Some clarification on Obsessive Thoughts

I have several people email me about worry and anxiety because they too sometimes get worked up about imagining a loved one dying. So, I wanted to clarify. I think a lot of us have these thoughts, but the guideline is usually how they are effecting your life.

For me the OCD part is that I feel the compulsion to focus on various horrible things happening to my family as a way of warding horrible things off. For me the obsession is making God realize that I deserve to have my children and to keep him from taking them from me. The compulsion then is to really feel the experience so that then I won't have to actually experience it. I will spend the entire night or a weeks' worth of nights experiencing say, the van going off the bridge over the Mississippi River on our way to Chowder's parents' house over and over. I panic about how to save everyone. I see their faces as they plea for my help. I watch the fear in the ones I can't get to as they drown. I swim to shore with the chosen child/ren. I plan funerals. I live with the guilt. I replay it all over and over and over. I will go a week with no sleep. I will grieve and grieve a loss that has not even happened. But, this is my way of convincing God that he doesn't need to take one of my children from me, that I can get the lessons and deserve the blessings. This compulsion keeps us safe.

Since I am on my meds, I think "this is what it would be like if Chowder dies" but I don't replay the death. I don't slip into that place of uselessness because of the obsession. Does that make sense?

So, I think the occasional worry and anxiety is just part and parcel of loving someone. But, if it is beyond that and interfering with your ability to function, than I think you should definitely talk to someone about it.

Randomness...

What a week I've left behind and what a few weeks I have ahead of me. I didn't get as much done last week as I wanted, but I did turn in several homework assignments and got some Spring cleaning done. It was great for the kids to be able to be outside pretty much all week. The weather was beautiful! And I spent some time doing stuff with them that I need to do more of.

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I have been working on my new website and hope to have it up sometime in the next week. It won't be the most seamless transition because I have never done anything like this. Hopefully it will all come together.

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Chowder has gone to Iowa for 3 weeks. He is doing some sort of training thingamajig for family ministry. Today was our first full day without him. We did a good job and held it together all day. But now...it's almost midnight and I have no one to snuggle in with. I started taking my OCD medication last week anticipating the anxiety. I was taking a 1/4 dose. But last night I upped it to a 1/2 dose. I'm feeling pretty well, though my morbid thoughts still get stuck. Like when Ladybug came in this morning looking for him and she cried the most quiet, pitiful cry, would not let me hold her and she climbed back into her crib to weep softly all by herself. And I couldn't get the "What if" thoughts out of my head. The "this is what it would be like if he died" thoughts. And then I began to weep softly all by myself.

The other thing is that I really miss him. I like him quite a bit and he always makes his presence known, so there is an obvious "Chowder Vacuum." We have set up video chat on our computers and text several times a day. I know it's so hard at the beginning, but soon it will be over and he will be home. with me. where he belongs.

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Humphrey is having some sort of gastrointestinal issues, right now. Let me tell you, a 160 lb dog can really stink a place up. Plus every couple of hours he starts whining because he needs to go out. I'm hoping that will not be the case all night long.

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That possible move I was writing about a few weeks ago? It is still in the process, but look at this...



It certainly sweetens the pot. 1890's farmhouse on 12 1/2 acres 5bd 2ba 2900 sq ft. I am suddenly pining for wide open spaces.

happily ever after and all that.

Just a week ago I wrote my list of things that make me happy. #4 on the list was my marriage. As I have said before, when I look back on Chowder's and my marriage Creation story, I see God's paw prints all over it. It's 0ne of those frustrating romances to watch with the timing all wrong for too many years. It's that movie that leaves you shouting at the screen, "Enough already!! Just kiss her!" And finally, she just kisses him and the movie ends. happily ever after and all that.

But it doesn't take much to open a chink just wide enough for the demons of doubt to slip through. Something as simple as say...opening your email and getting a friend request to Facebook from someone named "Sophia." ("Sophia" being the name of Chowder's college sweetheart.) So, I called Chowder and asked him what "Sophia's" last name was.
"My 'Sophia'?"
knife stabs in
The name, of course, doesn't match.
"But do you know her married name?"
"I think she kept her name. When I saw something about her in the alumni news, she had the same last name."
twist knife
Chowder and I have this game we play. Whenever we get one of his various alumni magazines, I turn to his year and tell him about all of the accomplishments of his classmates. You know, a self-esteem booster...I have never run across her name.
feigning nonchalance, "Oh. When was that? I don't remember that."
"I don't know, I got it in the mail and read it one day. When I was done I threw it in the recycling bin."

The demons begin to ask questions. They are very suspicious. And I am without my medication and extremely vulnerable to them. Why did he hide that from me? (Being a 4th if not 5th generation narcissist, I have to make it about me instead of how he felt when he read it.)

They had been perfect. really. Her: pretty sorority girl with long blonde hair. Him: preppy fraternity guy with boyish charms. Their love seemed inevitable. As did the plans they made. Not silly teenage lovey plans, but real plans. grown-up plans. Her father was a minister. She sang in the choir. When Chowder was searching for denominations that fit him, of course it ended up the same as her father's.

But it ended the way these loves do. Tragically. Heartbreakingly. I'm sure for both of them. I know for him. I watched the depression set in on him and hold him fast for two years. I talked with him about his regret, his grief.

The demons question whether he wouldn't have been happier in that life. If "Sophia" hadn't been the real golden ring and I was just the boobie prize. Whether he only married me because she had said no. Whether he wished some days, that she had said yes. That he lay next to her at night.

The doubt had me firmly in it's grasp now. The demons attacked one after the other for 2 long days and 2 excruciating nights. The doubts. the terrible, terrible doubts. At the point where I was doubting his love for me and the foundation of our marriage, I cried out to God. I wanted him to obliterate these demons. To destroy them completely. to go all Old Testament on that crap.

And you know what?
He did.
But he didn't destroy the doubt in the violence of the earthquake, nor in the crash of lightening and thunder. No, God annihilated my doubt in the still small kicks of the still small baby that miraculously continues to grow inside me. like a mustard seed.

A little voice that whispers, "I am here...I am here."