Casey Yarbrough

 Maguire

Eng 015 Section 038

No Time is a Good Time

      Anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) are psychological disorders that can be caused by low levels of serotonin in the brain.  Serotonin is an important hormone for regulating and stabilizing one’s mood.  Without it, emotional control can be quite difficult.  I know this because serotonin deficiencies have been intertwined in my life as far back as I can remember.  With this kind of deficiency, you can have good or bad days, depending on the amount of stressors in your life.  Most of my days were bad for the first few years once my disorder took full force.  I still struggle with it every day, and I regret so much.

      As a child, I used to hide my vitamins and my socks, normally in my closet.  The vitamins I could understand; Flintstone vitamins are just plain disgusting.  What little kid wants to munch on flavored chalk?  Hiding my socks, however, was just a habitual mystery.  Once I became older, and I got different vitamins, I started doing word separation in my head.  I would select a word from the television and split the letters into groupings.  If there weren’t enough letters to divide the word by two’s, I would add an extra consonant or vowel.  Maybe it was because I loved math that I did this; I don’t know.  I do know that this would go on for hours and hours before I could stop.  When I started middle school, I began reiterating entire to day to my mother.  My mom wasn’t a very strict person that insisted I tell her every aspect; I just felt the compulsive need to update her.  It was as if I was tattling on myself so I couldn’t get in trouble for something later.  Unfortunately, the impulse became so strong that I couldn’t consciously relax without telling someone about each, little detail of my day.  Even as a freshman in college, I still feel like I have to keep her informed at my grades and activities.  By the time I became a high school student, I had begun to indulge in the magical world of texting—every GPA’s worst nightmare.  I would have to type my messages perfectly.  If I messed up, the messages would be rewritten, no matter how long.  I had to do it over and over until it was perfect.  I could take up to at least 10 minutes to write a simple, good night text to my dad.  Another habit I picked up was the need to say, “Good bye. Don’t die,” as my farewell to someone.  If I didn’t tell someone not to die, I was convinced that one day they would, and it would be my fault.  This persisted for a couple of years before I was able to cope with the fact that death happens.  One specific summer, after I returned from a family vacation in Florida, I went through a phase where had to tell my parents of every time I didn’t wash a piece of silverware, just so they would know it wasn’t safe to use.  It’s as if the silverware sitting in the sink wasn’t a valid clue.  Looking back at it now, these little quirks and habits were kind of arbitrary, but I couldn’t control myself.  My strange, daily oddities had no rhyme or reason, but these underlying forewarnings, circumstances that had followed me through childhood, are now just small precursors to what really ensued.

      When I was a sophomore in high school, I decided to become a vegetarian.  My parents were a little bit shocked and tried to convince me otherwise, because a no meat diet was unheard of.  Eventually, they supported me and allowed me to pursue what I wanted to.  Also around this time, I had just gotten my first boyfriend, Donald.  He was a good addition to my already tight-knit friend group: Shelby, Caislin, Marleigh, and Alison.  You could say life was good for me.  I had my supportive parents, eccentric friends, a stable boyfriend, and I had even made the varsity soccer team that year.  I was a generally happy kid, until things got a little out of control.  Because of the underlying OCD, I slowly began to latch onto a purist complex, that if I touched or consumed meat (beef, chicken, pork, fish, or seafood), I felt as though I was going against my duty as a vegetarian.  So I exorcised meat from my life.  If someone had eaten meat, I wouldn’t touch them.  If I suspected that meat had been on a counter top, I wouldn’t get near it.  Eventually I became a vegan with a hardcore belief system that took a severe toll on my body.

      My fear of having any contact with meat prevented me from eating meals frequently.  As a vegan, finding food that could provide all of the necessary nutrients was a problematic task.  This, along with being an anti-meat control freak, made dinner time a living horror.  I only ever brought myself to eating packaged foods, but not canned because I wouldn’t use a can opener.  A lot of my meals were cold as well, because I was terrified of using pots, pans, the stove, the oven, and the microwave.  Nothing could be cross-contaminated.  My dinner normally consisted of macadamia nuts, peanut butter from a jar, a protein bar, or saltines (still one of my favorite snacks).  This kind of thing lasted long enough for my body to become emaciated.  I lost twenty pounds I didn’t have to spare, I didn’t have enough energy to walk up the stairs, I slept constantly, and if I had one percent less body fat, I would have been diagnosed as an anorexic.  For me, eating became virtually impossible with the neurotic life style I was living.

      Another issue I had was the compulsive need to wash my body of the daily impurities.  Forty minute, boiling hot showers didn’t always do the trick. So I would wash myself two or three times in a specific system, assuming I did it correctly.  To me, my system was foolproof; it had to been done precisely, or I would restart it.  If I didn’t need to shower, but I felt like I had somehow transferred meat to my lips or mouth, I would have to wash the area and the inside of my mouth with soap.  After you do this for a few weeks, the skin around your mouth dries out, peels, and stings.  Literally have to peel the skin off of my own face was not a pleasant repercussion for my actions.  If I didn’t have soap, I used Listerine, which wasn’t much better.  Most people don’t realize the amount of healthy bacteria and gum that repeated Listerine use can scrape away.  I remember one specific instance where I was washing my hands, and had to repeat the process several times.  I would finish, touch something ‘contaminated’, and start again.  I became so frustrated with myself that I ended up screaming and crying at myself in the mirror.  Unless you have OCD, you cannot imagine how maddening, and physically painful, it is to have to wash your hands four or five times in a row.  This episode was one of my liberating points.

