REFLECTIONS ON ONE YEAR HERE

Reflections On One Year Here

On my very first trip to Chicago, I hunted for an apartment.

Last year this time, I was looking at a variety of buildings in a city I’d never visited. I heard of the Bean and deep-dish pizza but that was about it – and there I was, about to move.

Before moving here, I was living in a small town in Pennsylvania, close to many of my friends and extended family. I was moving to a big city – something I hadn’t done since my miserable grad school experience – and I knew only one person who lived several hours away. I didn’t even know anyone at my new job except the people who I interviewed with, who seemed nice but were still strangers.

I had no idea if I was doing the right thing, but I was ready to leave small-town life. I could only hope I’d do well in the new job and make some new friends and get through that initial period of loneliness that’s happened after every time I’ve moved.

This morning, I got an email in my work inbox congratulating me on a year at my job that was no longer new. I told my boss, who I now consider a friend, and she was thrilled for me. And best of all, I had several people to write to outside of work to share the happy news.

I won’t deny that my first winter was hard. Even though I’d lived in the northeast for years, I was completely unprepared for Chicago winters, especially the wind (and the polar vortex days when it was too cold to even go outside). I was planning to start a lot of new activities when I moved, but found out that things tend to go on hiatus around this time and begin again in the spring, which meant a long, lonely winter. The only group I managed to find that did activities all winter, my Pokemon Go friend group, was the best thing that could have happened to me.

I found them my first weekend, and quickly became part of the group. It may not seem like the most sociable thing in the world to spend a lot of time playing video games, but Pokemon Go in particular helped me a ton after a stressful move. I found people to talk to my first weekend there, after going to the Lincoln Park Zoo for an event, and as I started playing more, I learned my way around Chicago by following pokemon through the map of the Loop and beyond.

When I first found the group a year ago, I was so stressed from the move and leaving my friends and hearing that my dog was sick that I thought my brain would just explode. But now, I have a kind, caring, supportive community, and I know I won’t have another lonely winter.

Last year, I couldn’t have imagined things going this well.

During the moving process, my beloved red Honda Civic, Marian (named for the protagonist of Dragon Age 2, one of my favorite video games), had squirrels under the hood. Not only did they leave nuts that I’m deathly allergic to, but they also prevented my car from going over 4 mph and left me unable to do my own chores, shopping, and other necessities during my last week in Pennsylvania.

I had to say goodbye to friends who I know are far better at communicating in person as opposed to online, and it was incredibly difficult for me to hold my tongue even though I knew I’d basically be losing the close bonds we had.

I was also going to a new job, one that I had no idea if I would like. I could very easily be moving from one job with a toxic work environment to another, even if my new boss sounded nice on the phone.

I was terrified that my apartment would be like my grad school dorm, filled with cockroaches until I got help from the local police in confronting my stubborn landlord.

All of this coalesced into one: I was terrified because I, a person who needs to know everything to feel calm, knew nothing.

And now, a year later, I’m thrilled at how far I’ve come. I’ve made friends, I live in an apartment that has its flaws but is certainly not infested with anything, and enjoy my job. I’ve also made strides in trying new foods, being more open about what’s helpful and harmful for me, and I’ve started this blog.

Writing for No Shame On U has been one of the highlights of my year in Chicago. I love the ability to show what life can be like with mental illness, and it heartens me to see likes, shares, and responses from people who have learned something new or found my words interesting. It’s a thrill to be writing for you, and I hope this year is just the beginning of much more blogging, sharing, and stigma-squashing to come! 

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

WHEN CHANGING PLANS ISN'T GIVING UP

When Changing Plans Isn’t Giving Up

Two weeks into National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), many writers consider calling it quits. The inspiration that carries many through the first week or two wanes, and the word count of 50,000 seems insurmountable. There’s a point every year when I feel like giving up, and it usually happens around this time as well.

I’m not giving up on NaNoWriMo, but the “hump” of the writing challenge makes me think of the time I did choose to give up on something, and how giving up is not inherently bad.

