Frayed

As I am coming off my medication after six years on Cymbalta (60 mg), now down to zero 🥴, I'm thinking about some stuff. To me, at this point, discussing mental health is about as personal as looking someone in the eye. I've been wrestling with this noggin of mine for most of my life and at this point, it feels like I'm already an open book, so I might as well get a little bit of writing done.

This post will mostly be my first childhood experience with OCD, or whatever the hell that was. With my mind currently in a state of withdrawal from an SNRI, it's easier to tap into what it felt like in those very early stages. Although somewhat tragic, it might be one of the most significant turns of events in my little life. Of course, there is much more to me than my struggles, but that's the theme here. If you like lots of milk in your tea, don't read this. As for me, perhaps if I get a few of the demons out, it'll leave some wiggle room for my very soul to pop thru and grace the world once again. What a nice thought.

I'd had a LiveJournal as a teen; Xanga as a tween. My mother always said I was a great writer (😘). If only I'd felt the same when it mattered. Now, we're left with 2024 me, with slightly frayed wiring. I seem to have neglected my wiring in lieu of mostly trying to manage basic survival over the years. I am getting off my meds now, and the only thing challenging this will be the significant quantity of neurological brain zaps that I am experiencing, + heavy emotions, like crying a bit too hard when I'm listening to, reading, or watching something that I would normally think is corny. But the zaps are so bad that I can actually hear them when it gets quiet. If you don't want to know what that is like, don't take an SNRI, or an SSRI.

Anyways, I'm supposedly trying to move on from decisions I've made in the past where fear was the driving force. And one of those decisions was rushing myself to get on a medication that would end up being one of the most difficult to taper off. Also, note that my brain just almost spelled "fear" like "fure." I be very frayed rn 🧠🙀

Story - OCD

Since I was 9, I’ve been dealing with relentless intrusive thoughts, impulses, + compulsions that seemed to come out of nowhere. As if some very unwelcome, terrifying newborn, alien creature was left on my doorstep; one that would make me do things that were so bizarre that they didn't seem to come from my own mind. They didn't seem human.

Every day I would wake up only to be filled with this powerful, frightening feeling of dread. The weight of this was like nothing I had felt before. Another day, another surprise bundle of incomprehensible tasks. Strange, doomed puzzles, all of them just for me to solve, or else. I tried to focus on school as much as I could, but the overwhelming power + the demands of this new creature would barely allow for it. I had a very hard time, not just with the repeated execution of these impossible tasks, but also describing them to people. I didn't know how to adequately put it into words.

Most of what it would have me do was beyond words. So I'm here to reattempt another description of this old nightmare, one that actually does it justice; a rough outline of the invisible entity that guided my every movement:

Everything in the world seemed to be connected by invisible lines or tunnels that had to be followed perfectly. And I was forcibly handed this very abstract set of rules for moving through space, written in some other dimension that only I could comprehend. Sounds almost like a bad acid trip, but that was my life then. It wasn't just tapping a pencil three times in the right rhythm; it was these very elaborate tasks, each controlled by that very strict set of rules that were forced upon me, unbreakable laws, with a few new ones written in each day by the alien creature that I was beholden to.

For example, I had to touch things, but not just touch them. I had to do it in a very specific way, a certain part of my finger, a certain pressure, and if I didn't touch the thing the right way, I had to go back and do it again. But when I withdrew my hand to touch the thing again the right way, I needed to withdraw it down the correct path, which was the same path from which I entered. Just describing it now is exhausting, but that's truly what it was like. And it was happening constantly; sometimes every minute.

None of it seemed terrible to an outside perspective. If anything, it was something to laugh at. My friend's parents found it quite entertaining. Sometimes they even got me to crack a smile, after all, it was pretty peculiar. Perhaps my profound hell could be rebranded as a bit of fun. But the terrible thing was that if I resisted it, which I wouldn't really ever do, but if I did, the consequences felt severe. It would start with what felt like a physical pulling at my chest, as if this unseen force were pulling at me by the heart with an invisible rope. The physical sensation was this sort of nausea accompanied by an unrelenting, cold dread. I would be locked inside this feeling until I completed the unfinished task or fixed what I had left broken.

The popular kids at school could tell that I was more than a little a bit weird; a perfect target for bullying. I didn't try to stop it. No one in the world could possibly grasp the intensity of these thoughts that had taken over, so what was the point of trying to impress these shitty, mean kids that only made me feel as if I should apologize for being born? We clearly didn't share the same values. I didn't enjoy hurting others' feelings, for one, & I had bigger fish to fry, like getting rid of this thing that had somehow latched onto me, so that I could enjoy my life, my childhood. Of course, it still hurt, not to be accepted. But the world had already shown me more than enough of its ugliness, so I wasn't surprised.

My closest friends at the time were ones that I didn't get to attend school with, unfortunately. I saw my best friends after school/during the weekends. At Marco Forster, Hell on earth, I mostly hung around with the anime kids. These kids really enjoyed anime. They were kind to me, even though I didn't feel I truly belonged to their particular group. I just wasn't that into anime. But I didn't seem to have a choice. I'd already been pigeonholed as the weird girl. So, I supposed, it was time to get into some anime.

As people around me started to notice—family friends, etc—they just thought it was a funny/cute little quirk. I was just a little girl after all. But my aunt, who has a degree in psychology (not child psychology obviously), basically denied my truth. She told me that she didn't believe me, and that I was only trying to get attention. As if I would ever lie about something like that. Perhaps she was attempting to help me realize how ridiculous it was, but it didn't work. It made me feel more even more isolated, and from the people who I thought were supposed to care. "What happened to my happy girl? You used to be such a tough cookie," my mother would say. I was inconsolable. My mind had become a trap, and there was only one escape that I could think of. I became obsessed with the idea of breaking free. I had no action plan... but I couldn't stop myself from thinking of it.

To be Continued