Dear Diane, It’s been severe for most of my life (53 years) but the contamination issue and not being able to wear normal clothes, showering with hose etc, has only been a feature of it for about 20.
The problem is, the fear doesn’t go, I wouldn’t suffer the cold like this if it did. I will face anything (for a few months) but I can no longer tolerate fear that is continuous, hence the lengths I go to in order to avoid it. Every winter is miserable, but this extreme weather is almost too much. The added worry about my daughter’s health, which has also been extreme, has just pushed me near to the edge. I suppose the incidents with the car and the shower, trivial at any other time, just felt like the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I know you are young, and I don’t want my message to come across as being bleak and hopeless. Most with OCD will find ways of managing the condition.
Dear Bren, I don’t know what to say. You know how I feel about you and if there was something I could do to help you I would do it. I know this year has been awful for you. I know OCD and depression have robbed you of the quality of life you so deserve. As you said we are made of tough stuff and the fight will go on…
Dear Paul, Yes a pilgrimage sounds wonderful. Like, Bren, you and I have our beliefs and our eternal optimism. If we don’t find peace in this life we know we will in the next. However, it’s still not too late for any of us!
Dear Tess, I have just realized that my dearest friends are from this forum, and some of you I barely knew just a year ago. OCD has very little to offer that is not of a destructive nature, but it has brought us together.
Dear Wombat, As I said in reply to your PM, I am deeply touched by your suggestions and I will seriously look into each of them! Thank you so very much.
Dear Helz, Thank you. I know you have had problems recently and I wish I had been able to help. I hope your fear has eased. Thank you for being such a good friend.
Dear Nicola, I am very pleased that your OCD is so much better. Thank you also so much for your support.
Dear Bridget, I am my own worst enemy. The CMHT said there is nothing they can do if I won’t let them in the house and won’t meet with them outside it. I do make it impossible for them. My husband is no saint (my mother disagrees with this, apparently only a saint would tolerate my extreme OCD) but he will try to help when he can, again I make this very hard for him, because usually I have to do things myself.
You begged me to find the strength to carry on. Well, thanks to all of you here, I have found it. I truly believe you have all, with your loving, warm thoughts, reached my spirit without my even knowing. I felt this before I even read the incredible response to my rant!
Dear Steve, I know my life belongs to me and not the OCD, but I don’t know how to turn it around. I have tried facing fear head-on, but I never learnt how to let go of it. I feel trapped, but please, as I said before, don’t think I will end my life deliberately.
Dear Jon, I have left my message to you to last, but please don’t think I value you and your opinions less! I just wanted to give more thought to my reply. I am a strong person, Jon, and I have been told by professionals that in many ways that works against me. I didn’t understand that remark, but I was told that few would spend the whole winter bitterly cold when they had a choice of wearing warm clothes and not doing laundry outside in a bucket in their underwear etc…
My father, who watched my OCD struggle since the age of about four, was puzzled by my inability to overcome it. As a child I once remarked I’d prefer to be blind than have OCD. This was said at a time when I was deeply depressed and after spending time with a blind lady who was incredibly happy. My father gave me quite a lecture, and I understood why!
When I was in my thirties, and the OCD was even worse, he passed a comment about my strong will and said he could not fathom out why I was unable to overcome my obsessions. He looked back to challenges from the past and asked why I could not stop my compulsions when I faced those things. I explained it is very different. When a person has a physical injury, their brain doesn’t necessarily have an imbalance of chemicals. Their brain, when sound, is able to fight the greatest adversity. You mentioned the Holocaust. I wrote about a lady who endured that atrocity, she was an OCD patient in a hospital with a friend of mine. For her the OCD was worse…Her psychiatrist claimed that severe OCD is the worst illness known to man.
By the way, my father had an excellent memory. A few months before he died, he spoke to me with tears in his eyes. He merely said ‘I wish you had been born blind’. I knew exactly to what he was referring and I knew he understood. Part of me, to this day, wishes he had not been able to, because the pain in his eyes will always haunt me.
Jon, as I said to Diane, there is hope and for those of you who are very young, even more so, because even those of you who do not respond to treatment (and many of you will) will benefit from science once it has cracked this awful condition.
Again, I cannot express how I feel. To say I am deeply touched does not even begin to describe my emotions. Thank you, every one of you!
Love, Tricia.
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