Let’s ask why

(clothes – barlowgirl)

I learned at some point somewhere that why questions should generally be avoided when possible, because they are often misinterpreted with a negative connotation…so I picked this lyric for this post of random questions that I potentially shouldn’t be asking…

Why am I still finding things that can only be explained as the mouse got it when the mouse has been gone for three months? So yeah. One day recently I got dressed in the morning in one of my favorite black dress shirts. All seemed fine…until…I was eating a snack, thought I might have dropped something, and realized what I saw on my shirt was a hole…and upon closer inspection there were a lot of small holes. And then I panicked (mild exaggeration) because mice have lots of germs. In response though, I did learn that although my worst fear, norovirus, can live literally for a year or more, and there were those germs I learned about in micro that could continue to multiply literally inside a bottle of bleach (is nothing sacred anymore?) that hantavirus can only live for 2-3 days outside of a host, and that decreases to one day if UV is present. I also learned about the geographic distribution of the common subtypes of hantavirus and which animals are carriers…I was unable to figure out, unfortunately, how much norovirus is on the typical sidewalk or apartment hallway and how easily that would transfer to the mouse, or whether mice could carry norovirus internally. So I washed my hands too many times and said goodbye to my shirt and considered whether my entire wardrobe needs to be bleached now. And this is why I have never bought bleach. I cannot trust myself to use bleach responsibly.

Is it normal for people in cars to stop to talk to strangers who are walking? Today (aka the day I wrote this, not the day I decided I felt safe enough to post this) for the first time since that day in December, I walked to church. With the exception of that brief walk maybe a month ago when I could see my car the entire way, the furthest I’ve walked or done anything outside was from a parking lot to a building. I was feeling brave…until…a car stopped just ahead of where I was. I felt afraid. What if it was creepy mustache guy or another unsafe person? I looked around me and was like either I stop right here on the side of the road and wait for this guy to move on, but in the meantime people are probably going to start looking at me because it isn’t normal for a person to just be standing on the side of the road, or Option B was to give the car as wide a berth as possible and keep going…and so I did that, but I felt trapped. To my left was a busy road, and to my right was some grass then the freeway – nowhere to run. Luckily it was not creepy mustache guy. Or at least I don’t think it was because he didn’t have a mustache, and there are a grand total of 3 things I know about creepy mustache guy. 1. He has a mustache. 2. He is creepy. 3. He knows someone I know. I do have two guesses what his name is, but I don’t do names on here, and also, I don’t know with certainty whether either of those names is actually his…so yeah. Maybe I will continue to be an exclusively inside person a little longer. It is rather unfortunate that hair is modifiable. Why can’t we live in a cartoon world where hair and clothes are identical every day? That would be supes helpful. Yes, I did just bring back the word supes…

Also, why do a few of my clothes still smell like smoke from when my oven decided to set off the fire alarm instead of make my brownies? All my clothes were in my apartment, but only a handful of them picked up the smell, and of those, only a couple have still held onto that smell. It smells homey to me now though…it’s from the before I knew I was legitimately being tracked. Not that the before time was an easy time, but I could at least attempt at that point to convince myself that maybe I was safer than it seemed…and then that all came crashing down.

Why was there a sign that said westbound only on a one way road? I looked at the map later and I’m pretty sure the road does go west only. And based on how faded the lines on the road were, it’s been a one way for a super long time. So like are they worried I’m gonna change my mind in the middle of the road, do a 3-point turn and go against the one-way signs????? Lol. Who even knows.

What does half past sober mean? It’s in the lyrics of a song I like and it sounds pretty, but I haven’t got a clue what it means to be half past sober.

Why was our legal system designed as it was? Okay, I know all the 9^th grade law and citizenship 12^th grade government stuff about checks and balances, but I know so many people for whom the Justice system has failed to provide justice. Honestly, I don’t actually believe that hurting people back is truly justice – someone else hurting doesn’t make my pain less valid, but the person who was hurt should not be the one with added burdens. If there is an ongoing risk to someone’s safety the justice system needs to do something. I am thankful that so far the only significant interpersonal hurt I’ve experienced has not been physical, but I have friends for whom the pain inflicted was physical and while I understand that emotional wounds are often not seen as requiring the same urgency as their physical counterparts, my friends have similarly not been protected appropriately. I get a lot of medical news to my inbox that I usually delete without reading because communication gets overwhelming sometimes, but today I clicked on an email and the article mentioned that often the people most directly impacted by adverse action are the ones without the time, energy, money, or other resources to successfully file legal complaints. I was like mic drop. That is so true. It’s frustrating that people with money and power can get away with horrid actions because they know we don’t have the ability to adequately defend ourselves and that they can manipulate the system to stay free to continue and keep us from safety. When I was learning about this stuff I was so proud to live in a country with such an incredibly well-designed legal system. We had some issues like the lady who sued McDonald’s and won because as it turns out if you order a hot coffee it is served hot, but on the whole our system seemed great…then I became an adult and saw it in real life. And now I am a lot less impressed.

What is the proper way to dispose of food that is too runny to put in a trash bag without risk of leaks, but too chunky to dispose of in the sink? Flush it down the toilet? I made this meal yesterday and it used two boxes of noodles, 4 cups or so of milk, 1.5 pounds of onion, a few other ingredients, and then two flavor packets. The picture on the package looked good. I used a lot of energy (both my own and the kind that comes from the oven) preparing it…then I tasted it and went yuck, this tastes like sour cream which is one of the foods I can’t deal with. I was proud of myself for forcing three spoonfuls into my mouth, but after that I had to admit that while it was incredibly wasteful there was no way I was going to be able to eat any more of that, especially knowing after the first bite of the first portion that it was going to be yucky…and just like that I need a new plan for lunches and dinners this week…(FYI, googled this before I did it and do NOT flush food down the toilet. High risk of clogs…which then made me wonder why vomit doesn’t routinely clog the toilet since it also often contains undigested food…but I think that probably falls into the category of things it would be most wise for me to not Google).

Why did that news story in high school say hearing a train coming means you should get somewhere safe because a tornado is nearby? You know what also sounds like a train, is a lot more common than a tornado, but is not dangerous like a tornado? You guessed it…a train! Most of the time I do just assume it was a train, but once in a while when I’m already stressed about other things (like norovirus…) I think about that it must be a tornado…and a tornado would be super scary not just because of the destruction of things, but because it would stir up norovirus and also if I had to go to a shelter there’d be lots of people potentially bringing noro with them and if I didn’t have my own freshly cleaned pillow and sheets those could also have germs on them.

Why isn’t the concept of grieving in small doses taught more commonly? I’ve read that it is common for kids to grieve in small doses, but as an adult, I definitely behave similarly. I’ll be ‘strong’ for a while then it’s like *bam* there is the grief. Today everything was great, and then suddenly I was crying because of the things I endured in the past year. Probably part of it is that over the past month a couple people have given me new words to describe what happened. Those new words gave me a lot more clarity about what was going on and really validated my feelings and to be honest made me start to really believe for the first time that I am strong, because once those words were out in the open and I had a chance to process what they meant I was able to recognize more clearly that to live through what I did and continue to try to make the best of it takes courage. I am so proud of younger me. Younger me went through a lot, especially considering it was coming at a time that would have been hard without any added stressors (two years without daddy, two moves in the same month – one of them halfway across the country, a job change)…

Also, not phrased as a question, but this video hit too close to home and made me cry. https://youtu.be/zF_Sg6fQTQI

There is the not matching thing, but the bigger thing was September. OMG. The I let everyone down thing coming first, way before the possibility of I failed. I felt like all the work that had been put in to teach me to reach out when things aren’t going right was wasted because I definitely wasn’t doing that again if this was the result (after further reflection I was able to recognize that this is not what was supposed to happen and while I did slide backwards a little bit that I am still lightyears ahead of where I was two years ago). I learned that my coresidents had been planning a birthday party for me,  and I was devastated that their effort had been wasted. TBH, my birthday was going to be hard when it came anyway, but learning that was crushing. I definitely wouldn’t have not wanted to know though. I think it was important that I find out, because I had been told that I was negatively impacting my coresidents and there had been complaints about me, so as much as it hurt, it was also incredibly healing to know that my coresidents wanted to intentionally make my birthday special and that it wasn’t true that they had any issues with me.

Also, I used to be really hesitant even when given the word by others to allow the use of grief to describe any loss but death. After experiencing the death of my dad, I realized that grief from any source feels basically the same. There are certainly varying degrees of grief felt by different situations, but non-death loss can be just as painful and evoke the same feelings as death loss. And I don’t remember where I was going with that statement.

