This is my first blog here, and I even as I\’m typing these very words I\’m starting to feel just a little relieved. I feel like I just found this hidden magic place on the internet, where I can talk to so many people who have suffered from the same illness that I have. I\’ve always wanted to write blogs about my experience but I never brought myself to do it on Myspace or Facebook because I would be speaking to people who really couldn\’t understand what I was going through. But now, there\’s this site. And blogging is going to be a regular thing for me.
I want to start by talking about some things other than OCD. I\’m going to get to it before the end of this blog, but I feel that even though OCD is a part of who I am, there is so much more to me than that. These next few parts may seem like boasting, but what I\’m trying to do here is highlight some things about me that I think are good, because I don\’t want it to seem like suffering is my only activity. Normally I\’m very modest and rarely talk about my own life with other people. But here, it\’s different because honesty is the best policy here. [On a side note, the following will be written in a random fashion, without much regard for transitional material]
-I have considered music an important part of my life since I was a young kid. It was when I was in middle school that I started playing guitar seriously. I added singing and bass playing to that arsenal in high school and college and now I\’m a bassist and vocalist by trade. This week I\’m going on tour and I\’ll be playing in front of hundreds of people each night! I love highly structured music, admittedly. Frank Zappa, King Crimson, Rush, etc. One time I transposed a very difficult Latin jazz piano tune to guitar and learned it. It was grueling work and I loved every minute of it. Plus, I played that song as an audition piece to a fairly selective school, (for jazz guitar), and got accepted. I have also learned some very challenging pieces for bass, such as "Sinister Minister," by Bela Fleck and "YYZ," by Rush. With the addition to working as a sideman for this indie label, I\’m also developing my own project, which I think will be something worth listening to when it\’s finished.
-I consider myself to be an intelligent person. I\’m highly opinionated but I try to not let that be a detriment to my personality. I vote democrat but I think independently. Obama\’s not perfect but he\’s the man for the job. Oops, there goes that opinion thing again! Also, I\’m a big fan of George Carlin, Bill Maher, Al Franken, and Keith Olbermann. I love to stay on top of current events and to have it blended with comedy is amazing. One time I won a writing award, (second place), in a high school competition. I was selected out of my entire graduating class to write an essay for it and got a trophy, (my only one besides some little league trophies from when I was a kid).
-I really care about other people, and sometimes I get depressed when it seems that no one really cares about me, (though some do, but maybe not enough).
-I smoke a certain green substance from the earth that induces inspiration and euphoria…and the munchies. Some of you may think this is bad, but I\’ve found that it\’s helped my condition to some degree. I also drink beer but not heavily. Blue Moon with a slice of orange is my favorite.
-I have dreadlocks. It took awhile to get them to where they are now, which is fully locked. And yes, I do wash them and they\’re clean.
-I\’m from the smallest town imaginable where everyone is super conservative and there isn\’t an ounce of culture anywhere nearby. Now I live in a major metropolis, in the heart of the city. I could have turned about to be some tobacco chewing, four wheeler riding, deer shooting, liberal hating redneck, but I\’m very far from it.
-I love art of all kinds.
-There\’s more, and I\’ll talk about it later. But before this thing gets so long that no one will read it, I should talk about OCD some. I\’ll approach in the same way as the above stuff, but unfortunately it won\’t be as fun.
-I have had OCD since I was a young child. It really started getting bad when I started middle school. I am not a checker, a hand washer, or a neat person. I don\’t feel like I have to physically do anything a certain amount of times. The illness is entirely contained within my mind. And it\’s been bad before, really bad. It was bad in middle school. I spent an incredible amount of time warding off invasive thoughts with a certain phrase that I invented to counteract them. I would mentally say this many, many, many times a day, and sometimes I would say it verbally. Somehow I made it through that school but I really don\’t know how that was accomplished looking back on it. I never went to a child psychologist and never told anyone what was going on, ever. I tried to tell my mother that I worried a lot, but she never thought it was serious enough to seek help for me. I went on undiagnosed. I want to make this clear because it is so important: I experienced years and years of a severe mental disorder and never even thought that what I had was an illness, that it could be treated. I just thought I was crazy. My childhood is horribly scarred forever because of this.
-High school sucked ass but not really because of OCD. During this time my symptoms were less severe, though there were a few lengths of time where I felt worse than ever, where suicide started to seem like a great way out. But the main thing about my high school experience is that I was totally an outcast there. I had my group of friends but generally speaking, I was the guy that everybody thought was weird, and it was really just because I had weird hair and wore weird clothes. People in the south can\’t handle that sometimes. Oh yeah, I even won the title of "Most Interesting," in my senior yearbook. That award is always given to the person in the class that is considered to be the most unusual. Great backhanded compliment.
-College is when things started to really suck. It started out ok until I met this girl and we started seeing each other. I realized that I liked her and that triggered something horrible. Around fall 2005 I started experiencing hell on earth. For a few months, during every minute of every day, from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep at night I was tortured by horrible thoughts. I lost weight because I wasn\’t eating much and sleep was not good. I contemplated suicide a lot during this time. I would see a character die in a movie, and kind of wish I could do the same. My suffering was severe to the point where just existing was a challenge. Finally around Christmas I went to a mental hospital and checked myself in, and was finally diagnosed with OCD, something I had never really thought about. I was 20 years old. Thankfully after that stay and a few months of getting my mental shit together, those horrible symptoms went away. But the prevalance of my disorder continued in different manifestations. I will talk about those in my next blog.
If you\’ve read this far, then thank you so very much. It means so much to me to finally get some of this out there. I hope you\’ll read more as I post. Thanks again.
