Today, I’m going to get into the absolute worst part of OCD. The fear, the rules, the fidgeting, all of that is unpleasant, but more or less manageable (for me, anyway). What makes life miserable in this stupid little brain of mine, is the idea of hurting other people.
If you ask me “would you like to be injured, Penny?” the answer, obviously would be “heck no, what’s wrong with you?” Pain is the very thing I spend all day and night avoiding: it’s the reason I’m constantly staying away from anything and everything that might cause me pain. But when confronted with the pain of those around me, friends, family, and sometimes even complete strangers, I break down. For me, their pain is much, much worse than my own. I don’t know why, maybe I’m a martyr, or whatever. But the way I see it: I don’t know how much pain someone else is in. I only know how much pain I’m in, and if I'm not dying, then obviously I'm fine. When other people are suffering, it could be as annoying as a paper cut, or as agonizing and horrifying as watching their only child murdered before their eyes. I have no idea, how could I? And if I was the cause of it, I can't live with myself.
I go the extra mile for people. I like to think I do it because I’m nice. Maybe all nice people think this way. But I can’t stand hurting people, or through action or inaction. Maybe I’m really one of Isaac Asimov’s robots or something (you know, the three laws? My geekiness is showing, isn't it...)
Let me give you an example. Back when I worked at that restaurant, several of my coworkers were Latino, and spoke mostly Spanish. I knew a bit of the language, and I picked up a lot more as I worked with them. It was really cool, being immersed in the culture like that, I loved it. Well, one day, a guy thought it would be funny to call me a dirty name in Spanish. Naturally, I didn’t know what it meant (my vocabulary didn't include many insults), so when he wouldn’t tell me, I went home and looked it up. Turns out it was really bad. I was mostly surprised, because I couldn’t believe that anyone would apply that kind of language to me. But I decided I would get after him for it, so he wouldn’t call me that again (not to shift blame or anything, but my Mom was in on it, and said I should stand up for myself). When I saw him the next day, I told him I looked it up, and told him he shouldn’t call me that, and told him I was mad. I can’t remember what exactly I did, but I will say that that was the first time I had ever given someone the “cold shoulder”, and it made me absolutely miserable, all day long.
The next day, he was avoiding me. He actually looked afraid of me, and my boss eventually pulled me aside and asked me what happened. He said that he caught the guy crying. I had no idea that any of that would happen. I realized that maybe he thought I was really, really mad, and that he must have thought I would get him fired, which in turn might get him deported.
I was consumed with grief. That night, I ended up in the dark, curled up in a ball on my bedroom floor, crying my eyes out. After that, I did everything I could to show him I wasn’t mad anymore, that everything was okay, but he always seemed to be just a little bit afraid of me. I even told him, in plain English (or Spanish, I can’t remember) that I wasn’t mad and everything was fine. But it did no good. I broke him, and I couldn't fix it.
Now, somebody tell me: is this normal behavior? I hear about people giving other people the “cold shoulder” all the time, and the worst that happens is the “victim” gets annoyed, and waits for the instigator to get tired of it. How was I to know that the guy would start crying? It wasn’t my fault. All I was doing was showing him that his behavior was unacceptable, and I wouldn’t stand for being treated that way. Instead, I end up locking myself in my room, my brain screaming WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? HOW COULD YOU DO THIS, YOU HORRIBLE, MISERABLE LITTLE WITCH!
And that’s just one example. Let me tell you about my love life.
I haven’t dated very many people. That’s just a side effect of being introverted. I’m okay with it: it’s not like “my life will never begin until I find my one true love and ride off into the sunset, all while singing sweet, repetitive songs about it”. Overall, I like my life just fine, and I’m content to let love happen when it happens.
But when a guy comes into my life, that’s when everything changes. My obsessive nature tells me that the guys I date are either saints... or devils. I usually brush off the devils pretty quickly. It’s the saints I’m worried about. I am convinced that any guy that I spend any significant amount of time with is as fragile as ultrathin glass. Any small initial attraction I had very quickly gets replaced with the overwhelming idea that I was going to break poor Humpty Dumpty to pieces. I can’t relax, not even for a second, because I might hurt him. He might fall in love, and I might not, and then I would have to shatter his previously perfect, porcelain heart.
