obsessive compulsive

Does anyone with OCD have this weird thing about needing to be “punished” for your mistakes? I don’t know if this is wrapped up in my self-esteem issues and some experiences when I was little, but whenever I make a mistake at work or something I become overwhelmed with this irrepressible intrusive thoughts about what a monster I am and a burning need to “atone” for what I’ve done. It’s not even about making sure I don’t do it again, it’s just this compulsion to make myself suffer. I don’t cut or anything but sometimes if I am particularly upset I will scratch and hit myself, not enough to damage myself but just to get the compulsion out. Or I deliberately expose myself to triggering things that upset me.

I hope everyone is having a nice day. Before I go any further, I wanted to preface this by saying that I have emergency support contacts and a safety plan should I need it, so please don't feel concerned for my immediate safety-I don't want to put anyone in a position where they feel like they have to counsel me down from doing certain things. That is not your responsibilty-and in any event, I am safe.

That being said, I wanted to ask a general question: how do you hold onto your hope? I feel like I've lost all my hope; my hope that I will ever not feel like I am a lost cause, entirely incapable of keeping the relationships that matter the most to me or even being worthy of those relationships in the first place. I had so many plans for myself, five, ten, fifteen years in the future, yet they seem impossible-not necessarily because of current circumstances but because I simply can't see a world where good things will happen. I feel incapable of doing anything but lying catatonic in my house, and even when I'm at work I have crying spells several times a day. I know I am very privileged and lucky to have the things I do but there is this unshakeable sense of sadness and loneliness that pervades everything I do and makes it impossible to see things clearly sometimes.

In particular, and what upsets me the most, is that I have so much love to give and I have always been so generous with the care I give to others. I've cherished every person I have ever had and yet not for the first time in my life I have come to realise I am entirely alone. I feel sometimes like I am crying out for help in the middle of the open ocean with no one around to hear me.

My contamination-based OCD was triggered really badly the other day, as I was watching a show where a character came down with a graphic case of food poisoning. I felt like I couldn't eat anything, as I was terrified of suffering a similar fate.

I couldn't stomach the thought of any food at all-until I came across some cous cous in the back of my cupboard, which I cooked and had with a little bit of butter and salt. This really helped me! The food was bland and dry enough that I felt safe eating it-it didn't trigger any of my usual intrusive thoughts about whether it was filled with invisible pathogens. Eating it cured my hunger and made me feel a lot better.

another poem featured on my insta, @erastesia.

even my comfort disgusts me

i sit in the leather chair, my throat

threatening to burst open. i fold the fingers of my right hand

into my palm to stop myself from scratching at my eyes

there is a great movement in me; it wants to spill out of me

like stormwater floods cities

and its object is to drown me

i press my feet into the carpet and imagine being tender with myself, 

I wrote this about living with OCD. I write a lot of poetry-my insta is @erastesia if you’d like to follow. Just a warning that this poem discusses OCD (obviously) and related low mood, and there are implications of ending a life. Therapy is important-please seek it out if you need it.

I am so good at hating myself that it is second nature,

so I talk about the ways I waste the ground I walk on and all my friends are worried.

I forget that it is not normal to think about yourself like that.

If you give me love then I will chew it up and spit it out because I do not believe you mean it,

I am a bad waste of a body,

and love is torn to pieces in my bad wasted hands.

I am so good at fearing the worst that I think my mind might be a loaded gun; inside each chamber is the next obsession, the next intrusion, the next potentially life-altering catastrophe for which I am on red alert.

This is what it’s like to see life as a long series of unchecked ovens burning houses down, of contaminated dinners and doorknobs giving bacteria the room to fester and breed in my stomach.

I realise I am sick when I look down at my hands and they’re red from scrubbing at real or imagined germs. I realise I am sick when I confess every real or imagined sin to my mother, my boss, whoever is close enough to satisfy the urgency of the compulsion. I realise I am sick when I’m in the bathroom six times every hour staring at my shoes and willing the fear to find another corpse to feed on. As far as corpses go, I have been fed upon enough.

I am so good at running from my problems that I think maybe probably I should run away for good. It would take an inferno to burn me down so I bring lighted match and oil and get to work doing God’s work. When you think about me, I want you to imagine the growth on trees after wildfire season.

Imagine cities burnt down and starting over.