Lost In The Stands Aisle

Trigger Warning: Death, Grief

I was in Michael’s picking out a stand for a new, lovely copy of the Silmarillion my parents and dog got me for my upcoming birthday, when my phone rang. I picked it up, I heard that my parents were in the car and my mom was crying, and I knew.

I knew that my dog, who was part of my life ever since I picked him out as a puppy fifteen years ago, had died. I didn’t know the specifics, which turned out to be a lot more peaceful than I ever could have imagined. It didn’t even feel real at the moment - he had been declining, and we were pretty sure he had liver cancer, but that didn’t change the fact that I hadn’t actually said goodbye to him and was nowhere near ready.

Luckily, I had run into a close friend in another aisle of Michael’s a few minutes before, and I texted them, telling them to come to the stands aisle. They stood with their arms wrapped around me as I sobbed, not caring that I was in public or that my friend didn’t even know what was going on or that COVID is a thing that exists. Everything fled out of my mind in that instant except for the horrible truths:

I am never going to get picked up at the airport by my parents and see my sweet dog getting excited in the back seat and feel him wiggle as much of his huge body into my lap as he can possibly fit.

I am never going to boop his snoot again, or even just hold my finger out and let him come to me and boop his own snoot (something he only did with me).

I am never going to spoon with him or watch Dr. Phil with him or lay with him as he falls asleep on the blanket I got him for Hanukkah that he slept in every night until the end.

I am never going to call home and ask to talk to him, only for my mom to exclaim that he’s licking the phone when I call him a good boy.

And yes, while I told him goodbye at the end of every time I visited, and had seen him a week before he died, I didn’t get to say a real goodbye and mean it.

In his life, there were a lot of “never again”s - including the fact that he stopped one of his cutest behaviors, squeaking while yawning, several years ago due to a collapsed trachea - but I wasn’t ready for the ultimate “never again.”

My friend walked me home, and we sat down by the computer, looking through old photos of my sweet dog. They let me share stories, helped me pick out pictures to tape in a grief journal my therapist recommended, and then I proceeded to distract myself as much as possible while still processing what was going on.

The only problem was, I couldn’t find a balance between distraction and processing. My dog died right before Christmas, which meant almost all of my friends were out of town, local events had stopped, and the days were short and bitterly cold. Sadness and loneliness felt overwhelming, and I had no idea what to do to get the more unpleasant thoughts of the reality of his death out of my head.

Even though I knew my dog was old and would die at some time in the near future, I wasn’t prepared to think about his body. When my therapist asked me what I would have wanted to happen to his body instead of cremation, I answered that I wished he could have just faded away into nothingness like Yoda. For the week it took for the cremation company to pick him up from the emergency vet in Florida, I couldn’t help but think about the fact that his body had to be in some sort of freezer. Far too cold, then far too hot, for a warm fuzzy friend.

I thought of his last moments, and even though it hurt my parents to ask about how things happened, I still did. I needed a story to tell myself instead of the horrors that my brain could invent. It comforted me to know that he didn’t pee or poop after he died and that he still smelled like his medicated shampoo.

There were some distressing details I fixated on, like the fact that he felt stiff when my parents took him out of the car. That - and the freezer and incinerator, which I imagined like the incinerator in one of my favorite psychological horror video games - stuck in my head for days, and I was unable to get them out. They felt almost like obsessions, except that there was no compulsion, nothing I could do to make the truth any less sad, scary, and disgusting.

Most of all, I felt a loss of control. I was terrified that Nana, who is 93 years old and has some health problems, would die too. I felt helpless to make my family feel better or to even improve my own quality of life. I wished that, somehow, someone could have known he was dying and called me so I could have said goodbye, since I was in no shape to have the existential crisis over whether the Rainbow Bridge - dog Heaven - is actually real.

But my therapist told me that even if my parents had called me at that very moment, I wouldn’t have been able to change anything. Death is a situation over which I have no control, and listening to everything happening but being unable to help might have felt even more frustrating. My therapist helped me list things I could control, and with the help of my family and the couple of friends who were still in town, I started to trudge through the days, learning as I went along.

I learned that healing looks different for everyone in my family, but we have certain commonalities - like stuffed puppies that look and feel like my dog and smell like lavender and can be warmed in the microwave for a hug - that we can do together.

