I have to admit, my life today is pretty blissful. I’m married to a wonderful woman, I have loving kids and grandkids for whom I would lay down my life ( I think literally.) I love my job. I LOVE being involved with the theater. I travel all around the globe having adventures. I love where I live in rural CT on my farm with my wife and our horses, ponies, dogs, cats, and apparently, 100,000 ground moles.
But there was a time when life was not good. There was a time when I used to dread (and I truly mean dread) getting out of bed in the morning. There was a time when I was so fearful that my hands used to go completely numb from anxiety…every day. Every single day.
As I sit here at my computer now thinking about those times, it’s as if I am looking back at somebody else’s life. Yet, the residual traces of terror that prick at me as I remember those times are forever a reminder that I once in my life I suffered from a debilitating disease called Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
I don’t know very much about the disorder. I’ve never been all that interested in researching it. I’d just as soon not waste my time dredging up that past life of mine. I think that I’ve been afraid to I delve too deelpy into it, for fear that the disease may make a comeback in me.
All I know about OCD is that it almost destroyed my life, and I beat it.

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I’ve got to tell you, this is the hardest the blog post that I’ve ever written. I’ve already walked away from the computer twice since I started writing this. I don’t know where this is going. I don’t know if this will ever get posted. If it does, and it seems disjointed or rambling or pointless, forgive me.
If you want to get a small taste of OCD, watch Jack Nicholson’s wonderful performance in the film called As Good As It Gets. His character’s efforts to avoid stepping on sidewalk cracks, and his bringing his own sterile silverware to restaurants, serve as comedic character-establishing devices in the film. For many OCD sufferers, such picadillos are mild.
Rituals. Fear. Counting. Performing the same task over and over and over again for no apparent reason. Constant worry that you will be discovered doing things that you know are ridiculous, but you MUST do them all the same. Humiliation of getting caught doing them. Constant fear of dying. These were all symptoms that I lived with every day from the moment I woke up to the moment that I went to sleep. Every day. Every damned day.
When going to bed at night, I would check to make sure the doors of the house were shut and locked. Five minutes later, I would check them again. Five minutes later, I would check them again. Then, I’d crawl into bed, stay there for a few moments, and then get up and check the doors two, three, or four more times. I would yank so hard on them that at one point we had to have the outside doorjambs replaced because I had loosened them so much.
I would count. For no reason at all. I would just start counting to myself. I’d count how many steps it took to get from one place to another. I’d count how many windows were in a building. How many tiles were on a floor. How many french fries were on a plate. Totally useless information, but for some reason, I needed to know. I mean, I just really needed to know!
It was the same thing with turning lights off. I would hit the switch to turn off a light. Then I’d think, What if the switch didn’t fully go to the “off” position and it is sparking there somewhere inside the wall? So, I’d turn the light back on, and then immediately turn it off. Then, I’d do it again. And again. And again. And again and again and again.
I would feel a lump on my skin. I’d immediately think it was cancer. So, I’d check it over and over and over again. Sometimes I’d do it so much that I would rub that part of my body raw.
Driving down the road, I would suddenly wonder if I hit somebody with my car. Nothing happened that physically triggered that wonder. I mean, I hadn’t swerved. Nobody had jumped out in front of me. It wasn’t foggy out. But, I would have this nagging feeling that I had hit somebody. So, I’d turn the car around and drive up and down that stretch of road…over and over and over again.
It was as if a switch in my brain got turned on, sending me a signal to check something, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to switch off.
I knew that these actions were driven by fear – fear that somebody would break in, fear that the house would burn down, fear that I had hurt somebody, fear that I was dying of cancer. I also knew that these fears were completely and totally irrational. And that knowledge made no difference whatsoever.
The fear was all-consuming and debilitating. It was with me all of the time, and, no matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to go away.
EVER.
24 –7.
365.

The time wasted doing the bizarre rituals was unbelievable. At my worst, I figure I would spend three or four waking hours on them. Every day.
The worst part though was the deep-seated humiliation I felt and the strong need to keep my symptoms hidden from everybody else on the planet. I would sometimes break down into an uncontrollably blubbering mass of protoplasm because I knew that I was acting crazily, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
I wondered if I was insane.

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(To Be Continued)