The Hardest Pill To Swallow

[Socketosis]

I've felt the need to express these thoughts somewhere publicly for a very long time but always put it off or figured there wasn't much point. As the circumstances of my life keep deteriorating, I figure it's probably better late than never to do so. I'm unsure if this will be my last post or not, but I will be sure to check in regularly to view any thoughts, opinions and possibly advice. Although I'm kind of at that point where I don't think there exists any advice that would help me. That is my fault. This isn't exactly a suicide note/post, but I cannot guarantee that it won't happen at some point. At the least, it's probably what Recel refers to as "social suicide".

Anyway, it's hard to know where to start with these things. My life history is probably a good starting point, but I want the reader to see the whole picture without me being too revealing, verbose or boring. So I'll try to keep it kind of engaging I hope.

History

My childhood was pretty decent I think. I had loving parents, went to a small local school where everybody knew each other, had a decent amount of friends and was relatively active and healthy. However, I showed signs of something... not being quite right with my head. It started when I was quite young; around maybe 7 or 8 years old. At night, when my mother would tuck me in for bed, I had this ritual where she would have to say "Goodnight" a certain way or I thought she didn't love me. If this wasn't done correctly, I would get incredibly distraught, cry my eyes out while begging for her to say it right and ask her to please not hate me . Every night was the same, and my mother would keep repeating it over and over, usually getting frustrated and sternly telling me to just go to sleep. This made it worse and I wouldn't calm down until she did it right.

That was such a foretelling of how I would turn out now that I look back at it. Luckily I outgrew that ritual relatively fast, but this whole thing about thinking people hated me if they acted a certain way or if they displayed any amount of sternness would last with me up till this very day. Even when I was disciplined for something, I would interpret that as an act of hatred and I think I still do to an extent. I even associated doing something good for my mother as an inevitable occurrence of disdain since the two things happened so close to one other.

Another one of my early signs which is probably related and still holds true for me today was that I would become suicidal during these acts of sternness or discipline from my family. Yes, I had episodes of suicidal ideation in my preteens. A few times I would take a giant kitchen knife out of a drawer and threaten to stab myself in the heart. A lot of times I didn't even bother with the threatening part and just thought about doing it. I was too much of a pussy to go through with it though and those episodes were very short lived.

The major turn in my life began at 10 years old when I came down with a virus that instilled the fear of getting sick. It started off with avoiding doing or thinking about things that happened just before I came down with it. I associated events and even a word with the virus, so that whenever they were mentioned I would get upset and try to block out the thoughts altogether. Then it slowly escalated to things like number association, symmetry (eg. doing something with one arm and then doing it with the other) and the worst of all: contamination.

After a few months, my parents were concerned enough to take me to the doctor to see what was wrong. He ended up diagnosing me with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and referred me to a child psychologist. She helped me understand my thoughts a little bit better and some of the treatment helped a small bit, but I would end up coming back to see her throughout my early teens as my disorder slightly worsened. I was also put on Paxil for a while, but it made me too drowsy in school. So that was switched out for something else. I don't think it did much, but whatever. To give you an idea of how bad my fear was/still is: whenever one of my family members vomited, I would become so upset that I hid behind a chair and cried while in the fetal position.

Moving on. I stated to become more reclusive when the Pokemon craze really picked up during 1999. My best friend at the time was really into it, so I got into it myself. This made me want to do and play Pokemon related things all of the time, so I kind of abandoned my old group of friends, which happened to be all girls (fuck I regret doing that). This was also the time I finished elementary and was moving on to Junior High with a much larger population than my old school had. My older brother warned me that revealing my love of Pokemon would get me bullied, so I entered it a bit fearful of how intolerant it might be. Thankfully I wasn't one of the kids to be bullied very often, so it wasn't too bad. I didn't have many friends in it though, since my Pokemon group of friends were mostly still in elementary. By the end of the year, I lost touch with most of them too for some reason.