Why did it take me so long to discover maternity pants?! I mean, I was barely out of high school when I fell in love with the whatsupelle maternity pants videos about how incredible maternity pants even when not pregnant…and now I *just* got my first pairs recently. So awesome! First of all, no buttons to deal with. Second, they only have to be pulled on and off – super fast and convenient. Third, when you have gone from a walk most places to a drive most places person AND are a stress eater, it is nice to have pants that can accommodate both your I have stress starved for a while body as well as your I have stress eaten significant amounts of food body without being too loose or too tight at any point in that continuum. I would say now that I’ve tried them I’ll never buy anything else, but I’m such a deal hunter that realistically if I need (or want) pants and they are an awesome deal but not maternity I’d prob still buy them…hashtag lifechanging for sure

why do some CE courses have such incredible mic drop moments? Today’s moment: “When you set down a dull saw, if you come back and pick it up, it will still be dull.” I wish I’d decided to go to that midyear session in person, but alas I remember every midyear I’ve gone to I’ve tried to cram in sessions back to back to back from early AM to late PM and am typically nearly literally running to my next session to fit as much in as possible, so really there is a very definite limit how much I can actually attend and it is far less than everything. But anyway, the point being made was that taking days off (or telling people to take days off since it was geared toward management) is not a solution to burnout or other problems in the workplace. The burnout or the other problem will likely still be present as soon as the employee returns to work. Unless you put in the effort to change the course of the ship, leaving won’t change anything. So true…a day off might take you out of the nightmare for the day (if you’re even able to disengage well enough to leave the workplace behind) but it will still be there when you return. It also made me think about how I’ve always said a snack covers a multitude of wrongs…like yeah, it kinda does if those wrongs were well-intentioned misunderstandings, but you can’t intentionally hurt someone then expect a snack to fix it…it doesn’t work like that…I guess it is kind of like I found out in middle school. When I had chocolate, people were really nice, but as soon as I gave it all away they went back to normal behavior and I was back to being teased for not knowing the in slang or the in way to carry my things, except now I didn’t have candy…but when I had things to share with my actual friends it was an appreciated piece of friendship…

I had one more thing I was going to write about, but then I started watching a video and by the time it was over I couldn’t remember what I was gonna write about anymore…so I guess it is time to say the end and get ready for bed even though I’ve gotten very close to nothing done all day unless you count the numerous games of quordle I won…

I smile and I pretend it doesn’t hurt

(Mean Girls- Leanna Crawford)

So after the OCD crisis last week I really thought I was over it and would be fine…

…that was not the case…

So I matched…and I’m supposed to provide regular updates on licensure because it is apparently a difficult process where I am going…

…which means I couldn’t use my do one thing at a time and figure it out as you go approach…

…and my brain still takes most stress and turns it into the kind of stress it knows how to manage: OCD.

But I was fine. I had to be fine. I had to be able to just do it. I had to get through it.

But I wasn’t quite as fine as I was trying to tell myself I was. I felt like I was being crushed on Tuesday and felt like I was going to throw up on Tuesday because my anxiety was so high…I had to go to Walgreens to get pictures and I thought I could do it. I thought it would be okay. And I mean I suppose technically I did do it, but it was not okay. Being in a store was a lot…and then instead of being able to take the rest of the evening to relax I had to go right back into licensure stuff…as of Thursday morning my application is in the mail…IDK if I actually did everything correctly, but it is gone…so you would think the stress would go down…good guess, but wrong…

It was like that was behind me so finally my body could crash. By the time I got to my car after work I was crying.

I don’t know if it was my biggest success of the day or my biggest fail of the day that I didn’t call in sick today. But in the morning I was like you have two choices. You can get ready for work or you can call in sick but you can’t just not show up…so I finally managed to walk through the doors at work less than a minute before I would have been late…and after I got to work I started to feel better enough that I could eat breakfast, so I mean, that is definitely a positive.

But I am super thrilled to never have to go through the residency application process again. That is the best news I could have ever gotten. I will take a couple weeks of high anxiety in exchange for never going through that again.

That’s why I brought my own sanitizer

(Karen of the Bells – The Holderness Family)

I was going to take a 5-minute social media break…and then someone on facebook said match day was like Christmas…

If that is true then I never want Christmas to happen again. And now I need an hour or so blog break.

I don’t have any positive match day experiences.

I get that doesn’t make sense because last year I finally matched…but my memory of the day isn’t matching – my memory is trying to pretend I understood what was happening while my now RPD was trying to talk to me on the phone and I was trying not to wash all the skin off my hands…(and that evening falling deep into an OCD attack).

Which is kind of similar to how this week has been.

Can we just call it match week and say it has been hard?

Let’s start surface level (because when things get too deep, people drown).

Even with nothing else really going on, acute sleep deprivation makes me psychologically vulnerable. There was a while in college that Cru and FCA were on consecutive nights and I therefore was up late consecutive nights and could almost guarantee I was going to struggle that third day, especially if there were any other bigger stressors going on at the time. It is much better now in that it isn’t nearly as close to a 1:1 relationship anymore, but I’m sure sleep deprivation doesn’t help things.

Friday, like usual I was scheduled to work until bedtime so clearly even if I had left perfectly on time I wouldn’t have been able to be in bed by bedtime. Then Saturday I go to bed and five minutes later my mom calls and talks for about an hour…then Sunday I am up late because long story short my friend got engaged, there was a snafu with our dinner plans, and I didn’t even leave until after bedtime. It was awesome, but it didn’t necessarily set me up for success.

Monday I found a worm trying to crawl across the floor at my apartment…and I freaked out. I flushed it down the toilet then I started worrying that somehow the worm would be able to climb out somehow and the idea of a toilet germ worm contaminating my apartment was even worse than the idea of an outside germ worm contaminating my apartment. I really was doing okay though. I went to work. There was talk about the stomach flu. I was a little stressed but mostly okay…for a while…and eventually I had to admit defeat and realize I wasn’t getting anything done and would probably do better at home where there was (hopefully) a lower germ level (assuming the worm was not escaped…and if it was I was just about ready to give myself permission to obtain bleach).

And by the time I went to bed Monday night I was really not doing awesome…and by midnight I was in crisis mode. And it is very fortunate that I have social issues on top of my germ issues, because if I didn’t have that combo there would have been a text sent to my preceptor declaring me unable to come to work because what if I have the stomach flu and what if I accidentally give it to someone else…so between 12 and 2 I am on my phone alternating between googling things about the stomach flu (because when I am deep in crisis somehow I believe that knowledge will somehow fix it even though it never really does) and trying to text out of work…and eventually I realize this is not working and go back to pretending like sleep is an option.

I get to work Tuesday morning and don’t even bother trying to make and eat breakfast because the idea of eating is terrifying. I am kind of shakey from dehydration/not eating/not sleeping, but by lunch time patient care is enough of a distraction that I am able to convince myself to eat rice krispy treat, and after that gradually convince myself that I should also eat pizza. In a couple hours when I haven’t become sick I start to feel a little safer…but Wednesday morning I still have some fear. And Wednesday afternoon I can feel the anxiety rising again and unfortunately in the need to stay calm enough to hopefully not have another night of crisis I only end up actually getting through a couple pages of reading.

I stay up way too late because people are the best thing in the world and I don’t want to be alone…and I do successfully avert crisis but I also get up still exhausted Thursday morning…and so of course there are two more worms on the living room floor. I finally make my way to work and try to look up how to keep worms out of my apartment…and get frustrated because the internet seems to believe that I am too dumb to differentiate a worm from a centipede/millipede. Y’all, those are two (okay, technically three) incredibly different species. I don’t actually know the difference between a centipede and a millipede, but I do know the difference between those and worms. Worms are way worse because they are sticky and slimey and therefore better germ vectors.

So that was the surface level explanation of I am trying really hard to just be okay this week…

And then there is the trauma history of all the failed match days. And I don’t think I need to write about that much to express that the three years of failure don’t disappear when you finally match.

And then there is the other major issue.

It still feels like my fault that my dad is not alive. Yes, I know it isn’t logical. I watched the GCS decline from definitely 4 though not a strong 4 to basically needing to imagine that it wasn’t a three…so I know medically that the brain was broken and you can’t fix brains. I know that if I hadn’t eventually opened the conversation my mom had said we needed to have that ultimately someone else would have brought it up – we couldn’t just ignore the decision that needed to be made…and I know that it wasn’t going to make things better or easier to wait longer or for it to take longer…but I still feel guilty…I knew I might have a hard time having enough PTO left for interviews if I was off too many days in August…and all those things got wrapped together into my fault. And I’m the medical professional. I’m the one who is supposed to do something. And all I could do was watch my daddy die. And I don’t want tomorrow to happen. I just want to stop on today because I don’t want to fail again. I don’t want to have to deal with all the things…I don’t want to face the mountain of things piling up because I can barely take care of myself, much less take care of all the homework I am supposed to be doing. I just want to quit. Not like quit residency. That is way off the table. Just like get up and turn off the lights on life and wake up someday in heaven.

