Where My Faith Lies

so where does my faith lie? in the written word, in literature,
in communion through story, in shared experience, in empathy,
in apathy, in desire to connect, in desire to disconnect, in nature,
in just fucking being still for a moment. my faith lies in a
stone bench that is not manmade; it lies in the curve of my stomach
when i am hungry; it lies in the tight muscles in my chest,
made even tighter by the sight of a word, which
was written by the soul of my mate how a word can influence
me, how i can influence someone else with a word.
how i am moved by the face of another.
my faith lies in knowing that i will fall into the abyss.
faith lies in the pit of a peach, in the pit of my stomach.
it lies wherever i think it does not; it lies in the ephemeral sugar
rush i will get if i eat sugar. it lies in the
question of logic; if i believe it exists, it exists because
i believe if i believe here is where my logic goes
here is where i lose my way how
can i have faith in something i cannot see i
cannot see faith where does it lie?

Without Faith

I had a sudden epiphany today, as I was driving through traffic,
trying to get home: I have no faith. Now, of course I've kind of
known this for a long time, but the thought has kind of fallen to
the wayside over the years, as I've searched for something--anything--
with enough substance for me to hold on to, to believe in. There
must be a shining core of beliefs in me, somewhere, that keeps me
looking for faith of some kind. Today, though, it finally got through,
the one real and true thing in my life is this: I have no faith. I don't
just mean religious faith, I mean faith at all, in anything.
There's a line from a Ben Harper song (cover?) that says "The drugs
don't work, they just make you worse..." That's been my motto as far
as drugs go, especially in light of the OCD & depression I have. Drugs
never work for me, physically or mentally. I have no faith in them,
never have. Drugs mess with my body, I have horrid reactions to
them. My mind is just as bad: I fight against them with all my might.
Our culture has become a drug culture, dependant on drugs and
that with each little ill or pain, we run to the drugstore to find the
quickest cure, the easiest fix, the path of least resistance. Our
society is dependant on the idea of the quick fix.
This applies to religion too, though, doesn't it? Don't we reach for the
quickest way to fix all of our problems, to cure all of our ills? No
matter how far fetched those beliefs are? Religion, for all its mass
appeal &quick & easy fixes for life, its supposed warm & welcoming
haven, it doesn't work for me either. Religion simply does not make
sense to me,it's illogical. Perhaps I think about it too much; perhaps,
I spend too much time ruminating and not enough time just accepting.
I'm done accepting things without investigating them first. So this
weekend (probably well beyond the weekend), I will be looking into
the dark crevices of my heart and soul, try and clear out some of
the cobwebs and find out why it is that I have lost my faith.

Step on a Crack

I'm sure everyone remembers that old childhood
rhyme, "Step on a crack, break your mother's back,"
right? So I googled this phrase, because in the past,
when I've googled it, the returns have all been about
OCD, and how that's one of the obsessive magical-
thinking type things that gets stuck in one's head,
on occasion. But now, when you google the phrase
"Step on a crack" what comes up is none other than
the latest James Patterson thriller, that has nothing,
so far as I can tell, to do with children's rhymes OR
OCD. It took me 7 or 8 pages before I came to a
listing for OCD. So why in the heck is his novel
called this? Looks like a marketing ploy to me,
because that phrase is so recognizable, and, as I
stated above, usually when googled one would
come up with tons of sites for OCD info and help.
So, a big 'BOOOO' to you, Mr. Patterson. Perhaps
someone who was looking for help just got sent in
the wrong direction.

