concepts that in fact I have considered for some time,
such as: what is normality and who would I be if I did not
have OCD.
It is very
difficult for me to identify my real self underneath all the
confusion of my various conditions. All of the conditions which
effect me are pervasive. OCD in particular
enters every facet of your life, it takes over your personality and
often you are left wondering what would remain if like Lou in the
aforementioned novel you could have your brain rewired so to speak
and become normal - whatever that is. I must admit that I would be
hard pressed to find anyone who was not in some way dysfunctional.
So what is normal anyway? It is seemingly a rare condtion. But
I guess one is considered not normal when ones behaviours seriously
disrupt ones life, are obvious to others and cause you great
unhappiness.
If I did not
have OCD would I be less scrupulous, less hygienic, less
responsible, less compassionate, less depressed? Would I be quite so
analytical, would I continue to ruminate upon philosophy, religion,
would I still yearn for the answers to the unanswerable, such as the
origins of life and for meaning to my existence. Would I still wish
to paint, would I work, would I have still been a housewife, a
mother ....where would I be, who would I be, if I did not have OCD.
If I did not have social interaction problems would I be more
gregarious, more lively, more fun loving... Well I could go on the
alternatives are infinite, but if the opportunity arrived to be
normal would I take it. Underneath the desire to be normal lies the
fear of losing my identity, it is not an ideal identify but it is
the only one that I know. If all the dysfunctional aspects of my
personality were removed what of me would remain. In some ways it is
frightening, rather like the reason I fear death, and that is
because of my anxiety concerning the possibility of the annihilation
of my identity and my self awareness. Yes of course I want to be rid
of all these life consuming, soul destroying obsessions and
compulsions but OCD is more
than that, it seeps right down to your persona, often shaping your
perception of the world and you philosophy of life. Sometimes the
thought of who I would be can be quite frightening.
Elizabeth Moon has an autistic son, to visit
her home page please click the link below.
Elizabeth Moon: Home Page
Click this link for articles on depression and
writing and autism.
Elizabeth Moon - Commentary
January 28th
I really wish that dog owners would be more aware of
where they allow their dog to defecate. There right in the middle of
the pavement was dog dirt, in an area where it would seem to me to be
pointless to take a dog in the first place as there is no admittance
to dogs in any of the public buildings that surround the square,
neither is it a thoroughfare. I cannot imagine that anyone who would
visit my website who sufferers from OCD or who is a carer or is in
anyway interested in OCD would do such a thing but if you do allow
your dog to defecate in a public place right on the pavement where
people will walk please think again. An incident earlier this week
has caused me much suffering and anxiety at a time when my OCD
symptoms are already on the increase and life circumstances are
particularly adverse.
In the Northeast you actually rarely find this
happens in contrast to the southeast where one had to sour the
pavements, as so many people seemed to allow their dogs to defecate
just about anywhere with alarming frequency. That is probably the
reason that I was not paying much attention as I have become
complacent since living here because of the infrequency of this
socially unacceptable behaviour. I do not know for sure if I
actually stood in it, it was spread out over a wide area presumably
because many unsuspecting people had stepped into it. But the
thought that maybe I had stepped into it could not be dismissed, the
doubt the anxiety. It is just dreadful for anyone, even other dog
owners do not like stepping into dog mess carelessly left, no one
wants dog dirt bought into their home regardless of whether or not
they are a sufferer of OCD. For me this is the worse kind of
contamination. Would I be able to wear my shoes again? I only have one
pair, the pair which I now worried where contaminated. I was anxious
on the verge of tears, life seems to be one nightmare after another.
Moreover I was angry, I get so sick and tired of irresponsible people
who do not give a dam about anyone else, sometimes a little OCD over
responsibility is not bad thing and it is a pity that others cannot
be more responsible and stop putting other people at risk. Yes at
risk, any kind of defecation is a health threat, dog mess can be
health hazard, this is a fact is is not OCD delusional thinking.
For the next several days I had to wear my sandals
in mid winter ! When we got to the car I had to carefully put my
shoes into a plastic bag and there they remained until I could cope
with trying to clean them. There was no visible sign of dog mess but
of course I could not be certain I was within centimetres of
stepping right into it and I could not be sure. I had to wait until
I could cope, often after a few days such things are easier to cope
with. But I had to wait until early morning so that I could clean
the soles of my shoes before getting showered and changed so that I
could put my dirty cloths straight in the wash and shower right
afterwards. So in my nightgown I had to stand in the yard and dab
these shoes with kitchen paper towel soaked in disinfectant, throw the
towel down the toilet, being very careful not to touch anything,
wash my hands, boil water in an old kettle and than scold the shoes in the
hot water again in the yard being very careful not to allow the
water to spread to the upper part of the shoe or to the inside. If
this happened I would consider that the contamination had spread I
would not be able to ever wear the shoes at all. I did this twice. I
than had to spray with a mixture of vinegar and alcohol and even
than I was not happy, still I was anxious and it would be a few more
days before I could bring the shoes into he house let alone wear
them.
I know of course that many fellow OCD sufferers who
own dogs and dogs are not a problem for them, I cannot imagine that
anyone with OCD who owns a dog would allow it to behave in such a
way, so my complaints are not directed towards them, neither are my
complaints aimed at any responsible dog owner. So please do not
think I am having a go at all dog owners. There are so many
irresponsible people in our society these days and this is but one
of the many facets of socially unacceptable behaviour but because it
has such a profound effect upon me I am naturally more apt to make
an issue of this.
*
Disclaimer :
No responsibility is accepted for the content of external links
including blogs:
Concerning blogs : Although I have initially looked through the
recommended blogs in my blog roll I have not read every single entry and
have selected each on its overall merit: interesting regular entries .
However the comments and opinions of the respective blog owners do not
necessarily reflect my own opinions.
*
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that I have a number of quite debilitating illnesses and there may be
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