In my senior year of college, I became extremely worried about my future. I had no idea what I was going to do next, but I knew that I couldn’t move back home to a place where I had no friends and no real prospects for a career. Like many other people my age with no clue what the future offered, I decided to apply for grad school.

I got into a school that I thought would be a good fit for me, and thanks to the scholarship I received, I believed that the school had faith in me and knew I would do well. I tried to be as confident as possible when I left my college, which felt so much like home that it truly hurt to leave, and headed to grad school.

The school I switched to was urban, as compared to my extremely rural college where I knew the names of the cows who provided my milk and ice cream. I’d never lived in the middle of a city before, and I felt overwhelmed before I even hit the city limits. My dorm room was expensive, tiny, and infested with cockroaches, and as I started going to class, I found myself with few friends and very little interest in the course material.

I kept going, though, because I thought that giving up would make me a failure. I pushed my anxiety and stress and sadness aside and it worked – for the first few months, at least. And then, since this was a Master of Education degree, I had to student teach.

Anyone who’s met me knows that I’m incredibly chatty and don’t have a problem talking to new people, but in the classroom, I felt so anxious when facing down the room full of twelfth graders barely younger than me that I didn’t know what to do. My stress level soared with each lesson, whenever I was faced with blank stares from my students or disapproving reviews from my two mentors.

The teaching style of my grad school clashed with the way I learned, and for the first time in years, I found myself struggling to keep my grades up. I got so nervous before each of my student teaching days that I had trouble convincing myself to go in the room and would sometimes even count down the minutes until it was over.

But I was determined to never lose a battle to anxiety. I’ve seen OCD as a fight for as long as I can remember, and whoever wins the most battles wins the war. The more anxious I became, the harder I fought against it.

And then November hit.

Like all the other years since I discovered NaNoWriMo, I was determined to write a 50,000-word novel in a month. And for the first time since I started grad school, I was finally doing something I loved.

I started sneaking my novel notebook into my free periods during student teaching, and during my grad school classes, I’d scribble novel notes in the margins. It was the one thing that made me happy, and I kept wishing that teaching felt like that for me.

Not long after NaNoWriMo ended – with another success – I was called into the grad school department head’s office and told that “we only want the best, and you’re not the best.” They gave me tissues and I cried not because I was sad to stop student teaching, but because I was sure I was a failure and I’d have to move back home after all.

But then, they offered me a deal: I could stay and do my last semester of the accelerated program, and in the end, I’d receive a degree but no teaching certification. In the last semester, I could take some elective classes beyond the department, and I was no longer locked to a career in teaching.

That first night, I felt overwhelmed. But when I woke up the next morning, I felt freer than I had since my senior year of college.

Suddenly, there was no pressure. I could do what I wanted for my career, and I finally knew that what I wanted to do was find a way to write. It didn’t need to be novels or even short stories, which I wrote at a frenzied pace that last semester, but something that used the talent I loved instead of made me anxious all day would be wonderful.

Long story short, the day before graduation, I was offered a job running a small-town newspaper. I was there for two years before I moved to Chicago, and although the work environment was not the best, I was thankful every day for the fact that I was finally doing something I loved.

In that last semester, I sometimes felt like a failure, especially when I’d see my classmates looking at me strangely or when they’d stop talking about teaching plans when I got nearby. But around then, I realized that there are different kinds of failure.

I no longer see my master’s degree as a failure. Sure, I didn’t do what I set out to do, but by changing my goals, I managed to find a career path I’m enjoying so much more. I’ve been a journalist for three years now, and the career offers me the opportunity to write during the day and then work on my stories and novels at home. I have a life filled with my favorite hobby, which certainly isn’t a failure.

This incident showed me the importance of knowing when to fight my anxiety and when to seek an alternate path. If I stayed at the school for a second year, ignoring the things about the city and the grad school program that made me miserable, I might have had the time I needed to feel comfortable in the classroom. But I would have missed out on so much more and fought so many battles that I really didn’t need to fight.

Ever since then, I try to choose my battles with anxiety and OCD carefully. Not every opportunity I don’t take is a failure, and saving my energy for the battles that matter has helped me work through more problems like my disordered eating, exposure therapy for phobias, and more.