And everyone is going to want to know if I matched and I said I would tell them but I don’t even want to know. I just want to pretend nothing ever happened. Which I know is not an adaptive response and I know will cause major problems sooner rather than later…but it just feels like too much that I can’t handle. I don’t want to face more failure. I don’t want to never be good enough. I just want someone to be willing to give me a chance. They don’t even have to really want me. I don’t care *that* much if I was last on their list. I just want to not be defeated again. And I don’t believe that is what I am going to find out. And that is hard on top of all the other hard.

And…time to get back to at least trying to get some work done…

What’s inside the rearview mirror is closer than it appears

(Dear Me – Nichole Nordeman)

I am giving myself one hour to write as much as I can in that amount of time and then I have to be ready to get productive things done…but there is so much swirling in my brain and I don’t really know where to start or how to make the twisty lines turn into words on the screen…so here goes what might be a totally incomprehensible post…

Last year today was match day. Last year the past month had been especially challenging…I took almost every Monday and Friday off for a little over a month because that was my interview strategy and those extra days without the distraction were difficult. And I was frustrated with where I was because it had been so long and I was still struggling.

And now I’m okay with giving myself a little grace…it’d only been like half a year…but now it’s been a year beyond that and I’m still not doing awesome. Sure, I cry a lot less…but sleep is still a major issue. The person who organized my grief group whose loss was I think 4 or 5 years ago says 5 years is acute grief and even beyond that it’ll still hurt…but I don’t know if I believe that. It is a lot easier to have grace for other people than for myself. I feel like I saw 6 months somewhere…and at midyear the session on grief I went to put the figure at 12-24 months…but really within a week or so people expected me to be okay…and I still feel like I need to meet that expectation. And I can’t. And sometimes it is exhausting pretending to feel okay.

To be fair, sometimes now I really am okay. But sometimes I am not. Sometimes it is just hard.

And everything residency related is hard.

Because it still feels like it is my fault and residency is very linked to that.

Plus there is all the trauma directly related to residency – the years of the cycle of trying, failing, limping through trying again failing again…

And then the cycle ended at least temporarily, but that didn’t take away the years of pain that preceded finally being wanted.

And it was a weird transition…

I don’t remember the whole sequence of the day. I remember being very happy and taking a picture of my computer screen and sending it to someone at work. I remember that I had the day off. I remember I was putting together a bassinet and struggling both with the instructions and with germs. My OCD was ramping up. I was trying really hard to minimize the number of handwashing breaks I took but everything I touched felt dirty. And then my now RPD called. I haven’t got a clue what she was talking about. I tried to sound professional and respond appropriately but my OCD didn’t want me to leave my apartment and there wasn’t good cell phone reception in my apartment so I really only heard a small percentage of the words and just hoped none of the information was important…plus when the OCD is really loud and all you really want to do is wash your hands plus you are in the middle of trying to figure out how all the pieces go together of the bassinet you are putting together you aren’t going to actually take in much of what you are hearing anyway…so probably I sounded a lot less thrilled than I really was.

And it was announced the day before that the St. Patrick’s Day talent show was not going to be a potluck like it usually was…and I don’t remember if it was because my OCD wouldn’t let me eat (more likely situation) or if I somehow expected even though the directions were to bring food for yourself and church would provide punch that I didn’t need to bring food…but I didn’t eat dinner. And I was playing my bass flute for the talent show so I couldn’t drink punch…and my OCD didn’t really want me to put anything in my mouth anyway. You know there is something really wrong in my brain whether it is OCD or just emotions that are way too high when I am refusing cookies. I did eat some cookies during the evening, but on the way out the door people who knew I usually love cookies were trying to get me to take some cookies home with me and I was refusing…that is not good…that night I was awake most of the night terrified of germs. And two days later it was Sunday and it was announced that starting Wednesday schools were required to stop meeting in person. I was at work and my church was taking a one week break…which quickly became a multi-week break…I don’t remember whether it was that churches were the next to get the boot or if the mall we rented our space in refused to let us in for events anymore, but it was over. And that was also hard. Basically that week everything ended. When you rely on the distraction and co-regulation of constant activity it is really hard to lose it, especially all at once.

I will admit I was over-committed. In addition to my full-time job…I volunteered with multiple areas Sunday mornings. Mondays I had worship team practice, plus or minus water aerobics, plus or minus young adult bible study, plus or minus reap and sow group. Tuesdays I had donuts at church in the morning and sometimes home group in the evening and I feel like maybe there was something else too. Wednesdays I had youth group. Thursdays I volunteered at the free clinic. I think I might not have had any Friday night activities except the monthly-ish game nights at church, but that might be wrong, because it has been over a year since this stuff happened…and I don’t recall any specific Saturday activities…and within a week it was gone.

And there started to be a lot of rules at work so even at work I was alone a lot. And I was getting fewer hours and less pay for the hours I did work and had to navigate negotiating for the end date I wanted…(and then found out my position was given to someone else within a month of leaving but back to full-time when they had cut me back from full-time)…

And fathers day commercials started…and I was about to move…and I wasn’t sleeping at all…and then I moved and I still wasn’t sleeping and then I started my position and was still in survival mode…and now it is almost over and I’ve barely experienced it.

Although, I have managed to become very over-committed again…just instead of mostly being over-committed with volunteering I am just over-committed with social activities…I love my friends…and I am also sad that I am going to have to leave them. And I am scared that I won’t have a position.

What if no one wants me again?

This time I have too much stuff to just move back in with my mom for a few months while I wait for someone, anyone, to have an open position…

And I feel like I am not where I should be…I’m ready to give myself grace for struggling then because it was so close to when my dad died, but by now I feel like I should be fine and I’m not. I’m not brave. I’m not strong. I’m just someone who can’t get over things and grow and move on. I just want to talk to my daddy. I miss him so much. My mom tries to fill in the gaps but is isn’t the same. We get along a lot better now that we really have to since we don’t have dad as the go between but it still isn’t like having my dad. And I want him back and today I watched the movie Raya and I felt angry because in the movie when Raya was brave her dad came back to life…but in real life my dad is never going to be alive again. And that doesn’t feel fair.

Here at the edge of fall apart

(Truth I’m Standing On – Leanna Crawford)

 

So this song played like four times on the radio while I was driving on Tuesday…and the first time I heard it I tried and failed to press all the buttons in time to see if my car could help me figure out what the song was so I could find it again later so I just memorized the approximate time and the station I was on in hopes of finding it that way…and then it played again so I got a chance to actually find the name of the song.

 

…and when I played it on repeat on youtube, eventually youtube suggested some other songs by Leanna and I loved them all. There is such amazing truth in her lyrics, but I just feel like at the same time that she really gets that life can be hard sometimes. The song on the radio is still my favorite, but they all are so good!

 

…but yeah, I’ve been at the edge of fall apart for a long time. To be honest, I’ve been pretty close to the edge for the majority of the past 7 years between the abuse and its fallout, then not matching to a residency (repeatedly), and then my dad dying…but lately life has just been hard.

 

Between the end of the second week of March and the beginning of the third week, life changed. On March 13 I found out I (finally) got a residency…and within hours the excitement morphed into anxiety…which biologically I know excitement and anxiety are nearly identical so it makes a lot of sense one could lead to the other, but it took probably about 5 days before I was really near my baseline in terms of anxiety again, and that was frustrating because I wanted to be done with the OCD and anxiety forever…and that was a reminder that chances are I will continue to occasionally have lapses for the rest of my life and I hate that because I hate the complete lack of control I feel when the OCD flares. Also, on March 13 was the church talent show. It was supposed to be a potluck, but it wasn’t – just cookies and juice. I considered not going because there was a game night in the cities that evening, but I’m glad I went because church was cancelled on the 15^th and also on the 15^th it was announced that by the 18^th schools would be closing to in person classes…and not much after that businesses started closing…my world was shrinking.

 

So I went from Sunday AM – church, Monday PM – worship team and/or pool time and/or young adult bible study, Tuesday AM – donuts, Wednesday PM – youth group and/or prayer group and/or pool time, Thursday – volunteering at free clinic…AND working full-time…to ONLY working full-time…and then to working part-time…(and now to not working for a few weeks). Sure, within a week or two there started to be some virtual meetings, but like I’ve said many times before, the power of together is nearly impossible to replicate online…and within a few weeks most of the virtual stuff was cancelled too or might as well have been because I was the only one there…living alone used to be the only way I could ever consider living if there was a choice, and now with work my only social venue and not even a good one at that, I craved the social contact a roommate would provide.