Let me tell you about my last run-in with the opposite sex. I was doing pretty well, we had gone on a couple dates, things were going smoothly. I hadn’t had any problems at all as we slowly slid closer together. Until Valentine’s Day. He got me a cute Valentine’s card. It was very sweet, and he said some very nice things about me. I freaked out. All day long, it ran through my mind, over and over again. It felt like the end of the world. I hadn’t fallen in love with him yet, we had only gone on two dates, but here he was falling for me. What was I supposed to do? Then I did something out of character: I talked myself out of severing ties. Normally, I would have been out the door faster than you can say "fear of intimacy". But I knew how I freaked out about stuff, and I decided to keep trying. We dated for another month, but all the while my ridiculous brain was constantly telling me that I had to fall in love with this boy, otherwise I would break his heart, which of course would be the worst possible thing I could ever, ever do.
Problem is, in my experience, you can’t tell your heart what to do. You just can’t. I became more and more anxious, struggling with my brain, trying to force myself to be in love. It shouldn’t have been hard: he had many good qualities, and very few flaws. And yet, I wasn’t in love with him. And I hated myself more and more for it, because I could tell he was falling for me. I was convinced that he was madly in love with me, although that probably was just my OCD working its magic. I realized that I was never going to fall for him, and the longer I waited, the worse it would become. I labored for days, trying to figure out how to let him down easily. I wanted to do the least amount of damage possible. I wondered if I should tell him about what I had been through, and how hard I tried to make it work, but any way I could think of to express those ideas just sounded wrong.
Finally I settled with the “I see you as a friend” spiel. It took me the better part of thirty seconds to end it. He seemed perfectly fine, and he said “Okay, thanks for telling me,” and that was it. No tears. No begging or pleading, or asking me why. Just, “thanks for telling me.” He was fine. He was totally fine. As usual, I had made myself sick with worry over nothing.
This is my life. I do it all the time. I overthink things to an Olympic level. I spend most of my time and energy trying to keep from hurting other people. Which is ridiculous. People get hurt no matter what I do. It’s impossible for me to shelter every person in the world from pain. And the truth is, if I can handle the kind of pain I go through every day, can’t other people? I can’t possible be the only one in the world who isn’t made of glass. I try to tell myself this. I’m trying to tell myself that sometimes it’s okay to be selfish. I haven’t really changed much yet. But I’m trying.
Is there such a thing as being “too nice?” I don’t mind making sacrifices for other people. It makes me feel better about myself, and I feel that if I’m nice all the time, it’ll be contagious. That other people will start being nicer, and over time, the whole world could be a better place. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? I do think that I shouldn’t punish myself like I do. I’ve never run somebody over with my car, or stolen money, or insulted someone. I don’t do horrible things, and I don’t even want to. I am not a bad person. So why does my brain tell me I am?
This is the core of the OCD experience. It’s when an unwanted thought or idea occupies your brain, and it won’t let you go. It comes on unexpectedly, and won’t leave no matter what you do. It consumes you, until there’s nothing left. It tells you you’re filthy, evil, a monster. It forces you pay, every day, for things you have or haven’t done, or things that aren’t even bad or wrong to anyone else in the world.
I hope that someone with OCD is reading this right now. First of all, I want you to know that you are not evil. Everyone has good and bad things inside themselves. Find the good. Focus on that. Second, I know you feel like the whole world rests on your shoulders, that there is a burden that is yours and no one else's. But you are not alone. You don’t have to do this alone. Maybe you feel like you’re not allowed to tell anyone about what you’re going through, that that is an unforgivable sin to ask for help. That’s where I’ve been my whole life. Get therapy, talk to somebody. Please. Some people will understand, some won’t, and that’s okay.
Sometimes you make mistakes, and that's okay. Stuff happens. But everything is not your fault. I promise you, it’s not.
Penny
No comments:
Post a Comment