I learned that, for me, it helps to imagine a positive story instead of dwell on the negative facts, and the same strategies - reminding myself of the positive thought every time the negative one rears its ugly head - is my best bet to get through this.

I learned that, unlike what I believed when I was a kid and getting bullied, it’s okay to cry, especially in front of friends. People who really care won’t mind, and through this experience, I have learned to treasure the people around me who have stepped up to take care of me when I’m usually the friend who gives care instead of receiving.

I even got to the point where I could go back to Michael’s and buy the book stand for what turned out to be my dog’s last birthday present to me, which now sits in a prominent place on my desk.

I’m nowhere near being okay about this, but I’m getting to the point where I can be productive at work, occasionally smile and laugh with my friends, and look forward to my upcoming birthday. It’s going to be a weird birthday, and things are likely going to feel weird for a while. But I have moved past the first, horrible wave of grief, and hope that one day, after more grief and growth, I will be able to cherish another dog who I tell stories about my beloved “little brother.”

Ellie, a writer in 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.

Role Playing for Real Life

Role Playing for Real Life

Last week, during my weekly Dungeons & Dragons session, I got proposed to.

Not by an actual boyfriend, or even for a real-life marriage. This proposal was for my D&D character, Kit, from her long-term boyfriend played by the Dungeon Master.

Still, though, before I started meeting with my current therapist, this would have been a terrifying scenario. Even though it’s not for real life, just the thought of roleplaying a proposal - especially one I planned for my character to say yes to - would have been too much.

Lately, however, I’ve been working with my therapist about how to get through scenarios from my past as well as my fears that haven’t happened yet, through roleplay. She sets the scene, just like the DM when I play D&D. Then, she asks me what the character (me at some stage in my life) is wearing, thinking about, and doing. Next, she brings in other characters - family members, a “protector” character I constructed in our sessions, or someone she’s invented for the scenario.

After all this preparation, we play out any situation I’m worried about like it’s D&D. She asks me, just like my DM does, where the different people and animals in the room are standing, who does what, who says what. She acts the other parts and as I try to act mine, I quickly find differences between the response I would want to say or do and the one that happened or that I think would happen in real life.

A lot of this requires living in the discomfort of the situation to figure out exactly what’s bothering me, then talking it out from there. Sometimes, the scenarios can take the whole time of the appointment; other times, we take a break from the scenario to discuss what happened, how I reacted, and what we can do moving forward.

I felt a little silly doing this at first, but after my first time going through a scenario, I realized how helpful it was. Additionally, it was wonderful to feel like she had developed this method for me based on my love of D&D, and found a way to communicate with me based on my interests to help me understand things better. It reminds me of the time I chose to read an analytical book about Middle-Earth instead of a particular textbook in college, and learned so much more because I was more familiar with the content and context.

Nowadays, my therapist and I are working on more scenarios about relationships. Ever since I had several bad experiences in a row, I’ve been very wary of getting in a relationship, even though I would love to have a boyfriend. Thanks to this method of therapy, I’ve been able to talk through the scenario of a first date before going on my first date in a very long time - and I was able to roleplay a new scenario of getting engaged outside of the context of therapy.

And I was able to have the reaction I would want to have if someone I loved proposed to me in real life - I smiled really wide, giggled into my hands as I held them over my mouth, and found a creative and cute way to say yes.

It’s not the same thing as a real-life proposal, but I was thrilled that after so much time working on this in therapy, I was able to experience what I would call a typical reaction to a proposal, and I didn’t overthink anything at all.

It used to be that, even in these roleplay situations, I would get overwhelmed with real-life feelings, thoughts, and implications. But this time, even though I wasn’t in therapy, I was able to just live in the moment, a skill I’ve been learning for years.

I don’t know when I’ll meet someone who I will want to propose to me in real life, but this experience gave me hope that I will be able to experience joy in this moment instead of intense worry, just like how I imagine it would be for someone neurotypical.

Ellie, a writer in 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.

Something To Be Thankful For

Something To Be Thankful For

This Thanksgiving, when I reunited with my parents, I didn’t expect to hear a story that reaffirmed something I already know - that my mom is an incredible ally for people living with mental illness - while also warming my heart at the thought of others doing the same.