NaNoWriMo is something I don’t think I’ll ever give up on, but I’m okay with giving up on certain other things now. It’s a tough balance to find, but thanks to the lack of stress from a career I’m enjoying, I have the time to sort through what’s worth it. And that is worth much more in the long run than a certification that would make me nominally not a failure of that program, but would make me fail in my most important mission in life: living happily with mental illness.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

A Trip Down Memory Lane

On a recent trip home, I found a few old flash drives that I used during middle and high school. On one of them, I found my first attempt at writing a story like the ones I write for this blog every week – sharing my experience with OCD.

The story I found is called “The Scepter and the Scourge” – I’d discovered the word “scourge” in computer camp and liked the way it applied to how constant and debilitating OCD was in my life at that time, and “scepter” was a nod to my brand-new love for Lord of the Rings and the association I formed between the obsessions in my head and my writing talent. I remember writing bits and pieces of the story, trying to come up with titles for each little section, and it was quite interesting to delve into my past.

The story begins with my first memories of my diagnosis. I’m pretty sure I was about nine years old at this point, as this was when I met the psychiatrist who’s been by my side ever since. She had a plastic brain in her lap, and she used it to explain to me about serotonin receptors and other things as I traced the corresponding parts on my own head. The biggest part I remember of that day is the question I asked her when she finally used the word “disease:”

“Is there a cure?”

“No.”

I remember feeling horrified that there was no easy answer, wondering if it was a disease like cancer that could just kill you outright or if it was something to live the rest of my life with. Either option sounded terrifying, and the best option she could offer me was a daily dose of Paxil. I’d forgotten how orange it was until I reread my own words.

But just as I’m going into this low point, the story shifts: I’m on the couch with Dad, as he urges me to look up from my Calvin and Hobbes comic book and watch Fellowship of the Ring with him. I was convinced it was for nerds, and being a nerd was a bad thing. But, as my younger self wrote, “everything I knew before and everything I thought after changed when I got my first glimpse of Lord of the Rings.”

It was the positive side of OCD, the one I’d looked for ever since that day in my psychiatrist’s office. I wrote about the euphoria that made me want to watch the movies from start to finish, even my willingness to work out while doing so – something I usually hated. I wrote about all the questions I asked Dad – all the mechanics of the world, history, geography, and the backstories of all of my favorite characters – until I could tell that he was wary of answering my questions in case he encouraged the obsession further.

And then my favorite part: I was sitting on the exercise bike, watching the credits of Return of the King roll by, and I couldn’t wait to start the whole trilogy again. I wanted – no, needed – a way to take this passion and carry it forward, and in that moment, I came up with my first original character within Tolkien’s universe. Her name – which I have never written in public before – is Ia (pronounced EYE-uh).

Along with the thrill of my favorite story ever invented came a crushing sense of guilt. I knew it was wrong to do this – it felt like some unholy combination of cheating, copying, and obsessing – but I was just a kid, and it was the equivalent of Chanukah and my birthday and enough snow to build a snowman and my favorite pasta dinner all at once.

I put in this character everything I wanted myself to be: brave, strong, mature, beautiful. Everything I disliked about myself, I tried to erase from this character, but I couldn’t quite get rid of things like fears and picky eating. After all, I wrote what I knew.

I wrote her story in my head all the time, creating the kind of high I can really only feel while deeply immersed in a story. All the possibilities of adventures within Middle-Earth felt intoxicating, and thanks to the repetitive nature of my thoughts, the feeling never waned.

In “The Scepter and the Scourge,” I relearn that her birthday is on March 23 (I was very much into zodiac signs, believing that the bravery of my own, Capricorn, might show up one day), and find the name of the original story file, which I believe to have been lost with an old computer (Forever Young, because of her journeys with immortal elves). I remember that her first story snippet involved a bully learning to be kind to her and accept her, which was one of my dearest wishes as a child.