 

And then I finally got to see some of my church friends again and then a week later moved across the country. Now I feel even more isolated. I see online people together and I’m not.

 

And yesterday I got like 20 emails of fathers day advertisements. Y’all it’s not even a real holiday and even if it were a real holiday I wouldn’t want all the reminders, and let’s be real, even if I did still have my dad, the stuff advertised for dad isn’t usually anything I think real people would actually buy for their dads…I just want it to stop.

 

And moving is never fun…but then I had to move into an apartment I hadn’t seen until I moved in…and okay, I know I would make a lousy salesperson because I’m too honest, but when someone asks about kids because your contract makes it sound like kids aren’t allowed on the property, just saying that yes, kids are allowed and there are a few families is not really the right answer if you are then going to tell me on move-in day that child-proofing is not allowed. I just feel like there was a lot they weren’t honest about…and then just the things you don’t know if you haven’t seen the place, like yes, there are walk-in closets on the property…it’s just the plural is that there are multiple units and each has one…and also the walk-in closet is smaller than my normal closet in my old apartment…and there is very little cabinet space in this apartment, and there isn’t an entry closet…and there were hornets nests all over and a water leak…and the doors go directly to the outside, which is nice except for one problem – the front door has space around it like a hall door usually does but an entry door to the outside shouldn’t so the creepy crawlies have free access.

 

And this one I knew before I signed or handed over any money, but by washer and dryer in unit what they actually mean is there is space to put a washer and dryer in your unit…which, weird, but okay fine, so I bought a washer and dryer from best buy. Easier said than done because the ones I liked best were on back order which left a few I didn’t love and some ridiculously expensive ones…so the earliest date I could have both delivered the same day was the 18^th. No problem, I can wait that long. And then the 18^th comes and at almost the end of my delivery window I get a call from the delivery guy that they can’t find my dryer…like seriously? It’s kind of a big thing to lose…it’s not like some phone charger that can fall behind the shelf or something…so my choices are get a washer today or get nothing so I obviously choose the washer…and I call customer service and after and they try to tell me that they can’t deliver the dryer until mid-July. Y’all, I don’t think it is unreasonable to expect it to take less than 2 months to receive a dryer that is in stock. Like I get you might be running low on delivery appointments, but you already screwed up so what makes most sense is you squeeze in an extra appointment today and bring me my dryer. Sure, utilitarianism sounds good on the surface to get the most total happiness, but as a customer I would rather you bump a series of people by one day than to bump me by another month…but finally we compromised and I get my dryer right before I go back to work…which is frustrating that I have to be home for another 8-hour delivery window, but at least I’ll be able to dry the comforter my brothers got dirty which means I can finally wash it. So that sounds like it should be the end of the story, right? Wrong…so the next day I get an email asking me to schedule my delivery appointment and I’m like isn’t that what I did yesterday?!?! Nope, they scheduled the dryer delivery, but the power cord and vent for the dryer weren’t going to be able to be delivered until later…umm, what good does a dryer do without a power cord? And also what is my installation payment doing for me if you aren’t actually going to have the necessary parts for the install? So I get back on the phone with customer service and try a customer service chat window at the same time to try to get this fixed. After an hour it is almost my turn to chat and then I get an error that the website crashed so please get in line again…I tried and it was estimating 74 minutes for my wait time – which I already knew from my previous attempt that the estimated wait time should probably be multiplied by at least two, so I gave up on that and kept going on the phone…after nearly four hours of getting transferred to higher levels of support I finally got to someone who said probably my best option was to reschedule the dryer delivery – and I was like absolutely not…and so he thought for a while and the only other option was to add a note on the dryer to please also deliver the vent and power cord if time allows…and that was the best I was going to get from them so I was like sure whatever and gave up…remember this is the girl that used to bike across town for a simple question because she hates using the phone…and so my mom tried calling the store customer service instead of the online order customer service and the manager agreed that if I came in that evening they would just give me the pieces I needed…so I did (and apparently there was a carnival being set up along the way so traffic was awful and also the best buy is on the opposite side of the city from me). And I’ll let you guess whether the manager was there and whether anyone had any idea about what I needed…if you guessed no, you were correct…but I found a guy who at least worked with me to find the parts I needed…so might I end up with extra pieces, maybe, but at least now I know when I finally do get my dryer I will have the pieces I need for it to get installed whether they decided they had time to bring them or not…if I knew buying a dryer from best buy was that much drama I would have just gone against the advice I received and bought the pretty red ones someone was selling on Craigslist…’cause like yeah, they are used, but they are pretty and I’m sure I could find someone to help me lift them and how hard can it be to read the manual to figure out how to set it up?…

 

So yeah, I’ve been struggling emotionally and the other things going on in life haven’t really helped and I’ve probably got cumulatively less than an hour of sleep in the past week which means since I haven’t had to work that I’ve been spending 12-14 hours most night trying to sleep which means the days are short and I’m not getting things done that I really should be doing…but we’re doing our best over here and praying that God has a plan, because this is definitely not a sustainable life model long term…

 

…okay, to be fair, I was also texting late into the night last night because I figured if I wasn’t sleeping anyway I might as well get some kind of connection…and I did turn off the sound, but I still could see the little notification indicator turn on…so yeah…but that was actually really good, because I do really need people and at this point even just a person via text rather than real life is still way better than nothing…and I don’t *usually* do that…

 

…and now I need to just post this so I can not be too late to church.

Sometimes you gotta go far

(Down Down Low – Christa Wells)

 

Yesterday I broke the rules and went greater than an hour away from my primary hospital site…what they don’t know can’t hurt them…plus the whole stay home thing is supposed to end soon anyway…which doesn’t necessarily mean that it is okay to break the rules, but I have learned in the past few years of life (AKA since early in fourth year) that following every single rule exactly as stated is not always advisable…and I feel guilty but I also really don’t feel guilty because I am doing what is important to take care of myself, and I’m not even sure it is legal to restrict what I can do on unpaid time. If I was on call then it totally makes sense that I would need to stay located where I could actually be called in, but if I am purely on time off I feel like I should be able to use that time as I wish as long as it doesn’t impact my time at work (AKA not going out drinking before showing up to work). Basically that is my criteria for if a rule is allowed to be broken – if it isn’t a rule that I think is fully legal AND bending or breaking it mildly is highly likely to enhance my well-being and highly unlikely to cause any negative consequences then I will consider breaking the rule. Which I hate because I feel like I should respect authority even when that authority hasn’t earned respect…but I also know I likely wouldn’t have made it through school if I hadn’t obtained desperately needed sharing of the load by stretching some definitions nowhere near 989’s definitions but definitely just a little beyond the dictionary’s opinion…and even knowing that I might not have made it without that I still feel guilty. But like seriously to not be allowed to talk about being abused or the aftermath and not being allowed to talk about not being allowed to talk about it…clearly I had no way to heal so I was carrying more than anyone should be asked to carry and sometimes just needed to be able to at least insinuate to a safe person that something was wrong…and so I did, and I pretty much had don’t ask don’t tell permission because *someone* had to admit that keeping a student from accessing support was maybe not wise. And, I mean, the amount I shared pretty much never really went beyond “I can’t explain why I’m hurting,” even leaving the “can’t” up for interpretation of whether I meant I literally can’t or just that it was one of those things I didn’t have the verbal skills for and didn’t have a paper handy to share my thoughts…

 

Anyway, back to what I actually started writing this post to actually write about…

 

I was having a really hard morning – not just because I didn’t sleep so I was tired, but also I was emotionally not doing well. And I was annoyed.

 

I had plans for the day. I was going to get up and get mostly ready then study then finish getting ready and get in the car to go to an eye appointment.

 

Instead I got up and was crabby and got ready and by the time I was finally done getting ready it was time to go. Apparently even if I take the shortcut of 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner to hurry up the shower process, it still takes forever and a half to get ready when, for example, apparently putting on pants involves stopping to wash my hands five or so times…not because of germs, but because of stimulus generalization. I didn’t know why my brain didn’t feel good, but a lot of times it doesn’t really matter what the initial not feel good is – my brain knows quite well that in the past washing my hands provided (momentary) relief from the emotional pain of OCD and so it generalized that to my brain doesn’t feel good so I am going to wash my hands…and sometimes (okay, most of the time right now…grief s*c*s) the executive in my brain is taking way too many unauthorized vacations and even tasks like trying to figure out which backpack pocket to put my phone in just feels overwhelming and hard and thus takes longer than it should.