As we took a walk in the not-so-brisk temperatures down South, she told me about something that had happened at work a few days before. One of her coworkers, Sandy (name changed for privacy), who is divorced and lives alone, was scheduled to work the night before Thanksgiving and didn’t show up. After several calls, three people - Mom, Mom’s boss J, and her boss A, started to get worried.

J stayed past the end of her shift to make sure there was someone at work, and she reached out to Mom to see if she could check in on Sandy because she lives in the same neighborhood. J and A kept reaching out to Sandy and the emergency contact she provided when she was hired.

In the meantime, Mom and Dad both went to Sandy’s house. They saw a silhouette moving around inside, but even after a while of calling her name and knocking on the door, they didn’t have any luck. They called J back and updated her; J and A initiated a 911 wellness check and then asked Mom to cover the night shift. Mom volunteered to do so and started to drive to work, about fifteen minutes away.

When she was almost there, J called her back, saying that she’d gotten in touch with Sandy. Sandy told J that she thought she was off that night and she was on her way; in response, J cancelled the wellness check and told Mom to go home.

But before Mom could get home, J called again. She said that Sandy had called, after pulling over on the side of the road, because she was crying so hard. She said she couldn’t go to work that night, and Mom turned right around to relieve J.

When she got to work, Mom found J on the phone with Sandy, who was crying so hysterically that she could hear her clearly even though J didn’t have her on speakerphone. Shortly after, Mom took over at work, J left, and the workplace stayed open when they thought they would have to close early.

In the end, A didn’t mind her employees being distracted, and didn’t hesitate to step in and help herself. J didn’t mind staying past the end of her shift, even when she had to be at the airport to pick up her daughter later that night. Mom didn’t mind all the driving or checking up on Sandy at her home. All three of them acted out of pure love and concern for someone on their team who was going through something, even during a busy holiday season when there was so much else going on.

When I heard this story, I was so proud of Mom and her coworkers for stepping up. As Mom said, “it was amazing to be part of a team where they were treating somebody with a depressive episode as seriously as a heart attack.” I wish this kind of story wasn’t so unusual to hear, but I am so thankful to hear it and know that there are people out there who care. There are so many people who find holidays hard, and knowing that there are communities out there who truly care means so much to me as I think about what I’m thankful for.

Ellie, a writer in 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.

Hurting to Help

Hurting To Help

This week, I finished my eleventh National Novel Writing Month - but this wasn’t like my usual NaNoWriMo experience.

This November, instead of writing a fantasy or science fiction novel like I usually prefer to read, I instead wrote the second draft of a memoir designed to educate people without OCD about what it’s really like - and help others who do have it to feel like they’re not alone.

To that point, the presence or lack of people who understand takes over a lot of the content. While writing, I had to remind myself that times are different now, I do have friends, and I am no longer the little girl who felt so lonely being the only person I knew with a mental health diagnosis.

I didn’t have the luxury of friends until I was much older, but when I was little, I wanted someone - anyone - to tell me that they also had something and their life was good, so mine was going to be good too. I designed the memoir to do that for others who might not know anyone else, who might find a friend in the book when they would otherwise not feel understood by anyone.

The tricky part was, I wanted to be as brutally honest as possible. I wanted to show the highs and lows in such vivid detail that people without mental illness would get a taste of what it feels like, and what some people go through every day.

Two problems quickly came up due to this approach: First, there is a lot of my own life that I don’t remember thanks to trauma, that I had to reach out to my family to ask about. It felt strange to be asking someone else about my own life, and yet I didn’t expect anything different. My psychiatrist told me a long time ago that the reason I was forgetting things like that was because of trauma, but it still bothers me that I feel like I’ve lost a part of my life to my head that I can’t get back, even by asking others. I can get their perspectives, but I can’t remember what I was thinking or feeling during these pivotal moments, which makes me feel like I’m missing something.

Additionally, I faced the problem of having to face that trauma head-on, especially in the case of my blood clot nearly ten years ago as well as the nervous breakdown two years after. I had written about both of these events before, but never in such explicit detail. In one of the essays in the memoir, I detail every single obsessive thought I had while I thought I was going to die in the hospital, from my fear of throwing up to my intense sadness of dying alone.

In order to make these essays as accurate as possible, I used the opposite of a therapeutic technique called “grounding.” Normally, people use grounding to remind themselves that they are in the real world and not in the middle of a traumatic incident, but I was using it in the reverse. I used the principles of grounding, including filling my head with sensory details, to make myself feel like I was there again. Although the writing turned out great, this greatly affected my mental health.

