I hate this damn disease. I can’t get away from it, so I try to deal with it. Just when I think I can deal with it, it changes and hits me from an angle I never expected. I am in a particularly vicious downward spiral right now. I read on the news today that they found the body of that little girl that went missing in CA – and I almost broke down crying in my office. I see news like that, which is everywhere in our media obsessed culture, and I become almost paralyzed with fear for my daughter. I can’t separate it, I can’t compartmentalize it. It is the irrational fear that OCD sufferers know all too well. It starts as grief and sympathy for the people who loved that girl, and then it becomes horror at knowing what she must have went through, and it moves on to terror that the same thing will happen to someone I love. I feel helpless, I feel scared, I am so damn disgusted by some of the uglier realities that are out there in our world. I know all parents worry for their children, but this is too much. This is hell. I face the agonizing pain of potential loss almost as if it were real…and I do it over and over again. The mere thought of something so awful happening to my little girl sends me into an anxiety tailspin. This is so difficult, and the things that make me want to keep going on are the things that OCD uses against me to bully me into living in fear.

Thank you for letting me write this down – I think it will help. My thoughts and prayers to anyone suffering from the same. Most especially, my thoughts and prayers go out to the loved ones of that little girl…for them, unlike me, it isn’t all in their heads.