Resting, Healing

Sunday is my favorite day of the week.
A day to relax, take it easy, rest. Read a book or two.
Watch football during the fall. Go to the park. Not
worry about anything.
Well, my Sunday started off ok, woke up, felt
fine, began my day. Suddenly, though, I began to feel
very un-fine: suddenly my abdomen was crunching
up in pain, and I felt very faint. I hate that feeling, that
feeling of being on the verge of passing out, yet not
passing out. It brings on a whole bunch of fear and
anxiety, which brings on a panic attack, my heart
triphammering and my head swimming. Oh, I do so
hate that feeling. So for about two hours I was on the
floor, ice pack to head, hoping and praying I would not
pass out, while also chanting to myself, in order to get
through the pain in my belly. I won’t say what I was
chanting, but I will say that it helps. Repeating a word
or phrase over & over in my head helps to focus my
mind, helps to get through the pain & unpleasantness.
Plus thinking repetitive thoughts is something us ocd-ers
are good at, no?
This kind of pain allows me to focus, and one thing
I focused on is the rush of endorphins I got each time the
pain subsided. So I counted, during the cramps, knowing
that the pain would stop, and I would get a rush of good
feelings. Counting also helps, it gives the mind something
to focus on.
The past few weeks have been a little rough for me,
depression has been ruling my life, and so I turned to a book
on Buddhism, looking for ways in which to be calm, focused,
and hopefully be able to look past this depressive phase.
There is a chapter in Thich Nhat Hanh’s “The Heart of the
Buddha’s Teaching” that talks about resting & healing. He
begins by talking about shamatha, “stopping.” In our daily
lives, we are so busy, we have so many bad habits and ruts
that we can’t get out of, we never just stop, pay attention,
be calm for a moment. Be mindful of what’s happening to
us or around us. One cannot begin meditating, or focusing,
unless they stop, even for a moment.
Pain forces us to stop, to put everything aside and
focus only on that. But do we stop long enough, do we stop
and rest so that we can heal? It doesn’t seem so. We seem
to want to just pop a pill, and then get right back to being
busy. We don’t take the time to rest and therefore heal.
Thich Nhat Hanh says “When we humans get sick, we
just worry!” So instead of stopping, resting, healing, we
just continue to worry, which probably only makes us
sicker!
So, on this Sunday, I decided to try and stop. I
had no energy for anything else, so I sat on my couch,
I enjoyed a good book, I even watched some sports on TV.
I drank lots of water & tea, I ate only good things, no junk,
and tried to just rest. To just be. I didn’t make any lists,
I didn’t try and do a million things like usual. I tried not
to worry.
And on this Monday morning, I woke up feeling
much calmer, much better.

Ruinous Bitch of a Disease. Saturday 5/19

So it seems that since I have a problem with meat,
being a veg-head, and also having those lovely contamination
fears, I am not the best candidate for a cookout invitation.
Everyone loves to cookout in the summer: grill stuff, eat
outdoors, drink beer, throw the football/frisbee, etc. It’s
an American pastime, you might say. I loved cookouts
when I was a teenager, mostly because they were always
held on the deck at my aunt’s house, the redwood deck
right beside the nice in-ground pool. My cousins & I
would just swim and eat all day long, long into the night,
swimming by the light of the torches, hanging out with
our friends. Now, I have come to hate them. Loathe them.
It’s not because I don’t like to eat meat: It’s because
I can’t stand the sight of it. It’s because I am terrified
that I will touch something that it has touched, that whoever
is doing the grilling has not washed his hands, or has not
taken the precautions that I would have taken. Ah — wait —
there they are, ‘what if’ thoughts. There are a million of
them associated with cooking for me, and in particular raw
meat. I even hate that word, meat. Oh the associations
abound. So, although I would like to hang out whenever
these cookouts are happening, I find that I am so concerned
with contaminations that I cannot enjoy myself, and just
end up leaving in defeat, rushing home to begin washing
and decontaminating myself.
So tonight, my neighbor invites me over. Him and
some friends, all of whom I know, are hanging out. So I
walk over to his place, only to see that they are grilling stuff.
At first, I was dismayed: but then I thought, well, it’s ok, I
can just hang out, it will be fine. My neighbor was more
affectionate tonight, having had several beers already, so
he was hugging me and touching me more than usual. Now,
I’m familiar with him, have known him for a while now,
so I’m ok with his brand of affection. But immediately,
the bad thoughts start in on me, and I could not make
myself comfortable. I didn’t want to sit in any of his chairs:
I didn’t want to touch anything, I didn’t even want to walk
on the ground where all this was happening. My cat Walker
had come over with me, and so I started getting thoughts about
what he might touch or get into as well.... So I didn’t stay
long, even though I wanted to, because the damn ocd would
not SHUT UP! I left by 9pm, all because the anxiety and
obsessions would not stop. Shame too, considering how
unbelievably hot my neighbor is, and how affectionate he
was tonight. It’s times like these that I get really angry,
when the thought crosses my mind: What has this
ridiculous shit of a disease made me miss out on? What
all do I have to avoid in order to live with it? What the
hell am I missing out on?
I told the guys I had to go home and take a shower.
They just laughed, not to be mean, but they don’t
really understand. I had to alcohol-swab my door handles,
inside & out, had to wipe down my shoes with one of
those clorox wipes, I had to take a thirty-minute shower,
in which I must have washed my hands about twenty
times. And did any of this ease my anxiety? Only
slightly. A lot of effort for very little gain.
So I retreat into my apartment, retreat into
soaps and antiseptics and antibacterial gels. I sit at
home on a Saturday night, instead of being with
other people, having a drink, having a good time,
having a life. So I am angry. But at who? Am I
angry with myself for reacting in a negative way?
Or am I angry that I have to deal with this stupid
shit at all? Can I be angry at a disease? The
answer to that last question doesn’t matter,
because I am angry with this disease. I reserve
the right to be angry with it for as long as it
plagues my life. I will be angry as long as I
have to complete these rituals over and over.
I will be angry that every night, I have to coat my
hands in vitamin E oil, so that my shredded, worn
skin can recover.