 

So I got in the car and I was annoyed because I was crying most of the drive and I felt like I should be way past that and I was annoyed because I should have better control of my emotions.

 

I *really* wanted to write it off as severe anxiety about going to a new place and talking to new people including on the phone to let them know I had arrived so they could let me in to wait my turn. But it didn’t feel like anxiety. Honestly, anxiety was on my mind about the situation the night before, but by the morning I didn’t really feel much anxiety, but I knew something was wrong.

 

And I arrived and pulled myself together enough to call and get on with life. And as I started picking out glasses I knew what was going on.

 

The last time I was at the eye doctor was the day my dad died. That is what this was about. It all made sense. I still was annoyed at myself that I couldn’t get over it, but at least I figured out why I was struggling. And that really helps.

 

It didn’t make sense at night or right away in the morning, but once it clicked it made a lot of sense. Last year, on a Friday I drove basically the same route I was driving Wednesday morning, but last year I was driving to someone’s house to drop off a child and then I went to Panera with my family and my dad biked there from work. I went to the eye doctor on Saturday morning, then I went home to start washing my entire apartment (because three-year-olds have no concept of germs and while things like the floor isn’t a kleenex and we wash our hands before eating are worth teaching, other things are not priorities) and then getting in a little sleep. That night and Sunday night I worked the night shift. Then Monday morning I went to my parents’ house, and Tuesday I helped my best friend with Night to Unite in three communities (which side note I am really sad that I will have to miss that this year since I’ll be in a different state…). Wednesday morning I went back home. Friday was the accident. The next week my dad was in the hospital all week. Early Monday morning I went home from the hospital with my best friend and went to bed for a few hours then went to the eye doctor for a follow up because I couldn’t see anything on my left side  wearing my contacts which is a moderate problem. And then after that I picked up my glasses that I hadn’t picked up yet because I went to the hospital instead of the eye doctor for the weekend. My dad never got to see my new glasses because I wore contacts when picking them out so I didn’t need to take pictures of them because I could see what I looked like…and it wasn’t like I was thinking then that I would need to show them to anyone. I haven’t gone back since…in fact, I never actually ordered any contacts. I kind of lost the contacts I was supposed to be trying…and then I finally found them but didn’t ever remember to try them out….and then suddenly it was far enough through the year that it no longer made sense to buy contacts that might be the wrong prescription in a few months anyway…

 

So yeah, no kidding it was a rough day.

 

But this time I made sure I had pictures of my new glasses. I didn’t necessarily need a new pair, but I picked out two pairs because I have plenty of money in my account that I lose when I leave my job…I didn’t use all the money in the account though, because even if it is just going to go into someone else’s pocket it seemed kind of wasteful to buy more than two pairs of glasses, especially when I was also planning on buying contacts and have two other pairs of glasses that are still essentially correct in addition to a backup pair that is close enough to work in an emergency but will give me a headache if I have to wear them all day…

 

Usually I don’t post pictures of myself on here because confidentiality, but I was wearing a mask that covers the majority of my face and I can edit out my eyes…so…here’s what I picked.

Also another tangent to give the advice that if you don’t know your right hand from your left hand very well don’t forget to re-draw the L and R on your hands after you wash them and it comes off so that it doesn’t look like you have no idea what you are doing as you change lanes multiple times trying to figure out which way you expect to turn and spend way too long at the intersections hoping you can figure out the correct choice…maybe in the future google could be re-worked to give me driving directions in terms of turn towards the window or turn towards the passenger seat – I think I could consistently get that right.

You can simulate but as hard as you try

(Statues – Remedy Drive)

 

This lyric really felt right for what is going on these days.

 

People are trying to make life “normal” by using video-conferencing technology or phone calls or whatever else, but as much as you want to tell yourself otherwise, virtual reality is not actually reality. Seeing someone via the computer or hearing someone over the phone or listening to someone via text messaging is still a disconnection from community. It will never fill the social hole in our lives. That hole can only be filled by real people.

 

On a related subject, the OCD I was dealing with a couple weeks ago has pretty much gone away. I am so thankful for that. There is some residual – mostly in avoiding any prepared food that wasn’t prepared by me or someone I trust so like no restaurant food and no cafeteria food, but right now I am okay with that…to be honest, while there are some restaurants where I love the food, I have always felt like restaurant food was a risk, even when there was not really an inkling of OCD around, so I am okay with avoiding that potential risk for a while at this time. I do not want to avoid that kind of thing forever, because like I’ve said before *can* you live life in fear of germs, yes, but should you, no, because that is an awful way to live…and one thing leads to the next and the more certainty you crave the more uncertainty you will feel. So at some point I will need to make sure I am intentionally eating food that doesn’t feel safe, but for a week or two while there are a lot of other changes going on around me I feel like having the familiarity of my own food is probably also something that is better for me, so it isn’t really the right time to push that.

 

Today so far I have gotten zero minutes of studying in…and to be honest I probably will not get any studying in the rest of today. I had really good intentions, but to make a long story short, all the things that were supposed to be really easy things to accomplish to get some things off the to do list first were things that I ran into barriers and got frustrated with…and then I saw that there was another IOCDF Town Hall on coronavirus and I wanted to watch that…it is so helpful to hear about other people having the same thoughts I am having and having to make a lot of the same choices as I am having to make and basically just having the same types of things coming up. Our circumstances might not be totally identical, but so many of the things brought up are so relatable. I’m not the only one who felt like the pandemic was my fault. I’m not the only one who felt angry that I had let the OCD come back (when in reality I didn’t really have any control over that). I am so thankful that there are there are people making content that reinforces the facts while validating and normalizing a lot of the things people like me are dealing with at a time like this. I appreciated that they acknowledged that life doesn’t happen in a bubble – while there are coronavirus related issues coming up, there are also things that would have happened either way that might have felt nearly insurmountable on their own, but dealing with them in addition to this just feels impossible. Also, this video really focused a lot of attention on realizing that a lot of what we might be interpreting as anger, fear, or sadness might actually be covering up our grief. There are a lot of losses.

 

For someone like me, I have never been very good at having friends outside of scheduled activities so I depend on things like church and other activities throughout the week to have a social connection. I’d been working really hard on trying to have friends outside of scheduled activities, but then everything was cancelled and most people don’t want to do anything anymore. It is hard. I live by myself so I am completely isolated. Virtual hangouts are great, but they don’t fill my social bucket the way that actual social interaction would. They are a band-aid over a broken bone. Maybe it kinda feels good for a few minutes, but it really doesn’t solve the problem. I desperately need real life people in my real life.

 

Kind of jumping to another topic, on Thursday I read the actual text of the governor’s most recent executive order. It was actually rather informative. People act like what the governor said means we can’t do anything, but there is actually quite a bit we are still allowed to do. You can still have playdates in public places (pretty sure they aren’t supposed to be called playdates once you are an adult, but I don’t really know what the word for adult playdates is). You can still go to restaurants (but not sit inside to eat) and stores (at least the ones that haven’t voluntarily closed). You can still go to residences including hotels, apartments, beach homes, houses, or other locations providing shelter. People can go to faith establishments (which I guess is the inclusive way of saying churches?) but only the minimum number of people required should be there. You can go outside (but the order does clarify that this does not mean you can trespass – you can only be outside in areas you would otherwise have been allowed to be). You can drive, walk, hunt, fish. You can buy a bike or a car. You can check in on your family, neighbors, or friends to provide care, support, or supplies. If your job is open you can still go to work…just in case anyone gave us a hard time my employer has a form letter on the website that just says if someone has this letter and a nametag it verifies that this person is an employee and should be allowed to continue to work. Seems kinda silly since anyone can print it and have an old tag or someone else’s tag or just not be scheduled for work…but I think they did it because there were some people anxious that what if someone stops me and thinks I shouldn’t be where I am?! So I guess a letter that probably took about 1 minute to whip up to ease some people’s anxiety is probably a good idea.

 

A lot of what is going on right now is also realizing that I can only control what I am doing. I might be angry about decisions other people are making and frustrated about the impact of those decisions on me and struggling with some of those things, but no matter how dumb or frustrating someone’s decision is and no matter how much that person doesn’t actually understand reality, if I am not in charge my job is to follow the rules and hope they change. No amount of frustration and anger is going to make things change.

