When I'm Not Inflicting

When I’m Not Inflicting

One of the many things I learned from my child therapist as a little girl was that people were not nearly as interested in my hobbies as I was, and I should be polite and not inflict my interests on other people - especially with my typical intensity.

I learned many strategies to hide the depth and breadth of my interests - how to have a “normal” conversation, how to suppress the level of exuberance I was feeling about whatever book or movie or fandom captured my heart, and how to temper my reactions to seeing or hearing about these things to not seem “weird.”

It’s worked over the years, but a few days ago, I experienced one of my favorite things - when I can talk openly and obsessively about the things I love the most without feeling like I’m burdening anyone or inflicting my passion upon them.

It started when I saw the art prompts for this year’s Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang (TRSB). This is my fourth year participating in this challenge, where artists create various forms of art relating to anything written by Tolkien, and then writers match themselves up with a piece of art and write a minimum 5,000 word story inspired by the piece of art.

There were over 200 pieces of art assembled in the Powerpoint, but one of them instantly caught my eye. It was the perfect mix of angst and sweetness, upsetting things and familial love. It had a significant mental health angle and characters I have loved for years. It was inspired by the Silmarillion - my favorite of Tolkien’s works - and was so beautiful I nearly cried when I saw it. Even though there was a week between when the Powerpoint was released and when writers could claim a piece of art, my interest never dwindled and I spent many hours imagining what this story could be.

The release of prompts to the writers tends to be very competitive, and when there was an error with the Google form accepting my response, my typing skills came to the rescue as I was able to type the entire form a second time within the first 38 seconds of it being released - and I claimed the piece of art that captivated me the most. I couldn’t wait to start writing!

But first, I had to connect with the artist. I reached out, not sharing any of my ideas in-depth, and was surprised to get a nearly-instant response. We started emailing each other, then I asked if instant messaging on Discord might be a better option for a longer conversation. When we moved onto Discord, she asked if I minded her sharing a “wall of text” about the elves in her beautiful painting.

I said I didn’t mind, and would enjoy seeing her ideas. She sent me a big list, and then asked me if I’d feel comfortable sharing some of my own.

In other words, she asked me - of all people - if I was comfortable talking about Tolkien’s elves. As if I could say anything other than yes!

Sure, it’s likely that someone who paints pictures of elves from the Silmarillion won’t mind talking about Tolkien’s world with me, but I have gotten so used to downplaying my passions that I was floored. Someone actually wanted to listen to me of their own free will? Someone actually cared enough about my passions that I wouldn’t feel like an asshole for making them listen to something I know they don’t like?

Long story short, I responded with a dozen of my Tolkien-related cosplay photos and a full page of ideas I had for the story. And it turned into a beautiful conversation where we could both say literally everything on our minds and not be perceived as weird, obsessive, too interested, or anything else so many people in my life have told me to avoid.

It’s not that I don’t understand the other side - it can be “too much” to listen to people talking about their passions for hours on end. But as someone told that obsessions are bad no matter what they are, even the ones that bring me great joy also bring me great shame. I don’t think it’s right to blabber on about my favorite things to everyone in earshot. But hiding things like this over the years has turned it into such a special experience when I get to share my passions and not feel guilty.

When I’m not inflicting, when the other person finds the topics I focus on equally addicting, I find such a rare thrill that makes me feel appreciated, valid, and worth being listened to. It’s one of my favorite feelings, and in the absence of conventions - where these conversations happen often - it was amazing to experience the feeling and make a new friend who I don’t need to censor myself around. With the two of us working together, I can’t help but feel that this might be my best TRSB story yet!

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.

Adjusting

Adjusting

I’m writing this blog at the end of my first week back in Chicago after six months spent at home, living with my parents and dog, and not far from Nana. And let’s just say the transition hasn’t been easy.

As someone who struggles with change at the best of times, I was especially nervous about how I would process coming back after so long. True, I’d done the same return trip for a few months over the summer, but I knew I would be going back for another extended stay sooner rather than later, and I had already decided that getting a dog would be my coping mechanism.

This time, it was a permanent return, and although I prepared several coping mechanisms - working on a new novel as part of a writing class I’m taking, learning how to play a musical instrument for the first time since childhood, training to become a Dungeon Master in Dungeons & Dragons, and trading the pokemon I’d caught while I was away with my friends who play Pokemon Go - it still left a lot of time for me to be alone.

