Reflecting...

 On Grief

In the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a man and a woman break-up and each pay for an experimental surgery by which they may erase their memories of the relationship and make it as if it never happened. In so doing, they re-live all of their memories as they are being erased. It’s a fairly accurate portrayal of grief. I don’t know that OCD exacerbates my feelings, but it feels like it. Maybe not. I had not had much experience with grief, to be honest. The pain has been unlike anything else. I used to write and ponder the nature of love. I ended up finding it not so intimidating. It’s a corollary of commitment, and I am nothing if not loyal. Finding someone to love is difficult, for sure. Loving the right person is the easiest thing in the world. Opening up my entire being to the person I love and being truly vulnerable took like 30 minutes. Sustaining a relationship is more difficult than loving someone and entirely different. My love doesn’t end because my “label” changed. Not how it works. If you’re a good and true person, love is easy. Boy, I don’t know about the grief though: the gnawing, endless pain reverberating through my days. Is the risk of feeling that worth making the commitment to love ever again? Maybe. Maybe not.

If I write this blog to help others, I should probably elaborate. Many can relate to the way I feel, I’m sure. Maybe someday.

On Endings

It’s been over four years since I wrote here. I have been compelled to Begin Again for a while now. My computer is littered with drafts and attempts to put down the words which can put my life back together. Perhaps there does exist some combination and sequence of words to make myself feel whole again, to resurrect the person I used to be. Maybe. Maybe not.

I stopped writing here for a few reasons. I enjoyed the feedback. People seemed to find legitimate merit in my words. I don’t believe I had many readers, but I know some found it, and it helped them some tiny amount. OCD, man. If I can help other people with OCD, that is something I want to do. So, why stop?

In summer 2021, my father drove up to Providence to help me purchase household items for my off-campus house. I was late. I am often late which is a personal flaw, but I did feel this tardiness was particularly rude. I was on a second date at a tea and crepes establishment called Schastea. It was going excellently. 

But I bring up that day because of the conversation that followed. Apparently, my parents had found this blog. They thought it was excellent but “kind of dark though.” I got cold feet. I didn’t particularly want to express dark thoughts anymore. They were in there, sure. I didn’t want my parents, my friends, my girlfriend, strangers to read it anymore. I can’t control my thoughts, and I didn’t want to live them anymore. I wanted to be the life of the party, everyone’s friend, a pretty girl’s boyfriend. For a time, I was.

I look back at that time wistfully. Of course, the circumstances were excellent, but I want to be that guy again. Covid was such a horrible time for everyone but also for me. I felt so emotionally stunted and held back from experiencing all of life. High school was really difficult for me and then the first two years of college were decidedly unhealthy. And yet, I found something when I wrote this blog. After that last post, I emerged as someone else. I was confident and purposeful and deliriously happy. That guy is gone, and I can’t find him anywhere. Maybe this blog will bring him back. Maybe the new year will bring him back. Maybe he’s gone for good.

At the best of times, I like to think I had a spark of something special. I had an energy to me. I would brim with a zeal for life. I wanted to live every possible second of life. I made people around me happy.

Yeah, things are pretty dark now. I wouldn’t consider this blog a cry for help. The crying for help stage was months ago. I feel ok now. I’m miserable and exhausted and that old Aidan spark is gone but I’m ok. I’m still really, really funny. I still make people happy. I am still someone people are lucky to have around them. I know that I have value. It doesn’t make being me all that much easier though.

This is the stage for gritting your teeth and getting through each and every day the best you can. 

On Identity

Why do people write? Why do I write? It’s self-expression. There is a yearning by any writer to be understood. I want the reader to understand me. A piece of writing, once published, is a window into the mind of someone else. For me, that has its own significance. 

When you have OCD, your mind is a battlefield. Intrusive thoughts and rumination is its own battle, but there’s a tertiary effect I didn’t totally understand. I can’t stop the thoughts from coming in. I can’t stop my brain from planting horrible things in my mind. 

The issue is that the volume of thoughts I have to categorize as OCD or non-OCD is disorienting. Thoughts come in faster than I can get to the bottom of whether they’re real or not. Am I really in mortal danger or is that just a delusion based on my fear of germs? Am I really going to get fired or is that a delusion based on my fear of failure? Do I really want to commit violence or is that just an intrusive thought I can’t control? I don’t have the ability to trust my own thoughts. I need to question them and fight them, just like this. I have often joked that I can worry about anything, and it’s true. I have to think about everything. It can be difficult to figure out which parts of my mind are the real me.

That is why I find writing difficult. I can manipulate the page to express anything I want. I’ve read things I’ve written, and it’s like someone else wrote it. The OCD switch in my brain took over and wrote something to make itself feel better. I could write a blog post about how great and wonderful my life is. Look at all these people’s Instagrams. I could be portraying a grand old time too. So, is all of this you’re reading just OCD or is this the real me? Do I even feel this way or are my thoughts just telling me I do? Who is this for?