 

I was reading a blog post recently that described someone who took her family kayaking only to realize she didn’t know how to swim and had never kayaked before and while it made sense for her 7-year-old son to ride with her husband that left her alone in a single kayak and she was struggling and afraid. She fell behind and then there was rougher water and she felt overwhelmed and alone like she was trying so hard but the trying was for nothing…but then the tour guide came to here and said it’s going to be okay and hooked her boat to his. She felt safe and secure. While it was briefly painful to hear a story of someone experiencing a together-ness that I am separated from, it was also a good reminder that sometimes I won’t be able to do life on my own. Sometimes I will need help…and while it feels like right now in my real life that most people don’t want to physically be with me and help me right now that God will never abandon me. Even if I got the Roni, God wouldn’t be afraid of me and he would be right there with me the whole time. He does say that it is not good for man to be alone…but he also promises to be with us even if people in the world do leave us alone.

 

There is a lot of uncertainty in life, but I have to keep believing that someday it will be better even if I have to wait for heaven for that. Maybe God lets life be hard so the goodness of heaven is just that much more sweet.

 

That isn’t to say I don’t want together right now. I do. Last week when there was still some OCD going on I felt like since I am in a high risk group that I didn’t want to spend any more time than necessary with other people in high risk groups because I felt like then if one person went down we’d all go down and…now I have gotten past the unrealistic OCD version of infectious disease where getting sick is basically inevitable because “proper” containment and sanitation is basically impossible so I realize that as long as I am not having symptoms nor am I visiting with someone with symptoms that it really is okay to still have friends. I am also getting so incredibly lonely that if the only person willing to hang with me had COVID19 I would consider whether quarantine and potentially getting sick was worth having some social contact. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There is a power in “with” that is impossible to re-create in the virtual realm. That power is so important and healing and life without it sucks. Pardon my foul language, but sometimes you just gotta say it like it is.

Lookin’ out for a threat in my own land

(Welcome to America – LeCrae)

 

I’m still struggling, but I am doing a lot better today. Today I have been hovering around 6 to 8 out of 10. A few spikes higher, but mostly a lot lower than the past two days. It is a lot higher than I want to be and feels like it is way higher than it *should* be, but today I was watching the video I found yesterday that I definitely couldn’t watch at work.

 

https://www.ocdkidsmovie.com/coronavirus It’s the first video on this page (titled JUST, Ethan: OCD/Coronavirus Town Hall). It was super helpful in normalizing a lot of what I am dealing with. Sometimes I forget there are other people with OCD dealing with similar issues. I have never been to an OCD support group (ironically, it was primarily anxiety that kept me from ever attending when there was a free group near me when I was in school and now I both don’t know of any free groups and until recently didn’t really have OCD anymore…), but this video made me really wish I had been involved. It helps to realize I am not the only compulsive researcher, not the only one struggling with where the line is between letting OCD get a stronger hold and actually legitimately protecting myself, not the only one worried about hurting someone else. It helped to hear that it is common for OCD to think that it has its own MD and was a much better student than the actual experts. It helped to be reminded that while we are freaking out, the CDC isn’t actually recommending any washing beyond what we already should be doing – not easy, but good…because I want to be told that it is okay to spend all day washing my hands, but knowing that right now all that is recommended is washing your hands like normal is good to know. Based on the questions it kind of sounds like I might not be dealing as well as other people…but…they also addressed how people with OCD tend to be all or nothing thinkers – either I am in remission or I am in a relapse with no room for I am just having some fear…I honestly think I am beyond the point of “just some fear” but it is very true that I am an all or nothing thinker. Grey is super hard for me. Even though I love the song Grey (grey’s my favorite color; black and white have never been my thing…). Maybe one of the most encouraging pieces of advice was that people who are fighting OCD are some of the people most equipped for a time like this because we have experience with coping with fear and uncertainty.

 

I’m not out of the woods and I’m still struggling, but I am thankful that the anxiety has at least decreased.

 

JK. My apartment manager knocked on my door and just having to interact with someone increased my anxiety, and then she invited herself into my apartment and besides the fact that my apartment looks like a small bomb went off, I really really do not want other people in my apartment, and especially not other people that are wearing shoes. As soon as she left I was crying again and then I used one of my last two cleaning wipes to wipe my face and the floor.

 

I know that isn’t the right way to deal with this stuff, but I also know that I am doing my best.

 

So yeah. I don’t know how I am going to get through the next few months or more if this fear continues…I know now that I need help, especially because tomorrow I go back to work and the position of my current employer is that everything is business as usual, and I know from my coworkers’ experiences that even with doctor recommendations for accommodations there is no guarantee even if I asked for accommodations that I would get them…yeah, I know I said before I never saw accommodations as something that would benefit me in the long run, but I feel  like right now my anxiety is so high that working is hard and I might actually be more productive and make better decisions if I could work from home or if I could at least work exclusively in the cancer center where I have a lot less contact with other people. I feel like right now the more immediate problem than beating the OCD is getting the anxiety under control even if it does let the OCD itself get worse.

 

They want us to be a direct patient care department, but honestly the reason even when it was suggested I was never interested in even considering becoming a doctor is because I have zero desire to be in a direct patient care role. Pharmacy is for me because I want to directly impact patients while having zero contact with them…but they are pushing for patient contact and that is why they aren’t even considering work from home at this time. They’ve said they’ll consider it if we reach crisis level staffing due to quarantines and illness – I think by that point it is way too late. I want to work from home right now. I have always hated med rec partly because I hated talking to the patients, and also because I was terrified of the germs…and a big problem in my opinion is that probably at least once per time I have a med rec shift there is a patient that doesn’t have precautions when I go in the room but when I go out and back to my computer suddenly the patient is on precautions…it always makes me mad because especially when it is that quick, clearly you were thinking about it by the time I went in and could have at least warned me that there might be a risk…but really my opinion is that even people without infectious symptoms are a risk and I know we are supposed to be conserving PPE because it is on shortage and we already are getting sub-products just to have *something* to use, but I would much prefer to wear a mask and gloves and hospital-issued scrubs whenever I had to have contact with a patient. And I don’t necessarily want contact with my coworkers either. I am really glad things are being cancelled because I at least don’t feel pressure to go places while my anxiety is making it nearly impossible to get out of bed for anything but showering and washing my hands (and going to the bathroom)…

 

If I didn’t know it was a super irresponsible decision, I would just put in my notice and quit…but I know that is a bad choice. I really really don’t want to go to work tomorrow though. I mean, today I really had to work hard to walk the few feet down the hall to my mailbox…going back to work is just a huge hurdle. I know these things aren’t my decision and I have to respect that, but this is definitely one of those times I wish I wasn’t a pharmacist. If I’d given up on my dream and become a social worker instead I could do telecounseling. I mean, a lot of people wouldn’t want to come see me anyway, so it would help ease my fear and my clients’ fear. Would it be avoidance which is usually not a good choice – probably, but I think with where my anxiety levels have been that it is probably better to find a way to bring the anxiety levels down than to directly work on the OCD at this point. I am going to keep doing my best.

 

Someone on the internet said that he thinks the best approach would be for a group of people most likely to recover from the infection to intentionally get infected and then there would at least be some herd immunity in the population. I was angry at that suggestion. First, there is no way to know for sure if someone is going to survive the infection or not, so even if you are willing to go first (which the guy wasn’t – he felt like he should be the part of the population that got to hide away while the rest of us were thrown to the wolves). Second, evidence from China made it unclear whether this was a virus that people developed immunity to after recovery, plus even if they did it doesn’t mean they would be immune to other strains and we already know that there are variations in the genetic make-up of this virus which means that it could very well become different enough that immunity (if it is possible) to one strain wouldn’t protect you from the next strain, just like if you get influenza A it does not impact your potential for getting influenza B just as badly because they are different enough that immunity from one doesn’t impact the course of the other much if at all.

 

And I am angry that there is even a potential that I or anyone I know could get this disease. I think as soon as the virus was discovered in China that people shouldn’t have been allowed out of China. I know this is my OCD speaking, because there is a tiny part of my brain that says you can’t force people to stay inside even a large country, but it is hard to stay in the real when it feels like there is such a threat. There are confirmed positives in the county I live in now. That is really really not okay. That means to me that probably every single person in the county is infected. That means no one and no where are safe. I want to move to Antarctica which is the only continent without Covid-19. I am scared. I have only had maybe 16oz of water today which I know means I am getting progressively more dehydrated which is dangerous, but it is hard when the fear is so high to get anything in my body. I had some time this morning where I was at like a 6 and happily ate the chocolate bar I bought at Ikea in October…and I probably should have tried to get some fluids in too, but I was thinking more along the lines of making sure calories were getting in. I haven’t seen the pounds drop off my body yet, but I know that is a risk if I can’t get my anxiety under control, so yeah. I don’t know how I am going to get through this. I should really be using time like my day off today to start studying for the law exam and stuff, but instead I have just been trying to survive, which is all well and good and all, but is not going to help if I lose my position because of failing the exam. Then I’d have no job at all which would be an even bigger problem probably. I would really like God to come back and end the world. That feels like the only solution right now. So yeah, I still need a lot of prayer and I am still trying to figure out if there are other ways people could help without terrifying me. I want to say please drop off bleach and Clorox wipes, but for one I don’t want to impose on anyone, and for two I am afraid even if I got the industrial size that I would feel like since it was dropped off to help me feel better that it would be okay to use the whole thing that day…which might or might not help for a few hours, but then could potentially make it worse when I couldn’t do the same thing the next time…or when I destroyed something that I later felt was important enough to me that I shouldn’t have destroyed it…so yeah…basically I am fighting for my life over here and don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s tough to fight the fear when you’re feeling scared

Let’s Go – Debra Lynn La Lima)

 

OCD thrives on uncertainty, and there is a lot of uncertainty in the world. Yesterday I read some recommendations from OCD experts on managing OCD during this time…and they don’t even all agree. Some say let people have their obsessions and compulsions as much as they want because of the liability if you told them otherwise and they got sick or died. Others say carry on as if nothing changed. Others are in the middle saying follow CDC recommendations to the T and consider life an exposure at this point. And of course everything in between…so there isn’t even a good guideline on what the right response to this thing is.