This week, I found myself going outside about as much as humanly possible, walking 7-10 miles a day. On these walks, I could see other people, even if I didn’t talk to them, and I didn’t feel quite so alone as I did settling back in to my apartment. I’d really gotten used to having company around whenever I wanted people (or my dog, whenever I was in a canine mood), so it felt so strange to go back to living alone.

Living by myself for the first time in so long means that the routine I’d been following with my family was gone, and with all the freedom to do what I wanted when I wanted, I felt even weirder. The need to see other people hit me hard, and since I’m over two weeks past my vaccination, I started to make plans immediately.

Some things worked out, and others didn’t. But I really got my heart set on meeting with a friend who I hadn’t seen since October, and although I remembered that she was often very flaky with plans, I was unprepared for the wave of emotions that would rush over me when she canceled our plans.

I should have known that this would happen, based on past history. And yet, I couldn’t help but cry as I felt like I was doing everything in my control to help ensure a positive return experience, and there was so little I could actually control.

After living with OCD for so long, I have realized that controlling my environment to the best of my ability is the best way to stay on an even keel. But at times like this, times of major transition when it seems like nothing in the world is normal and I’m suddenly thrust into a new routine in a place I haven’t even seen in months, it feels very overwhelming.

In the end, I decided to try to be kind to myself. I dressed in warm fuzzy pajamas, enjoyed a takeout dinner from one of my old favorite restaurants, and tried to enjoy what was in my apartment instead of running away. I went through my old favorite books, rediscovered just how comfy my “comfy chair” is, and played a relaxing Nintendo Switch game on my TV.

This relaxing evening didn’t fix all the worries I’ve been dealing with since I came back, but it did help me find my footing. It occurred to me that trying to rush feeling back to normal wasn’t actually going to make me feel better any faster, and no matter how many new activities I try, it’s going to take time to get used to living alone in Chicago again.

So yes, there have been tears, frustrating moments, and far too many footsteps. But I hope that, as more time goes by, I can continue to take steps to feel adjusted in healthier ways.

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.

VACCINATED

Vaccinated

I’d never been so excited to have a needle in my arm.

But I was so thrilled the night before I got my first shot of Pfizer that I barely slept. I couldn’t wait to go to the convention center, even though there wasn’t going to be a convention there, to get my shot along with my dad as soon as our state opened up to 16+.

The process ended up being easy – we were in and out very quickly, and I received a “I got my Fauci ouchie” sticker to show off. It was an easy process, and the same was true when I came back three weeks later for my second shot. My only side effect was fatigue the next day, but I was still able to stay awake for Dungeons & Dragons that night after a hot fudge sundae.

As excited as I was to get vaccinated, things started to feel weird once I got my second shot. I heard so many opinions from so many people about where and when I should wear a mask; whether I should be allowed to do things like eat outdoors or indoors at a restaurant, see a movie, and hang out inside one of my favorite stores; or return to Chicago.

Now that I’m several weeks after my second shot, I’m doing my best to figure out what the “new normal” looks like. I have many contrasting desires – safety for myself and others comes first, but I am also missing things like gathering with friends, attending events at my local game store, and, of course, giant conventions with thousands of people.

The conventions are likely going to have to wait a while (although I’m holding out hope for Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo in December), but the other things are a lot more ambiguous. I’ve found myself wondering what’s safe for me to do with my vaccinated friends, and these decisions are a lot more relevant now that I have returned to Chicago

When I was with my parents, I had social contact every day even without leaving the house, but now, if I want to have social contact in person, it’s up to me to decide what’s safe. This has been somewhat anxiety-provoking, a phenomenon many people are experiencing right now.

I’ve heard it called “re-entry anxiety,” and for me, it set in once the immediate worry of catching COVID-19 or spreading it to an unvaccinated family member dissipated. Once my family was vaccinated – and I was the last one – some old fears of change started creeping in.

I’ve never been good at change, and no matter how much I miss certain things, it was hard for me to come to the decision to leave my family and go back to Chicago. I felt torn between being used to daily in-person socialization and missing my independence and my friends. I ended up compromising, waiting a little while after I got vaccinated to go back, and now as I settle back in, I am trying to figure out how to balance these needs in a new world.

Normally, when I go back to living alone after an extended visit with family, I try to take very good care of my emotional needs by making a lot of plans. I’ve tried to do that virtually this time, but after living with my family for longer than I’ve done since I left for college, I still feel strange to be by myself and create my own routine. It’s something I’ve done before, but not in a world like this, and with uncertainty comes anxiety.