But with the high came the shame, the knowledge that writing Ia’s story was just another obsession. Just like the ones about throwing up or drinking out of water fountains or anything else in my head. And so I did everything I could to keep it a secret. I embedded the document so deeply in a maze of files that I hoped Dad would never be able to find it, and in “The Scepter and the Scourge,” I detail the path: C:\Users\Michelle\Documents\My Private Stuff\Why are you snooping in here\I mean it\ok if that's the way you want to be\3\how did you get in here\ok now here are my files\Forever Young.

I hoped the guilt trip of clicking through all those subfolders would be enough, but in my fear, I deleted things I wanted to keep, I shredded any papers I wrote her story on in real life, and I kept my happiness in my head just as much as I tried to keep the obsessive thoughts that controlled my life.

The two most valuable things I found in “The Scepter and the Scourge” are a short section of Ia’s story that I never deleted – rife with spelling mistakes and contrived plot that somewhat makes me cringe, but is still somehow beautiful – and the following observation that I remember literally stopped me in my tracks as I got off the treadmill one day towards the beginning of high school – and, as the story ends:

“Out of all the roles that Lord of the Rings played in my life, whether as a fascination or a comfort or a cure, the most important thing about the movies is that they gave me Ia. And Ia gave me the strength to continue many times when I feared I would fail, and the courage to face each new day with an open mind, and the audacity to seek adventure rather than hide from it. Ia was a friend when I had none and an inspiration to write when my hands were sitting still on the keyboard.

But most of all, Ia made me an author. If I can create a character as strong as Ia in someone else’s world, why can’t I create such a strong character in a world I invent? Better yet, why can’t I be the character, in the world that we all live in? I know that I am ashamed of certain things about myself. I know that my OCD has hindered me from opportunities in the past, such as going to summer camp or drinking orange juice. However, I unconsciously put this one thing I wish I could cut out of myself into Ia, and I find that where it weakened me, it gave her strength.

Her ability to focus single-mindedly on one thing for extended periods of time is what gives her power. It’s what makes her do what she does. I’m not a doctor, but I’ve gotten pretty good at telling if someone else has OCD, and I can safely say that she has some form of it, at least the intense focus and dedication that comes with the frantic worrying.

When I realized it, it really made me think. My experience with my brain has not been good (I even looked up lobotomy on the Internet for a short while in the beginning to see if I could ‘fix’ myself), but only I have the potential to make it better—in short, to give myself a happy ending just like I gave Ia. So you might ask me, when has my worst trait ever been a blessing instead of a curse? Well, let me tell you:

Now.”

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

NEVER GIVE UP NOVELING

Never Giving Up Noveling

This week, I’ve begun a challenge that takes up nearly all of my free time in the month of November for the past nine years – National Novel Writing Month!

As part of National Novel Writing Month (usually abbreviated to NaNoWriMo), participants write a novel containing a minimum of 50,000 words solely during the month of November. You’re allowed to do as much planning as you want ahead of time, but you can’t actually start writing – or counting your words – until midnight on November 1.

I discovered the challenge in high school, and quickly latched on. I started November with a vague science fiction idea about a disease spread by mushrooms. Mushrooms and disease make for a typical Ellie OCD idea, but I had no idea how much the challenge would shake up my typical routine.

I’ve always felt most comfortable as a creature of habit. I know when I wake up, how my mornings go, my routine for my school – and later, work – day, evenings, and bedtime. I, thankfully, don’t have any obsessive thoughts about following this routine (especially bedtime, which tends to fall by the wayside if I get engrossed in a video game, book, or conversation with a friend), but I always feel best when I know what’s happening next.

Changes to my routine can make my anxiety skyrocket, so planning for something like NaNoWriMo can involve a lot more than just brainstorming ideas for my new novel.

The basic plan for completing NaNoWriMo on time is writing 1,667 words every day, but in practice, it rarely happens that way. I always try to go ahead, planning for fewer words around Thanksgiving if I have plans with family and keeping a buffer of at least one day in case something happens. It stresses me out a lot if I fall behind, because I’ve never lost.