      The worst part of my disorder was the emotional change that impacted my ability to function as a normal human being.  Having a shrieking, mental breakdown was a pretty common part of my day.  I remember being on a family vacation to the Finger Lakes, eating a potato chip that was cooked with shrimp, and screaming and cursing at my mom in front of the entire restaurant. She had tried to stop me from washing my mouth with soap.  That same vacation, my Aunt Tracy, who was a social worker, spent hours trying to convince me to take an anti-anxiety medication or I would be admitted to a hospital.  I remember sitting on the lake dock, crying for hours, contemplating whether or not I should chuck the pills into the lake.  I was able to talk her out of her threats and promised that I would try to get better.  I made a lot of promises like that, which I never planned on keeping.  That vacation was easily the worst week of my life.  One year, my family sponsored a pre-homecoming party at our house, and all of my friends came. I had an anxiety attack and argued with my mom in front of all of the parents because I couldn’t keep calm in our house.  Marleigh’s mother tried to calm me down, but it was too late.  My episode was already in full swing.  Looking back, I cannot imagine how many times I publicly embarrassed my family. 

      On a normal day,  I wouldn’t touch my cats, I couldn’t let my boyfriend hold my hand unless he sanitized, and I definitely couldn’t bring myself to hug my own parents.  If something or someone tried to touch me, I would immediately recoil from them.  Donald would try his best to appease my disorder to try and help me survive the outside world.  He wouldn’t eat around me, he would decontaminate himself, and when I was reacting negatively, he would reassure me with a hug.  Being with him was my anodyne zone, and eventually, I became too much, and it ended.  Once my human safe haven was gone, I realized every other bridge I had burned.  My best friends couldn’t be bothered to hold a conversation with me; they didn’t understand my disorder.  It took a year before my own dad could even begin to grasp it. I wasn’t myself anymore, and I certainly wasn’t stable.  This was my second insight that I needed to fix what I had wronged.

      While a lot of these anxiety attacks and episodes were occurring, my parents tried to get me help.  But as any raging teenager in denial would do, I resisted.  Fortunately though, after my realizations, I came to the conclusion that the therapy and medications they wanted me to partake in might actually be beneficial.  I blamed a lot of people in those therapy sessions for what had happened to me, but I had to get all of my frustrations off my chest before I could heal.  Somewhere along my dissent from rationality, I learned that my mother, her siblings, and their mother all had the same disorder I do, just in different forms.  So naturally, I blamed her.  I often wondered why she had a child that such conditions could be passed down to.  I wished that she had warned me that this could be my life one day: insane, alone, and reliant on medication.  I blamed Donald for all he had tried to do for me.  His protecting me actually hurt me, and it took almost two years before I could forgive him.  I blamed my dad for not understanding me, because I had always been “daddy’s little girl”.  And I hated my friends for not trying to hold on to me.  The only person I didn’t blame was my step-father; I remember crying after hugging him for the first time in two years.  In my eyes, he was the innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Sometimes, I liked to entertain the idea that I would die.  Death stopped to be a fear of mine.   I was never suicidal, but living became seemed so difficult sometimes.  My new fear was living.  Sleeping became my new escape, and waking up was my nightmare.  It took over a year of frequent appointments and Zoloft before I could even begin to learn how to control my reactions and my body.

      Let’s play a game.  Let’s pretend someone asked me what a life changing event for me was.  If I told them about how I developed anxiety and OCD, they won’t understand the significance of what that means.  To them they are just words without a definition.  But that’s because, when I’m open about it, it’s healthy Casey that is talking.  Healthy Casey is able to control herself and isn’t on a war path of self-destruction; it’s the unhealthy version of Casey that scares me into the status quo.  If someone had seen the warning signs earlier, I wouldn’t have a two year gap where my life should be.  My mother knew what kind of lineage she had, and we all tried to ignore it.

      From time to time, I forget everything that ever happened, and I get to pretend that I am back to being a thirteen year old girl, who doesn’t have a care in the world.  I’m a healthier person now.  My weight has gone up and I can keep my emotional reactions in check.  My friendships have been rekindled, and I have a wonderful boyfriend that I haven’t scared off yet.  It took a long time before I could become stable again.  My only lasting qualm is that, even though I got professional help, it didn’t come soon enough.

      Time is of the essence when signs of psychological disorders start.  They won’t rectify themselves; they will simply get worse.  Anxiety and OCD come in many indeterminable forms, and maybe the stronger people can overcome them by themselves.  I’m thankful every day that I didn’t succumb to my emotions and intentionally harm myself, but some people don’t have that restraint.  One day, I plan to have children, but I am terrified of passing on my genetics.  I refuse to allow them to have a cavity in their lives that their friends refer to as the “Freak Out”.  The heredity is a fact we all have to live with, but the catastrophic events following are not.  As soon as I see one of my children taking the road I did, I will be getting them help.  There are billions of people in the world, and my family is not the only one with this kind of lineage.  No time is a good time to do it, but I will make sure that there will be one less child that has to go through what I did.

Today I was just sitting in the commons doing some work and two other people were just sitting there doing there thing.  Apparently a variety of friends within the same group come into this room to study sometimes and the guy didn’t recognize me.  He didn’t know if I was in this friend group or not, but he introduced himself to me anyways and was very nice. Some people in society are just good-hearted.

That awkward moment when you try to find a picture of some guys to repost and you end up with something completely unexpected. Jeez.

when you’re boyfriend says something painful to you without meaning it. you know it was an accident, and you know it meant nothing, but it still hurt. that and everywhere you turn there are remnants of his ex, but he doesn’t realize to change it or take pictures down because he doesn’t function that way. i don’t hold him against it and i know he doesn’t mean it. it just hurts.