Then I discovered what the internet had to offer and took an immediate interest in it. I wanted to get it for our home and awesomely enough my parents got me a new computer and a dial-up connection. This was bad news for them, because I was absolutely addicted and took up the phone line a lot of the time. They would try to introduce restrictions on my usage, but I would still manage to sneak on it (which was especially easy when they were at work). However, I wasn't a complete recluse at this point, but I was getting there.

Then I entered my teen phase, so you probably know how that goes. I became a bit depressed and more rebellious. I was like a fake Satanist too or something. I don't know, I was fucking weird. Anyway, I would try to do things to be in with the popular crowd, so I tried to emulate some of things they did. One of the major things was farting in class, since it seemed to always get a good reaction from the guys and I thought it was funny as hell too. Some advice for young people: if you do the same thing as the popular kids, but are not one of the "in" crowd, you are going to get a different reaction than what you expected. As you can guess, nobody found it funny and actually pointed out that it was fucking gross because it was ME who did it. I also overdid it so my classmates went on to ignore it. Fortunately for me, I wasn't the lowest on the totem pole in our class, since there was this one kid that brought much more attention to himself.

Anyway, that year was a year I'd love to forget, because it was just shitty. I developed a more pessimistic view on life from that point. High school was a better environment I think, even though my OCD was gradually worsening and students were talking about being sick on a daily basis. I met a few interesting individuals and stuff.

College was great, but at this point my out-of-school interactions were mostly online.

After finishing school was when things made a swift turn for the worse. At this point I didn't really have any friends outside of the internet other than the few occasions I met up with my old ones. Being out of school made it so that I didn't have to deal with as many of my fears as before. So I chose to stay on the computer just about all the time. My OCD was getting harder to manage and my only source of help was a string of mostly useless psychiatrists that would ask me how I was and prescribe me some new meds every couple of months. My current psychiatrist is a bit different but has told me countless of times that he doesn't know what else to he can do for me. I realize it's most likely I'm just a shitty patient moreso than them being incompetent.

More recently I've switched towards cognitive behaviourial therapy that a psychologist can offer, but I still find myself unable to do it. Even the easy things seem to be something I choose to avoid for some odd reason even though I realize they might be beneficial. Is it laziness? Stubbornness? I don't know.

Current Perspective

Okay, so I wrote way more than I wanted to on my history. So let me get right into the heavy stuff. My disorder has been worsening constantly over time, but it was introducing new thoughts and rituals at a somewhat slow rate. Over the past year, things have spiraled downward so fucking fast that I don't know what to do with myself anymore. Just going to appointments is a major task in itself which requires approximately 2 hours of washing with hot scalding water and the use of an entire bar of soap. No, I am not exaggerating, not in the least. This is not only fucking painful, dreadful and time consuming, but it's a massive waste of resources and money.

It also doesn't only apply for appointments. For instance, taking a crap results in about 6-7 hours of ritualizing, including washing multiple times and also showering before I can finally sit down and relax. I can't deviate from any of it because I need to feel "clean" before I can even think about resuming my day, or what's left of it.

My anxiety is almost always in effect these days, even when I'm just sitting here at the computer. I've become afraid of everything, including most of the things in my room. I can't do anything for myself anymore because I want to avoid the horrible rituals that come along with it. This puts A LOT of work, pressure and dependence on my parents, who have hit one helluva high level of frustration. It doesn't help that they don't really understand how mental health works and think I can just stop doing these things if I want to. There is so much more I could reveal that would tell you just how bad I've become, but honestly I'm too ashamed and embarrassed to talk about it. I've revealed just about all of it to my current therapist at least.

I feel like such a selfish piece of shit for all of it too. I'm so concerned about one goddamn fear, that I'm destroying the lives of my parents, their house, and even myself just to lessen the chances of having to face it. I know that my methods aren't really helping in that regard, but I actually believe that they do, deep down, on an emotional level rather than a logical one. I will outright tell you right now that I am willing to die rather than face my fear. I'm that pathetic.