When I prepared for coming back, I made my best effort to make as many virtual plans as possible – three events in the first weekend alone. But that’s not sustainable for every weekend, and it falls to me to figure out how to create a balance between my usual routine and what makes sense for these new times.

It’s hard for me to not have even a vague idea of what the world or even just my everyday routine will look like, because I’m normally a person who’s most calm when I know the general roadmap of how things work. Without knowing things like when (or if) I’ll be returning to my office, seeing my friends, or doing activities I enjoy, life feels strange.

I think it’s important to talk about feelings like these, especially since so many people are experiencing them. As more people get vaccinated and make their forays into the world at large, it’s important to not sweep re-entry anxiety under the rug. Talking about this very common form of anxiety may help people become open to more conversations about mental health, which would be useful to many people as we figure out what the post-COVID world will look like.

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.

LITTLE THINGS

Little Things

While “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” is a common phrase, few of us celebrate the individual steps that help us get to that thousand-mile mark.

When I look back at the journey I’ve taken to get to a more stable place, that road is paved with hundreds of tiny milestones, some of which have been far easier than others, that help me lead a more normal life even with OCD.

Something that came to mind recently is that I avoided sleeping on my left side and my stomach for years thanks to an Internet sidebar ad that showed up one time for me. It was from a disreputable source trying to sell some kind of weight loss product, but the image of the stomach being “more full” if someone slept on the left side, and that that could cause nausea or vomiting, somehow got stuck in my head.

Like the vast majority of my obsessive thoughts, I knew it was completely incorrect. There was no way sleeping in a particular position – one I’d slept in plenty of times before – would cause anything to happen to me, but the idea wormed its way into my subconscious, and I found myself unwilling to sleep on my left side or my stomach.

Recently, however, I’ve noticed that the power of this long-held idea has faded. I sleep on my left side perhaps not as frequently as on my right side, but for whatever reason, I’ve felt the urge to sleep on my stomach. I was nervous at first, but quickly realized that it wasn’t actually going to do anything to me. I didn’t believe the ad I saw years ago anymore, and it had no power to make me sleep in any particular way.

And so, I tried sleeping on my stomach. It was scary at first, but I soon realized that I felt completely fine. One night turned into two, and now I sleep on my stomach just about as much as I sleep on my sides.

This might sound insignificant, but to me, every one of these tiny changes I make helps me live a life I can be proud of. I am reminded of this pride every time I try a new food (this week, I tried samosas for the first time as I hesitantly dip my toes into the world of Indian food), try a new activity that scares me, or convince myself out of a panicked thought loop.

Sometimes, when I get ashamed of myself for being afraid of things, I remind myself of these tiny steps and how they can make my fears much more manageable. I think about the time my best friend from college and I went to a Persian restaurant to try tiny bites of the food that might appear at my Nana’s 90th birthday party. I recall when, in the middle of the pandemic, I taught myself how to do things like grocery shopping again by taking two-minute trips to the grocery store where I touched nothing, just stayed in the building. In both of these instances, the “test drive” experiences made the real thing a lot less intimidating and helped me enjoy myself during times I thought were going to be ordeals.

When I discuss the various things I’ve gone through with friends, I sometimes hear that the things in their lives are impossible to handle or that they have no idea how I have handled what I have. I can’t see the whole journey either, when I’m in the middle of it – I just see the parts and the tiny little steps, and as I go along those steps, I find that I’ve gotten a lot farther than I thought.

In the world of therapy, this concept is called graded exposure therapy. Even though it often begins with the help of a therapist, I’ve found that it helps my everyday life to include little things that make me uncomfortable but help resolve my fears and obsessions in the long run. Whether this means listening to ambulance sounds to become less afraid of hospital memories, touching a dog for a moment in order to get used to being around dogs, or taking the tiniest lick of a new food, I appreciate the way these steps add up to create a path to where I want to go.

This mindset is a huge shift from how I used to see things when I was younger – that I was somehow stupid or bad for needing more steps to get to my goals. But now, this is my go-to method for anything that scares me. I’ve found something that works for me, and even if it takes more time and effort to make progress through little steps, I now celebrate them because they help me do the things I want to do and be the person I want to be, while acknowledging the way my head works and making accommodations for myself.

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.

#chooselife;....Guest Mental Health Awareness Month Blog

#chooselife;

TW: Suicide

Welcome to the “shittiest club” of all.  That is what I was told after my husband Ted completed suicide in July, 2020.