I’m so relieved to be done with this round of writing, and eager to hopefully share this book with the world sometime soon. In the meantime, I’m going to not think about the project for at least a month, to give myself time to heal. I was definitely hurting myself in the interest of helping others one day, and although I do agree with that principle, it was definitely too much all at once.

Even so, there was one positive side effect of writing about all these traumatic times: I was able to see how far I’ve come since I was first diagnosed, how I am able to live a successful life with a job and friends and financial independence, and that encourages me to keep fighting to improve life even more for myself and others living with mental illness.

Ellie, a writer in 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.

Dungeons & Dissociation

Dungeons & Dissociation

It’s rare that I experience something new related to my mental health, especially since I’ve been living with OCD for a full quarter-century and PTSD for nearly a decade. But last week during my Dungeons & Dragons session, I found myself experiencing a symptom of PTSD that I had never felt before.

I was sitting at the table with my friends, just like every week, when the DM told me that he wanted to turn off the lights, and I should pick a scented candle to illuminate the space. I picked a peach one and he set it in the center of the table, then explained that my character was going to have a dream scene.

This isn’t unusual in our campaign - multiple characters have either prophetic or interactive dreams - but I knew this one was different as soon as the DM leaned over the flame and started to yell at me that I’d done something wrong.

Instantly, I felt defensive. The DM was role-playing as a powerful devil, which I knew, but even so, I felt highly uncomfortable. He was up in my space, yelling, stern, scolding me for something that I had to do in order to keep the party together. Nothing I said seemed to make a dent in his anger, even though my character has very high levels of charisma and that usually works. He then had me roll a die to see if he could be persuaded, but I needed to roll an 18 or above on a 20-sided die to even have a chance.

I rolled a 10, and he explained that my character faced horrible pain before waking up transformed into a hideous creature.

As he detailed the changes, a strange feeling came over me. I felt like I had the urge to panic, but it was almost as if it was locked behind a glass wall. I could see it, but I couldn’t access it - or any other emotion. I just blankly stared ahead, feeling like my brain had left my body entirely and was just off on its own somewhere. This was extremely scary, but I couldn’t quite feel the fear - that was locked away too.

It didn’t take long for the DM to notice that something was wrong. He asked me if I needed a break, and I nodded, then finally spoke - asking him to turn the lights back on.

When the lights came back on, I felt like my brain came back to my body. The feelings of panic and upset returned in full force and I started to cry.

The DM said that we were going to stop playing for the night and just process this. I was afraid and ashamed - I don’t like to be mentally weak in front of my friends, in case they decide that I’m not worth being friends with if I’m too complicated - but I couldn’t hide it any longer.

I told him that I had been triggered by several of the things that happened in the conversation with the devil. The darkness and firelight accentuated the fact that he was looming over me, angry. I felt helpless not only in the encounter, but in determining the fate of my character. I felt like I couldn’t consent to what was happening, I had no agency as a player or as a character, and I started to spiral in a strange way I’ve never encountered before.

When I told my therapist about this, she told me that I had dissociated. This is an out-of-body experience when reliving certain types of trauma or experiencing too many triggering things at once. I came to realize that many of the physical changes the DM gave to my character were things that were directly tied to my medical trauma and also to the way I had been writing about childhood experiences recently, back when I thought that my OCD made me akin to a monster.

I reached out to the DM, who was deeply apologetic, and we spent hours talking through what would be the best way to undo the damage that had been done both in and out of the game. I was able to choose what changes I was okay with physically, as well as start my character on a new path to get out of the deal with this devil altogether. He also assured me that any further interactions would take place in normal lighting with no looming or yelling.

Even though I was ashamed of dissociating, I was so glad that I have finally found people who I could tell something like this to and they would want to help instead of run as fast as possible in the opposite direction. The whole group rallied around me and I felt incredibly supported.

My therapist described this as a “corrective experience” - I experienced a situation that was like something before (displaying mental illness openly around friends) but instead of being rejected, I was accepted for being exactly who I am, brain and all. This response enabled me to feel powerful both in and out of character and I believe my D&D campaign will continue to be the wonderful experience it has been for the last two years.

Ellie, a writer in 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.