I've hit the lowest point in my life and I'm terrified of how much worse it can get. If I get a disease, or my parents die, or I become homeless, then it's over. I don't think I can even live in some kind of housing unit for people with special needs because there's no way anyone would do all of the things my parents do for me. It would be impossible for me to cope with that. Speaking of, my parents are at their breaking point and I'm convinced my mother would prefer me out of their lives at this point. I don't blame her. My continued existence is doing nothing but ruining them and their house. They are getting old now and are starting to develop health issues which probably stem from the stress induced by me. It hurts to know that I'm literally killing them and that if they knew I was going to turn out like this that they would've chosen not to have me. That is is just a logical conclusion.

I have put a lot of thought into why I should continue going on. I just don't see much of a reason. I can't even be successful on the internet. I've chosen to abandon my only social circle a while back because it was having a negative impact on my mental health, but I'm not so sure I've been that much better off. I lost one of my closest friends whom I also had a crush on, because of my mental problems. Who blames her though? Nobody wants to be around someone constantly depressed and unwilling to do anything to change it. I only have my best friend left really, who has an amazing tolerance level but is hardly ever on now due to certain circumstances.

The most common advice is "seek help", but what do you do when there isn't any? When my therapist tells me that if I'm ever feeling suicidal and think I might actually do something harmful, then I am to call their prevention hotline. But... why? Why would I want to jeopardize my only way out? You know that phrase, "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem"? Well, I think that, in my case at least, prevention is a temporary solution to a permanent problem. Seriously, what can they do other than restrain me, medicate me, refer me to ineffective counseling or put me on a short suicide watch? They can't magically fix my long term problems.

Even if some magic miracle were to happen in the recent future that cured me of my disorder, I think I'd still be a shitty person with shitty social skills and a large host of other shitty traits. Even when my dog was alive, I don't think she liked me all that much. She was always excited to see my brother and would even sleep on his bed if he let her. She only really showed affection towards me if I came home from school or had food. But she acted that way with everyone if they did that. I still miss her and wish I could've been a better owner.

I even hate my grammar patterns. Why do I refer to myself so much? Am I a narcissist? Why do I use so many commas?

My mind is only ever at ease when I'm distracted with working on things, which is nice until reality hits me smack dead in the face again. Also, it's hard to convince myself that it's worth putting so much time and effort into something when nobody really gives a shit about anything I do anyway. I'm not sure if my ideas just suck ass or something. They probably do. It's kind of discouraging, ya know?

Crud, I really suck at remembering all of the stuff I wanted to say. Ah well. If any of this sounds familiar to you, then you've probably read the confession I made in the Anonymous Confessions thread. Anyway, I'll probably regret this later, but it was nice to finally type something out even if it was just complete whining garbage.
 

[Hux]

I know we're strangers and all, but if you need someone to to talk to about it, I'm game.

I've been diagnosed with OCD as well and have suffered from most of the problems you have.

 

[Sourdough]

I can't understand what it's like to live with severe OCD, I can only tell you that going away and isolating yourself won't make anything better. You said you only really have one friend you don't talk to that often, but even that is worth hanging on to. CBT is a great challenge when you've spent your life thinking the way you do. It's not laziness or stubbornness preventing it from helping, it takes a lot of time and effort to see results. Please, try. Then keep trying! It's worth the struggle.

Hux (most lovely devil dog person) can relate, and it's a chance to make a new friend who can actually understand what you're going through! Try taking him up on his offer.

[Toshabi]

 

 

[WileyWarWeasel]

Use water.

[Vallium]

Hang in there Sockie, if you need any relief I think a stranger cant tell you a lot of your extreme feelings of negativity are in your head, I dont believe your parents are entirely upset at you for living as you do, if theyre your parents and have attempted to placate your condition in your past, even exhasperatingly, they'll understand that you have your struggle to deal with, they wont be mad at you for trying to live through that process, in fact Id venture to believe they were proud of you if they even remotely knew.