I described Ted as the “perfect storm”.  He was depressed and filled with anxiety which was only exacerbated with the onset of Covid 19. He was a cancer survivor twice.  He was not afraid of dying, he was a peace with his life.  What Ted was afraid of was suffering, not being able to breathe, not being in control of his body.  What made this worse for Ted was my job as a home care physical therapist, going into patients’ homes daily, not knowing what I had come in contact with or was exposed to.  In essence, he created his own cycle of suffering which he acknowledged and eventually succumbed to.

The day Ted died was typical for us, except for what he had said to me, that he felt alone and that he was losing his faith in G-d.  I assured him he was not alone and that we could go see our Rabbi regarding his concerns over his faith.  He was a deeply religious person, a son of two holocaust survivors.  But that day my brutally honest husband lied to me when I asked him if he was going to harm himself. The answer was always no and not ten minutes later, he had died by suicide and changed my life forever. 

The events are clear as the day it happened, knowing what happened, calling 911, going to the hospital, knowing he had died.  I was by myself the whole time. We lived in the country and had no family nearby.  I called his family, my family and my close girlfriends who insisted on coming over the house.  The people that could come were on their way, damn Covid.  There were so many emotions all jumbled together—shock, anger, shame, sadness, love, and a deep, deep heart ache like I had never experienced in my life. I was so angry with Ted for “doing this to me.” 

Because of Covid the funeral and shiva were all limited and controlled.  Only twelve people at the funeral; and shiva was scheduled outside, masked and distant.  It was a cold and unfeeling experience.  I missed the hugs most of all. 

 Shock was my friend during this time, it helped my survive.  I was sad, I cried, but I could not feel the grief that was on its way.  I started that journey by reading every book I could on suicide.  I did Zoom services daily to be able to say Kaddish. I listened to podcasts on the subject, hearing how others survived and thrived. I also talked to others—my rabbis, family and friends.  I did not hold anything back about what happened; I did not complete suicide, Ted did.  Understanding the stigma related to this, I was not going allow it to brand me.  I was honest when I needed to be, an open book about what happened.  During this time, I also returned to work and decided that a move closer to my daughter would be the right thing to do.  It was our home, not my home and I needed to leave. I was so conflicted because typically you are told not to do anything for a year after a loss, and here I am planning to sell, buy and move to another state.  And it happened as it was to happen.  Four months later, I am in a new home, new state, just a few minutes’ walk from my daughter and her family. 

I was very fortunate to have a therapist who I called immediately for support and guidance.  I started sessions on a weekly basis soon after the funeral.  I also found a wonderful organization call Cornerstone of Hope, which deals with grief at all levels and for all different scenarios.  I was fortunate to find out that there was a group for suicide survivors that would be starting soon, in person and I would be able to complete this prior to leaving Ohio.  This group has been a lifeline for me—knowing others who have walked my path, knowing that what I am going through and feeling is normal.  It was the hug I had been looking for… at a distance.  I have been lucky to continue weekly meetings with this group, growing, learning, and supporting one another. 

It has been nine months, and so much has changed and evolved.  I have learned so much about myself, suicide and grief.  I learned that I am so much stronger than I could ever have imagined, that I have family and friends that are gems on earth.  Suicide comes with unanswered questions that will never, ever be answered and not to focus on the way Ted died but how he lived.  I was told by my brother soon after Ted’s death that “this was not my fault.”  This message was powerful and continues to give me strength when I need it.  Grief and flashbacks have become familiar occurrences, often visiting in waves, sometimes will stay away for a while and then revisit me, uninvited of course.  I do not fight the grief any more, I understand that this is a process.  Death is something that you never get over or recover from, you just learn to live with it at different levels.  Sometimes feelings of grief will flare up and sometimes it is quiet and leaves me alone.  I truly take one day at a time because all I have is today. 

Lastly, as a survivor, your therapist or doctors always ask you if you have feeling of wanting to hurt yourself.  It’s a common question as well as a common feeling to not want to be here anymore.  Of all the lessons I learned through this experience is to choose life.  Knowing the hurt and pain that a suicide causes to family and friends, how could I do that to my loved ones?  Today I choose life, with gratitude, grace and joy. 

Mimi Aron is a mom, grandma, and survivor of suicide. She lives in Madison, WI after relocating from the Cleveland, OH area with her mini poodle puppy, Gracie Joy. She is currently working part time as a physical therapist, rewriting her bucket list, and learning what it means to live her authentic self.