No matter what’s been going on in my life, I take the commitment to write a novel in November very seriously. I think about the timing and the schedules ahead of time and if I sign up on the website, I don’t quit for any reason. I didn’t even quit last year, when I had just moved to Chicago a few days before November started, had just started working at my new job, and was just informed that my dog had cancer (thankfully, he beat it, and is doing very well!). It took a lot of frustration, tears, and long walks in the cold, but I didn’t give up.

NaNoWriMo, for me, is a path to the dream I’ve known as long as I’ve had OCD – to be a published author. I’d love to walk into a bookstore and find my own book there, perhaps even find someone buying or reading it, and feel like my ideas are changing the world. It’s what inspires me to write every day in November, even if it’s cold, I’m tired, I’m busy at work, or any other excuse.

Most of all, I’d love to use some content I create during NaNoWriMo to help people. I originally started this blog to help reduce the stigma of mental illness by sharing my everyday experiences, and through conversations with my friends and family who read my blog every week, I feel like I’m helping to change perspectives.

I don’t always write mental health-related content on purpose during NaNoWriMo. Sometimes, I’ve written stories to help me deal with things – it’s my favorite way to release anxiety from trauma – and other times, it creeps into my narratives no matter what I’m writing. After all, it’d be great to see more characters with mental illness in fantasy, science fiction, and other genres where representation is rare.

Over the years, I’ve written novel-length stories about a medieval woman suspected to be a witch living with PTSD, a knight with paranoid delusions, a milkmaid-turned-revolutionary who learns how to overcome her anxiety, and more. In all these stories, I also tell mine – the story of someone whose mind is made for obsessions but also for stories, and who uses both of those to create something positive.

Thanks to my OCD and a healthy dose of competitiveness, I’ve written six 50,000-word novels in past Novembers and had another two years with over 100,000 words in the month. The sense of accomplishment is well worth changing my routine, no matter how much overthinking I do before November starts – and by this time in the month, I’m settled in a different routine where I can do what needs to get done every day while working on my long-term goals.

This year, as I write the tale of an exiled priestess learning her way around the world, I hope to add a ninth notch to my belt as well as stick to my philosophy about living with OCD: never give up!

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

WHY MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS NEED MENTAL HEALTH TRAINING

Why Medical Professionals Need Mental Health Training

 This week, I went to a new vascular surgeon. As usual, I was nervous, even though I knew the appointment was going to be minor - but this time, I had nothing to be nervous about. The doctor and nurse were both kind and understanding, and made me feel at ease both before and after they learned my history.

Learning about the medical reason that brought me in was one thing, but I’ve experienced mixed reactions when medical professionals see that I take psychiatric medication. Sometimes, it changes the tone of the whole conversation. I’ve had times where it’s clear that the people treating me believe that the only thing wrong with me is my head, even when I come in for something completely different.

I’ve even had doctors and nurses question if I’m making decisions about my health solely based on OCD, or if I’m even capable of making decisions – and then they look to others to speak for me.

Thankfully, my doctor visit this week was different, but thinking about some of these previous experiences reminded me of a scenario from an episode of Grey’s Anatomy (spoilers for season 14, episode 11): Dr. Miranda Bailey, a Chief of Surgery in her 40s, goes to a nearby hospital and claims that she is having a heart attack.

On the surface, it may seem like we have nothing in common – I’m in my 20s, not a medical professional, and I’ve never had any cardiovascular problems. But what ties us together is the experience we have both had in doctors’ offices and hospitals, something that allowed me to predict her lines before she could speak them, to believe in her from the very first moment.

Dr. Bailey and I both have OCD, and it is this shared experience that made me feel seen, heard and understood over the course of the episode.

The tests come back negative, at first, and rather than feeling relief, I, like Dr. Bailey, feel stress. It’s what I feel when I go into a doctor’s office. In my mind, I’m still the hypochondriac I was as a child, and I feel deeply ashamed if I go to the doctor and everything turns out fine. It may sound counter-intuitive, but I couldn’t remember the last time I went to a doctor for anything other than a routine visit and didn’t want there to be something small but fixable wrong with me, so that I wouldn’t be seen as just another person with OCD seeing things that aren’t there.