 

I dont have or know what OCD is like, but Keep in mind your condition alone ist the only condition people have, lots of people suffer lifelong conditions like or as OCD,  and the problems dont easily or ever go away. Its not meant to go away, I believe, its something you have to work through as a struggle and find a strategies to cope and fix errors in you

[Socketosis]

Hey all, sorry about the late reply. After posting and getting some sleep I felt a bit better and didn't want to come back to dwell on things right away. Thanks for the replies, they were certainly more uplifting than I would've imagined.

On 11/2/2016 at 7:14 PM, Hux said:

I know we're strangers and all, but if you need someone to to talk to about it, I'm game.

I've been diagnosed with OCD as well and have suffered from most of the problems you have.

 

Aw that stinks. How do you deal with it? I find preoccupying myself seems to be the only real escape from the terrible emotional states I end up getting into. It does nothing to help the root of the problem though. :\

[Hux]

2 hours ago, Socketosis said:

Aw that stinks. How do you deal with it? I find preoccupying myself seems to be the only real escape from the terrible emotional states I end up getting into. It does nothing to help the root of the problem though. :\

Well, there's not much you can do to get at the root of problem, and keeping your mind busy is really about all you can do outside of taking medication.

Whenever my OCD started to get particularly bad, I always found that shifting from whatever topic was currently bothering me to something else. It might sound dumb, but thinking about the ocean sort of helped me. Whenever I became paranoid and anxious, I'd just try to concentrate on the ocean and hope that my bouts of more extreme OCD would come to pass.

Oh, and have you ever been on any mood stabilizers? I'm not bipolar, but for a while I was on both an SSRI and a mood stabilizer and it really helped.

I know you've heard it many times before, but if you really want to see your OCD tended to, get professional help. I recall you mentioning that you visit a therapist, but have you visited a psychiatrist recently?

Sorry about the Great Wall of Text.

[Socketosis]

4 hours ago, Hux said:

Well, there's not much you can do to get at the root of problem, and keeping your mind busy is really about all you can do outside of taking medication.

Whenever my OCD started to get particularly bad, I always found that shifting from whatever topic was currently bothering me to something else. It might sound dumb, but thinking about the ocean sort of helped me. Whenever I became paranoid and anxious, I'd just try to concentrate on the ocean and hope that my bouts of more extreme OCD would come to pass.

Oh, and have you ever been on any mood stabilizers? I'm not bipolar, but for a while I was on both an SSRI and a mood stabilizer and it really helped.

I know you've heard it many times before, but if you really want to see your OCD tended to, get professional help. I recall you mentioning that you visit a therapist, but have you visited a psychiatrist recently?

Sorry about the Great Wall of Text.

I think I may have been on some sort of mood stabilizer before. I recall it being mentioned at least, however after looking up some common ones I don't recognize any of the names except Lithium, and I'm sure I didn't take that.

Yeah, I've been seeing my regular psychiatrist every few months basically just for check ups. I haven't really opened up to him before about just how bad I was until around this year but he doesn't really know what else to do for me other than try different drug combinations. The latest one he prescribed a few weeks ago was Risperdal. I don't think it's doing much for my obsessive compulsive thoughts, but I've been focusing most of my time on stuff that's at least kind of productive compared to before. So that's a plus!

[FlynnCoyote]

The hardest pills to swallow are those big ones with "suppository" written on the packet.

With the obvious butt joke out of the way, all I can really say is that mental issues are among the hardest to deal with. but being aware of it and taking steps puts you well on he path to getting the upper hand so kudos on that.

[PurpleTail]

It's too painful to read for me, does this story have a good, happy ending?

[Socketosis]

8 hours ago, PurpleTail said:

It's too painful to read for me, does this story have a good, happy ending?

Not yet I'm afraid.

[Sourdough]

1 hour ago, Socketosis said:

Not yet I'm afraid.

Let the battle rage on!

GO RED SOX SOCKETOSIS