Month: August 2012

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I shouldn’t be writing this, but I have to tell someone or I think I’ll explode. Not with anger, at least not at Soul Bro. I can never be angry at him. Anger to me is like death and I try to avoid it, usually I HAVE TO only be angry with myself. I am enraged at The Partner, though I’m suppressing it. I have no right to be angry at anyone but myself. It is all my fault. I feel just about as hopeless as I did that fateful day in February, but I sweep that feeling under too, because I’m so afraid of losing my friend. Plus I know I’d botch it again and end up in hell on earth, alone. It was a good lesson for me. Besides, it’s almost always the wrong thing to do. I just am not brave enough to smother out my smidge of hope I cling to. Unless I’m willing to do something almost always fatal, I’ll leave that to cowards braver than myself. I want to live. I think. I hope. Things just keep coming into my head. Doubts that anyone loves me, including the person I love most. Maybe he just wasn’t  thinking how it sounded, but it confirms that I am only a burden on humanity. I let resentment fester, the kind I have no right to have.

The fact of the matter is that when I went to the hospital, they bagged up what they could and left it in my soon to be repossesed car. The rest they later threw away or kept as finde’rs keepers. I didn’t realize though, that the finder’s keepers rule applied to what they kept. I only realized yesterday that I had no right to say something was mine that I left behind.

My resentment of The Partner made me say what I did yesterday, because in my myopic world, keeping something that once belonged to me still belonged to me. I was angry that he threw away a desk that had been in my family about 100 years. I was angry that the netbook I bought the day before I tried to kill myself magically dissappeared. I was angry they took two of my three cats and dropped them off at the pound, though Soul Bro had PROMISED me he’d take care of them. One of my cats the pound was going to put down had not my nurse rescued them, the one that was always in my mom’s lap.

My sin yesterday, and now that I think of it it was petty of me, is I said to Soul Bro, “I see that The Partner kept my mom’s bedside table.” I had to say it when I saw it or it would rot in me. I didn’t want him to say anything to The Partner, I just wanted to say what I said, because I saw it as wrong not to offer it back to me. I really just wanted someone to know, so I could resign myself.

“He’s had that for years,” Soul Bro said, but I knew he was mistaken, or didn’t know what table I referenced. I replied “Oh, OK. I was probally wrong. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.” And I shouldn’t have.

“But you did mention it.”

I apologized.

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” I replied. I knew then that this would come back to bite me.

Later, showing my intense stupidity once again, I asked about a small fan I had,

“It’s not in the closet,” he said, but I could have sworn I saw it  earlier. I let it go.

I guess later on in the evening it came harder to dispute that The Partner had some of my stuff, as a basket and coffee table was brought out. I kept my peace though, knowing my battle was lost.

You see, I was getting my old bedroom back, because they know that when the social worker comes it isn’t going tong to look good  that my bed is in the dining room area with the amount of rent I pay. I didn’t mind really, but now I’m back in my room. I hate it  though because at all times I have to keep a dog fence (actually made for toddlers) in front of my door, so their dogs can’t come in. I make sure I have as little to do with the pug The Partner favors when he is home due to his intense jealousy  and his belief that the dog only likes me because I’m female. But it makes me feel bad to have that there, to be jumping or going around it. It makes me feel like trash, though i guess it’s because the female fawn pug has territory issues.

But what really started me thinking bad thoughts is when they came in, both my Soul Bro and The Partner to tell me off. Soul Bro said that he was tired of me thinking I was entitled to things when I had left them here for two months without  concern. That he’d tell my social worker just why I had a high rent due to the fact that I “burned them so badly the first time.” They mean my attempted suicide. Of course, this makes me so miserable that I wish my attempt was successful. I’m trash. They might as well told me that I was the southend of a horse going north.

Then my Soul Bro berated me for saying The Partner moving stuff around was making me nervous, that he knew me better than anyone and that a mess couldnt upset me  when I came from the living conditions I came from. It’s the moving stuff  around me and seeing  what he has that once was mine.

Meanwhile that asshole, The Partner, is giggling at me and staring me down . He stays staring me down after Soul Bro leaves just to intimidate me, and I excuse myself to the safety of the bathroom. I know  it’s wrong of me and if karma is real I should suffer the more, but…I really hope it hurts a lot when they remove his stitches today. Not prolonged agony, mind, but I hope it hurts like they hurt me for maybe a few seconds. I really can’t help think he has the moral compous of a honey badger.And I am trying soooooooooo hard to like him. I think the moral thing to do was at least offer me my shit back, but whatever. If I’m a blight on humanity (and I am), then he’s the giant locust.

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OCD Book Review: I Hardly Ever Wash My Hands by J.J. Keeler

Lisa16 Comments

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An awesome 5 star read!

Recently, I received an email from TLC Book Tours asking me if I would review a memoir by a fellow OCD sufferer. Of course I said yes, because I love books, memoirs, and the word “free.” I am so glad I did, because I ended up reading the best book on OCD I ever read. The book is I Hardly Ever Ever Wash My Hands: The Other Side of OCD by J.J. Keeler. It was as though the author ran a spinal tap to my soul and drained out my own experiences with OCD. If you suffer from OCD, you might get the same jolt of recognition from I Hardly Ever Wash My Hands as I did. This book is also invaluable to those who ‘suffer’ a friend or family member with OCD. One receives a candid look into the mind of  an OCD sufferer and the horrors we often suffer in silence day by day. Fortunately, the book isn’t a dark abyss of misery either. J.J. Keeler has a brilliant sense of humor that shines through the book’s heavy subject matter and shows that we aren’t just a bundle of nervous buzz kills, that we can indeed be ‘normal’ on the outside, that we can be fun, and we are good people. Really, this is a book anyone can enjoy and learn from, an entertaining summer read that shines a light on the fact that no one is ‘perfectly normal.’

I Hardly Ever Wash My Hands is not a memoir about the pop culture OCD sufferer, the meticulously clean germ phobe who keeps everything in its place. When a friend suggests to her that she may have OCD, the author responds with, “but I hardly ever wash my hands.” I had a similar reaction when I was diagnosed. I remember saying to my shrink, “but I don’t compulsively wash my hands or flip light switches over and over.” It’s all here in the book, the truth about how OCD messes with the mind. I could identify with the author from page 1. I used to “catch” AIDS all the time too and was afraid of being pricked by a wayward needle in the grass. When Keeler describes being afraid that her teddy bear had a bomb inside, I could recall my own teddy incident. Except mine was an orange squirrel. I was convinced it was full of drugs that would either kill me or get me thrown in prison. Afraid of stabbing someone just because one sees a knife and being filled with terrifying images of hurting people? I’ve been there before. Ritualized praying, I still have the T-shirt for that one. 

J.J. Keeler

J.J. Keeler also shows us how some phobias are normal, that not everything is our OCD. She also addresses what to do if you are just realizing you might have OCD. She reminds us that those who pontificate on how “it’s all in our head and we don’t need medicine or therapy” don’t have a clue. It’s really difficult dealing with people who think they know everything about our issues,

English: Teddy bear Français : Ours en peluche

and just this reminder from Keeler is extremely comforting. We are able to see through Keeler that OCD isn’t curable, but one can live a life not dictated by our mental illness. The most important point of I Hardly Ever Wash My Hands, however, is seeing that we are not alone. 

Here is a link to other blog reviews for this book. http://tlcbooktours.com/2012/05/j-j-keeler-author-of-i-hardly-ever-wash-my-hands-on-tour-july-2012/

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