 

I know it is my OCD speaking, but I don’t think the CDC recommendations are good enough. There is a lot I don’t think is good enough right now. I will admit that when my OCD takes over, germs become almost magical in their ability to infect the entire world…and the severity of every possible infection basically increases exponentially…I don’t want anybody to die but it feels like everyone is going to die.

 

I saw somewhere that being a pharmacist right now if like being a musician on the titanic – they played as if everything was absolutely normal as the ship went down. That is pretty much how they want us to respond. We are still supposed to carry on as if nothing changed except make sure the code orange list is up to date in case we need to call extra people in. In Italy, they closed everything, even parks…but not pharmacies. So yeah, I thought that was an apt comparison…and then…I realized that every single one of the musicians on the titanic died (because they were busy making sure everything stayed absolutely normal instead of trying to save everyone)…umm, yeah, not happy…I know legally there are a lot of barriers to working from home, but I would say the vast majority if not all of my job could theoretically be done from home if I had the programs and a couple cameras in place…but instead they make me go to the germ-infested hospital and sit next to my coworkers all day.

 

It doesn’t help for them to claim that the hospital is a safe place for patients/visitors/staff. You might as well be telling me the sun is black for all I am going to believe you. And I know that being with people is healing…but it feel incredibly scary…

 

Nothing feels safe. I don’t even feel safe in my apartment. My door opens into the hallway – a shared space with minimal cross-ventilation. And air can get in from under/around my door, so really my entire apartment is incredibly contaminated and not safe either. I mean, I guess it is safer than some other places, but it just doesn’t feel safe and I don’t know what to do.

 

I thought I could just create a set of rules and follow them with no exceptions and I’d make it through this…I know that over time I will get through this and I know that in the past creating rules has been helpful for me…but right now I am in so deep that just making the rules was too hard. I know that the right answer to the maximum number of daily showers should be 1 unless there is some type of extenuating circumstance, but it feels like a minimum of 2-3 would be much more appropriate and I can’t make myself agree. Right now I am sticking with just one, but it is a huge battle of wills to do so. And like I am trying to convince myself that just laying on my bed in front of the computer doesn’t require getting up to get hand sanitizer and washing my hands…but that, too, is a struggle…if I weren’t so tired I might not be winning that battle, but between about maybe 2 hours of sleep last night and zero the night before and all the fighting I have done in the past to not let the OCD win, I am moderating…for now…but to be honest I am willing right now to give myself some grace if that’s what it takes to get through the days, because at this point the anxiety is a major problem and if I thought it would get me sleep and would get sufficient food and water in my body with less fight I would do pretty much anything right now. The problem is, the fear is so bad that even washing my hands doesn’t really bring any relief. While I am doing it I am still worrying that it isn’t working and as soon as I make myself stop I feel like the germs are rushing back onto my hands. It feels hopeless.

 

To be honest, I am a huge extravert. You wouldn’t necessarily guess it since my anxiety tends to keep me alone on the fringes, but I am an extravert, and that makes this even harder, because I live a lot of life incredibly lonely, but now the idea of being with anyone is terrifying – what if I get them sick and what if they get me sick…

 

And then there is the whole I really should be preparing for residency now (getting licensed, getting somewhere to live, etc) but that whole thing that would be really hard even without anything else going on (I’ve never really moved all at once before and I’ve never done a back and forth and back and forth move without my daddy before)…and I don’t really know how to pack and I don’t know how to find somewhere to live and my executive function is still struggle-bussing so organizing all the things that need to be done in order to get licensed and the studying for the test were going to be challenging. Then you add the anxiety on top. I don’t want anyone to help me move because they will add germs to my stuff…but my car definitely can’t tow a moving truck and my car can’t fit any real furniture, so not having any help at all is not an option. And what if the testing centers close and there is no way to take the exam? And what if the board of pharmacy closes and whether I take the test or not I can’t get licensed…and I’m pretty sure Missouri’s board of pharmacy require finger printing which first requires a finger printing center to be open and second requires that my fingers touch surfaces that gazillions of other fingers have touched…

 

…and a teen in a school in an area I frequent was I think a confirmed positive (maybe a presumed positive but the only difference is whether the patient tested positive on just a regular test or on the CDC test)…and that is another big problem because the only people that count as true positives in our case counts are the ones tested by the CDC which is not that many. And that obviously means there are zillions of people who are positive but not in our case counts. And there is a presumed positive who was at a high school in my area on Wednesday and another potential positive I heard through hearsay right next to one of the hospitals I work at and another one or more near the hospital I mostly work at…okay, one of those ones closer to me I haven’t got a clue where it actually is located and another is a quarantine of an exposed person not an actual case (yet) and the other parts of the more were basically invented in my mind…but yeah, I am scared.

 

I wanna end with lyrics that I think are from a Michael Card song, but I’m not sure which one “sleep while you can now so wandering and torn for outside this world is a terrible storm. Soon you’ll discover the taste of your tears as the maker so silently fashions your form.” Actually I think it is from Lullaby of the Unborn by Michael Card…yep…I’ve definitely discovered the taste of my tears lately…the internet says lots of previously healthy people my age who seemed like they had little risk of being infected much less of dying have died…one of the stories I probably shouldn’t have read, the woman was 29 and she’d been wearing a mask and washing her hands and all that stuff but one day she felt nauseous and then a few days later she was in the hospital and then it seemed like she was getting better but then a few days later her heart stopped and within I think it was a week later she died but her husband is still telling their children that mommy is at work and every time the phone rings they ask for mommy because they don’t know she is dead…and that was scary because I don’t want to die and I don’t want my mom to die and I don’t want anyone to die and I don’t want that person to be dead but she already is and it is too late and the world is a scary place to live and I was super angry both on my way to work and on my way home. On my way to work because someone was outside and coughing and on my way home because someone was spitting in the street. People being disgusting and spitting in the street makes me mad all the time because by the time you are maybe 3-5 years old you should definitely know better than to spit, so by the time you are a grown adult you really have no excuse for not having learned that…but when I am fighting the OCD it makes even more angry because it feels like a direct threat to my safety.

 

Like it says in I’ll Find You by LeCrae, death’s knockin’ on the front door, pain’s creepin’ through the back. Fear’s crawlin’ through the windows waitin’ for ‘em to attack. They say don’t get bitter get better, I’m working on switchin’ them letters,  but tell God I’mma need a whole lotta hope keepin’ it together. I’m smilin’ in everyone’s face. I’m cryin’ whenever they leave the room. They don’t understand what I face. They don’t know a thing that I’m goin’ through.

 

I am mostly just trying to survive, but I do want to get better. And I have to hope that I will get better. Maybe it will be in the next week. Maybe I will be fighting every single day until Covid-19 is contained, but either way I’m struggling now and need hope now. I am not doing well, but I refuse to accept this as my fate for the rest of my life. One day I will beat this. I have to, because I can’t keep living like this. I want to go home to heaven, but I can’t. Not today.

 

Maybe I could learn to skype or something so I could decrease the anxiety around social time but still have a way to connect. Maybe that is too much for me right now. I have no idea. I’m just exhausted and drained and have a whole day in front of my tomorrow…but luckily one in which I do not have to go to work and right now I’m thinking I’ll give myself permission to just change into a clean pair of pajamas instead of trying to fight the fear of the germs that might be on my real clothes…because doing laundry does decrease the germ load by washing some of the germs away, but it doesn’t kill germs and like just one item contaminated with a microscopic load of norovirus can infect 95% of the items washed with that item…and at times like this, that is terrifying. And I’m going to actually stop writing now and see if I can actually finish dinner. That would be an awesome accomplishment.