Dr. Bailey, like me, thinks of everything her symptoms could lead to, every possibility that won’t end with her going home in shame, with a bill and a sinking feeling of losing a battle to mental illness. She asks for more tests, her voice sounding desperate as her doctor refuses. She even asks for a second opinion, but before her doctor will agree, he asks more detailed questions about her medication list. He finds out that she has OCD.

And he summons a psychiatrist instead of the doctor she had asked for, assuming her symptoms are nothing more than the product of a delusional mind. This leads to a session of humiliation where she has to stand her ground against someone questioning everything that brought her to this point.

And then, she has a heart attack.

I didn’t want one of my favorite characters on the show to have a heart attack, but part of me knew if I was in her shoes, I would feel vindicated. I cheered when the doctor who blew her off was asked if he had
performed the test she had asked for, finally showing him that she had been right all along, and his prejudice got in the way of his patient care. I also cheered when other doctors believed in her and treated her properly, ensuring that she would have a full recovery.

There may have been some viewers who thought she was exaggerating her symptoms, or simply crazy. But I believed her from her first words, because I have lived her story more times than I’d like to think. And I can only hope that doctors treat me like the good ones on the show, rather than the one who almost cost Dr. Bailey her life.

Training and tolerance can make the difference between an experience like mine this week, and the plenty of times I have been belittled, disbelieved, and more simply for an unrelated mental health diagnosis.

When I watched that episode, I knew it shouldn’t have mattered that Dr. Bailey has OCD. What mattered was that she was in the emergency room complaining of chest pain. Not everything can be traced back to mental illness, and even if symptoms turn out to be a false alarm or an obsession gone wrong, a patient with OCD still deserves to be heard and respected, just like anyone else.

And contrary to what I’ve heard from some medical professionals, Dr. Bailey and I are not unintelligent because of our OCD. We have past medical experiences that inform us of what is dangerous and doctor-worthy, and because of our OCD, we put a lot of thought into weighing the pros and cons of going to see a doctor. Our mental illness should not provide an excuse for not looking into everything our physical symptoms could be. What seems fake may be completely real either in my head, my body, or both.

I still remember the names and faces of doctors and nurses who blew me off, didn’t believe in my symptoms and just heard shallow breathing or saw fidgety fingers flying across the screen of my phone. These reactions are why I Google my symptoms, or consult a friend, so that the decision to go to the doctor is not mine alone. It’s also why I bring a friend if I go to the hospital, in case I need someone else to speak for me once my medical history is out in the open.

Even tolerant people aren’t immune to this kind of thinking – even my mom, an incredible advocate whose quick notice of my OCD in early childhood helped me become the person who I am today, didn’t believe that I had a severe nut allergy even after I had reactions, because it looked like OCD on the surface. When I had my first life-threatening allergic reaction at 18, I wheezed into the nebulizer with relief, because then, perceptions of OCD couldn’t get in the way.

I also remember the good just as much as I remember the bad. I still have a scribbled message of hope and drawing of a butterfly from a nurse that I carried through my three procedures that still hangs on my fridge seven years later. And without the incredible support from the doctor at my college, there is a good chance I would have had to forfeit a semester in my freshman year for medical problems. Doctors and nurses have been some of my strongest allies in my fight against both physical and mental illness, and they have the power to make my fight as well as that of many other people so much easier. All it takes is compassion and belief.

But in order to get to that point, doctors need to act like the vascular surgeon I met this week and find a balance between putting an anxious patient at ease and relying too much on anxiety as a diagnosis rather than looking for physical problems.

As Dr. Bailey said, “I am not ashamed of [my OCD]. But it’s not my story. It’s just one piece. And if you check the ‘mental illness’ box and refuse to look at anything else, then I’m not going to live long enough to finish the rest of my story.” With proper training to help medical professionals find the balance, I hope that one day, people like me won’t have to worry about seeing a new doctor. They’ll simply be another ally in our quest to finish our life stories that are altered by OCD, but also composed of a great many other things.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.