AN APPLE A DAY

It’s an old adage, the old ‘apple a day keeps the doctor away’....
except in these modern times, of course, when an apple
(or an orange, spinach, lettuce, pet food, etc.) can send you
to the doctor, or worse—kill you. Or your pet. Just last
night, the local news reported another contamination outbreak,
simultaneously adding that our system for keeping food
safe is, well, um, faulty. Ha. Tremendous understatement.
For those of us ocd’ers with germ/contamination
fears, this only adds to our anxieties & burdens, causing a
spike in ocd symptoms (increased hand washing, or avoidance
of certain things). When I first began having the signs/symptoms
of ocd in 1996, my biggest problem was fear of food-bourne
illness. So during that time when the ocd began to creep into
my life, I began to hear these stories on the news, about all
these different foods being contaminated. My food list began
to shrink. I became more & more restrictive in what I ate, to
the point that eventually, I was on a liquid diet.
One of the first stories I remember hearing was about
apples, from Washington state. Now, apples are not one of
my favorite fruits, so it shouldn’t have bothered me. However,
ocd being the sneaky & obnoxious disorder it is, I of course
began making the magical connections in my head: I could
not buy/eat anything even associated or near apples, and I
could not check out behind anyone in the store who had
apples in their cart. Anything made with apples, whether
pasteurized or not, was out too — juice, cider, apple jelly,
mixed dried fruits, apple butter. I wouldn’t even go near
an apple tree.
Those original obsessions and fears over certain
foods have stayed with me, because they are associated
with a time when my ocd was quite severe. Apples &
alfalfa sprouts were the two I could never bring myself
to eat again. That is, until this year, ten+ years later.
Now, I’m a known veg-head, plus I like to eat
organic as much as possible, so I do most of my food
shopping at Wild Oats. I usually go around lunch, when
there are tons of free samples to be had, and I can usually
make a small meal out of them (I’m a small gal, I don’t
eat much!) Anyway, in the produce department, there is
always a fruit or veggie set out to try, and during the winter
it’s almost always apples. At first I was pissed — why not
oranges or pears, strawberries, anything else? But one day,
as I was leaving the store, I grabbed a slice of apple on the
way out. I was hungry & feeling brave. I ate half of the
slice & chucked the rest. But I felt exhilarated: I took a
chance, a risk. I faced up to a fear that I had been living
with for ten years. Ten years!

I still had the barrage of obsessive what-ifs, but each
time I go to the store & I eat a slice of apple, those thoughts
bother me less & less. It’s my own little behavioral therapy
session. And it works.

SHOPPING CARTS

A couple of years after I was officially given the diagnosis of OCD,
I returned to school to study psychology. One course I took
was called 'Motivation,' and the professor of that course,
let's call him Professor M, always said things
in class that inflamed me, for one reason or another.
Usually it had something to do with my OCD. So in one particular
e-mail, he said to me:
"It doesn't matter what shopping cart you choose!"
Well, Professor M, if you have OCD, it ALWAYS matters what cart you choose!
And here are the reasons why, in an essay.

If you have OCD, it âlways matters what cart you choose. You
must choose the right cart, and you must choose it using just
the feeling of it being the right cart. You will just know which
one is the right one. I think it has something to do
with the fact that what makes a cart a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ one has
everything to do with the magical connections that one makes
in ones head regarding the cart’s feeling of ‘rightness’or ‘wrongness’;
purely arbitrary connectionsthat have nothing to do with the cart itself.
It has something to do with the ‘what-if’ factor: what if this cart has
been touched by something that makes me uncomfortable and gives
me anxiety? What if it’s been touched by someone with a contagious
disease? Or some dangerous chemical? The list could
go on and on. And you cannot see whether any of these things have
occurred or not. You cannot control what has touched this cart in the past,
or what will touch it in the future.
The magical thinking makes you think you can pick an innocuous cart,
that you can tell it it’s the ‘right’ one.