I’m so tired of the fighting. I’m tired of thinking things that aren’t fucking real. It’s so frustrating to argue with myself about everything. Imagine being my parent or my friend or my girlfriend. I want people to rely on me and meanwhile I can’t even figure out if what I’m thinking is real or not. I told them once to try and stop giving me reassurance when I asked about my obsessions. I’m sure they tried their best. But I, knowing that I had asked them not to answer my compulsive questions, would later try to figure out a way to get the answer out of them. I had to try to trick the people I was closest to into saying what I thought I needed to hear. It felt so lonely. It was OCD, not me. 

That’s a neat trick. Blaming everything bad and wrong on OCD and shirking all responsibility for myself. If that’s what I do, then I’m forgetting the part where I enjoy the fruit of my manipulations. All I feel is guilt for not controlling the monster.

The day I realized I would be on medication forever was a bad one. What kind of a person literally cannot tolerate daily life without chemical help? How can you trust a person like that? Is the medication burying the real me? Will my true identity be a long-buried secret? Maybe that was the day I broke. Who knows?

WHY AM I WRITING THIS? If OCD is the one typing these words, please, please give me a sign. 

On Giving Up/In

I find it difficult to get through the days. I’ve been pretty open about it to those who care. I broke something inside of me this year, and I don’t really know what fixes it. I used to feel driven to break new barriers. I wanted to succeed and defeat OCD and be as successful and happy as I could be. Well, there’s no defeating OCD. I’ll be fighting this shit until I die. I wake up and I don’t know what to do. All I know is I want to avoid the moment when I’m alone with my thoughts. But the distractions lost their potency. I’m good at my job. I have friends. I watch movies. I play sports. I have multiple therapists. I still can’t shake the monster in my head. 

It's been a year of rock bottoms. They’re never the moments you would think. They happen at night, when I’m alone with OCD. I keep discovering a new low, a fresher hell. All of which brings me to one new idea. So many people congratulate me for continuing to get up every morning and trying to live my life. They applaud my attempts to feign normalcy. On some level, I appreciate it because getting up every day and persevering has been so, so difficult. But I also feel shame because other people do persevere through far worse. OCD is bad, but there are far, far worse diseases. I have my physical health and for that I am eternally grateful. However, why does it matter that other people successfully get through worse? Good for them, they are incredible, but why does that mean I am not worthy of plaudits for fighting my own battle? And, if I am worthy of praise for carrying on; can I choose to forego said praise and instead just fucking quit?

Yeah, waking up every day is hard. I’m fucking disabled. I’ve read the list of federally recognized disabilities and OCD is on it. I should just admit it. I am a disabled person. That is incontrovertible fact. Living in my brain is hard. And I’m choosing to be a fucking lawyer??? Who said I had to do that? If brain surgeon is the most stressful job in the world, then lawyer certainly is not too far off. I don’t have to find another relationship. I don’t need to network. I don’t need to make new friends. I don’t need to go to a job that will stress me out every day. I’m lucky. My parents can afford to take care of me forever. I can move back. Maybe I could collect a disability check. I could get a job that people like me can handle. There is no shame in it. There’s bravery in even this act. There’s bravery in admitting that life is too much, that I can’t handle leaving home, and that I can’t go on anymore. The way things are going is totally unsustainable, and it is not my fucking fault. It’s OCD. None of it is on me.

So much has happened this year, and none of it has been good. I have accomplished so much this year and none of it has gotten this shit out of my head. So, why carry on?

 

…

 

Yeah. We all know I’m not going to quit. This fight is all I know. I’ll be fighting my thoughts until the day I die. OCD is going to be with me forever. I will be hearing these thoughts every second of every day forever. There is no way out. I’ve made it this far. I don’t know if things are ever going to get better. They might. They might not.

No way out. It’s a bittersweet conclusion. On the one hand, where I am sucks ass. On the other, it means I’m committed to not going anywhere. I’ll be here. I do feel fortunate that I can see that much. No way out.

I’m not giving up, but I do need to give in. Give in to the fact that I can’t control the world around me. Give in to the fact that people enter and leave your life. Give in to the fact that I can’t control my thoughts and that I don’t have to believe them. Give in to the fact that I might not follow my parent’s path. I might not follow my friends’ path. Give in to the fact that I can’t control how long grief lasts for. Give in to the fact that there is no going backwards. Give in to the fact that I will always have doubts.

The only thing I can control is going forward. Wake up and do the best I can. That’s all I have control over. That doesn’t make me feel any better. It’s not supposed to.

On Me

I find myself in the laughter of others. I find myself in loyalty. These two qualities are good, and they feel good. I can re-discover myself. I will come back here in one year and tell you all that I re-built myself. I’ll be back and better than ever. I don’t know what that will look like. I promise I will tell you it’s possible. Because I’m going to do it. Happy Holidays and let’s get the fuck out of 2025.