Whatever I did tell me so I can do it more I’m so afraid of losing more

(What did I do – Stephanie Pauline)

 

The original title of this post was going to be “was it worth it, the hurting, the pain” (No regrets  Lecrae) and obviously like the chorus of that song says, the answer was going to be I’d do it again in a heartbeat…I really wanted my next post to be a super victory announcement…the first sentence of this title is I guess my victory – I don’t know how I finally got someone to want me, but I am so relieved that I did…or at least I was relieved…

 

…but I’m in crisis right now.

 

…which probably shouldn’t come as such a surprise given the current media focus on mass hysteria and my history. People with OCD or a history thereof are told over and over that you don’t need to keep washing your hands. The world is safe. You are okay…but then the CDC and the WHO say wash your hands all the time. And the media says apparently some kinds of bleach are better than others and I didn’t even know there *were* different kinds of bleach (and I also so far have never allowed myself to purchase bleach because I know with my OCD it is not a safe thing for me to own). But now more than ever I want it…which probably means I definitely shouldn’t buy it, because I know myself and if I had bleach right now I could absolutely not be responsible with it…which is why even when I am doing well I don’t buy bleach even to try to remove stains, because it isn’t worth it for the risk it brings. Even just having it there to make me feel safe and having me promise I wouldn’t open the bottle isn’t really the greatest idea because, for one, I’m sure I’d find an excuse to open it for what felt like but wasn’t a good reason and for two because to beat the OCD it is best to actually try to learn safety rather than trying to create backup plans.

 

…but anyway, surprise or not I am fighting, and I know I need to eat dinner, and I know that probably if I can eat dinner it will actually make me feel better because one symptom of low blood sugar is anxiety, and I know that fueling my body is important, but right now my anxiety is too high to force myself to eat, so I am hoping writing will maybe help…maybe it won’t, but it is worth a try.

 

I am trying to focus on the positive. I made it multiple weeks of being okay before I came crashing down.

 

It started innocently enough. For the past week or two there has been a truck with the logo of the company my dad used to work for parked somewhere that I see on my way home from work. Not always in the exact same spot, but always on my way home. And I want to call my dad and tell him about it, but I can’t. That creates an emotional not feel good each time. Due to stimulus generalization, that emotional not feel good turned into washing my hands. Even in people without OCD, extra hand-washing has been associated with increased levels of health-related anxiety, so as you can imagine, in someone with a history of OCD I was at even higher risk…but with all the news saying wash your hands it didn’t seem *that* out of place to do a little extra washing, and it honestly wasn’t really overly excessive. More than necessary, yes, but not nearly as bad as it could be.

 

Then I got the residency match results. I finally matched!! I am thrilled!! But you know what one of the emotions most physiologically related to excitement is? Anxiety. I didn’t notice my anxiety levels creeping up at first. I mean, I was totally distractible, but I mean I’ve been more distractable than usual since my dad died and add excitement to that and it made sense…and also, I am very much aware that I am due for a period and a lot of my period symptoms overlap with the anxiety symptoms, so it still didn’t click. When I didn’t really particularly *want* to eat dinner that should have been a big clue, but I mean my body was adjusting from evening shift so I had a late breakfast and lunch and it made sense to some extent that at 4-something I might not be particularly hungry, especially because I had been snacking.

 

I went to my church’s St. Patrick’s Day talent show and participated and by the end I was definitely fighting the fear, but I was doing okayish…but by the time I arrived at home my anxiety was, simply put, bad. I got ready for bed, but my anxiety was extreme. I was very much awake the entire night. At one point I finally was like I’m not sleeping anyway so I might as well go on facebook and ask for help. I was still awake the rest of the night, but somewhere in the early morning hours my anxiety finally fell to a 7 out of 10. A seven is still severe, still a number at which I am going to be working hard to do anything including getting food and water in my body, but I spent most of the night at around a 9.5, so it was a definite improvement. I have always prided myself on being able to mostly keep up normal appearances despite my anxiety, but at a 9.5 I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it to work.

 

As it was, on my way to work I was singing to myself (to the tune of row row row your boat) wash wash wash your hands wash until they bleed, nothing goes near your mouth until the blood flows out.

 

I do know that when your hands become bloody you are now at increased risk of infection, but it is really hard to not keep washing your hands when your anxiety is high, and if the washing gets really bad, lotions/creams/ointments stop working for two reasons. First, because they don’t have time to sit on the skin long enough to do anything before they are washed off again and second because eventually there isn’t really much skin left for them to soak into to protect or heal.

 

As much as I know the power of with, at the high levels of anxiety I am facing I don’t want to leave my apartment and I don’t want anyone else to leave their homes either. I want bleach to rain out of the sky and flood everything. The anxiety sucks and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. A few weeks ago when I said that you can’t live your life in fear…and then backtracked and was like well you can, but it is an awful existence…well, at the point I am right now, leaving in fear is awful, but fighting the fear makes it even worse…but I know not fighting it really isn’t a choice. I do know that right now all it takes is claiming I feel sick and no questions asked I will have the day off…but…I also know that creates a lot more work and puts a lot more stress on my coworkers and that isn’t fair to them, so my sense of honesty will not let me do that if I am not really sick…even though OCD is definitely an illness it isn’t an illness that is contagious.

 

People have different reactions to my fear. One of my coworkers thought it’d be funny to lick his hand and touch a bin. I did not find that funny. He did put hand sanitizer on the bin after he saw my reaction, but when I was running on zero sleep *because of OCD* I was definitely not in a place of mind where that was even marginally funny. Another coworker was like but that doesn’t make sense because you are young and even if you got it you’d be fine…and while the logical part of my brain knows she is probably right, most of my brain is still not okay and running the worst case scenarios of getting really sick and or dying and or my family or someone else I know getting really sick and or dying. And those worst case scenarios that my logic center knows are just that, worst case scenarios, other parts of my brain see them as the totally logical next step of life. And that makes it really hard to even care that I am going to have a residency and to start working on plans for that…and I know there are about a million plans that need to be set in place for all that to happen…and then she was talking about how her daughter’s friend had been to Italy before the ban and now her daughter is worried that she might be exposed and might expose other people who are at higher risk…and I definitely didn’t need her to spell that out for me because as soon as she got as far as friend and Italy I had already made the rest of the leaps and was afraid. While I was at work there were times my anxiety went as low as like a 6, but upon leaving, my anxiety quickly started rising again.

 

There are a lot of ways that my OCD is a vicious cycle. One of them is that my anxiety sometimes induces nausea to the point that I have thrown up solely from fear before. (The way I diagnose that it must have been fear is really partly restrospective and when my anxiety is high I don’t actually fully believe the episode was fear-based even though I know it was, but my criteria is basically that I felt physically fine before anxiety started ramping up then I felt nauseous and threw up, then almost immediately I started replacing fluids and didn’t throw up again. It is terrifying (and honestly the actual vomiting part hasn’t ever happened with OCD-related anxiety probably because that is the worst part of the fear and what I am trying hardest to avoid…but I still have the GI issues that feed into the fear and then that fear increases the GI issues which increase the fear…so yeah, I am fighting so hard and not feeling like I am winning.

 

I guess one more positive is that I know based on the calendar and on symptoms that I should be having a period right now, but except for such minimal spotting it could have easily been missed if I hadn’t been watching for it, I haven’t had bleeding or the awful pain that sometimes accompanies it. So either my anxiety has suppressed that (which definitely is possible) or I just have a little longer than I expected for it to get going, but either way I will take what I can get. After all this writing I still don’t want to eat, but I am going to get some food ready and at least try to eat it, and then I’m going to at least try to get some sleep tonight. I don’t know if it is going to happen but I really want it to. I can’t keep going like this.

 

I should probably clarify that even before my anxiety started really kicking in I had said to myself that probably suicide rates were going to go up as people become afraid of being around other people and increase social isolation, but currently I do not feel suicidal. It is hard to describe, but there is this huge pressure I often feel when the OCD is attacking that I have to stay alive and continue fighting. I don’t understand it, but I just wanted to clarify that at this time I am in crisis and not doing well at all, but I am safe from suicide. I tried to research suicide and coronavirus using google recently, but apparently google doesn’t recognize the difference between dead and suicide so all that got me was big warning about the dangers or coronavirus and I knew better than to try to read those articles.

 

Please pray for health for me and for everyone I know and for everyone I don’t know. Health physically, and health emotionally. And that I can stop crying and get some food in my body, not necessarily in that order – either order is just fine if I can have both. Basically I need help and since people are currently terrifying, prayer is the only thing I can really ask for.