2023 - DEATH AND REBIRTH

 Well, 2023!! I got diagnosed with OCD! And I keep running into stupid stuff I feel like I have to do but now, with the aid of medication and insight, I can identify as the OCD and anxiety nonsense they are. Things like:

• "doing it right" even though I'm the only one who cares about it, then being upset when no one else cares about it
• frantically trying to do "enough" to celebrate holidays, then feeling like it's never good enough. For example:
• reading scary stories and watching horror movies all of October, then feeling guilty for not playing horror videogames
• having a delicious meal with family on Thanksgiving, but feeling bad for not feeling more gratitude the whole month
• fully celebrating Christmas by giving and receiving gifts, attending church, and reading scriptures about Christ, then feeling like I didn't think about Jesus enough
• making the same Christmas cookies every year, then feeling like something is missing

• trying to fix other people's problems, even though they never asked me to
• caring more about making other people happy instead of doing what I want to do
• trying to review all the dumb stuff I did wrong during the sacrament and being certain that I must not repent of it because I know I will repeat that dumb stuff, also, is it really a sin?? NOW I read scriptures during that time! 
• wanting religion to make sense
• going through all my previous journal entries and summarizing them every year!

Maybe in the future I will have tons of time to reflect on the previous year and want to read my journal entries for the whole year. I know that my memory isn't accurate, but I'm okay with that. I don't have to be a historian of my own life. 

There were some other milestone events for me this year. I had my third sinus surgery and afterwards I had a terrible infection. The pain was excruciating and I wanted to go into a medically induced coma until it was over. The nurse laughed at me when I asked if I could add an analgesic to my sinus rinse (specifically, that stuff you spray on the back of your throat when it's sore). There was a week where I wanted to die. I was really thinking about the most ethical way to end my pain, like it was something on my to-do list and people trying to guilt me out of it by saying they would be so sad were merely obstacles in my way. It's really hard to describe my mindset. It was different than being depressed, it was just feeling certain that there would be no end to my misery. Luckily, my ENT was able to get a real sample from the problem area. Black blobs came out of my sinuses like the witch of the waste's minions in Howl's Moving Castle. But unlike a wasteland, there was a lot growing in my sinuses--black mold and two different bacteria. 

Somewhere in here I presented at Mormon Scholars in the Humanities. I twisted Steve Peck's arm until he agreed to write an interactive fiction piece with me. After two months of discussing ideas, we realized that Steve needed to learn more about interactive fiction before he tried writing it, so I wrote a class that would introduce him to interactive fiction. That was pretty fun! We still haven't written an interactive fiction piece together but maybe that will change someday.

After I got proper treatment for my sinus colonization, I started to get some of my energy back, just in time to start grad school in the fall. *checks 2022's post* Long story short: I was accepted into the English MA program at BYU (where I work). The department refused to accept any of my credits from when I completed the coursework for the program in 2009-2011, stating it was expired. I found great loopholes for them, including a case where another BYU student had proof of prior knowledge from their job accepted as credit for their PhD program. I decided to start the program from scratch. That included taking intro to graduate studies, which was mostly our professor telling us that if we were serious about going into a PhD program, we had better try to publish something. Meanwhile, my Mormon Esperanto Society article was accepted for publication with the Journal of Mormon History, and three articles I co-authored with my friend Michael Austin on the literary lessons in church publications and the history of Mutual Improvement associations were accepted for publication (one has already been published in BYU Studies). Mike helped me so much with my graduate studies. We have similar low tolerances for BS and sometimes it's a relief to know that you're not the only one who thinks a critical theorist is just spinning their wheels. He helped with my papers that I wrote for my graduate seminars too--I feel like his apprentice, but he says I'm his peer.

My grandpa died in September, but I didn't get obsessed with grief like I did when my grandma died. Fall semester was jam-packed with work, classes, and homework. I had the experience, several times, of simply not having enough time to complete my reading assignments--something that is difficult for me and hadn't happened the first time I did my MA coursework. But we can consider this exposure therapy for my perfectionism (being forced to imperfectly perform the assignments and then realizing that the world didn't end). Another exposure therapy for my perfectionism and overactive sense of fairness happened at the end of the semester when my professor gave me a low grade on my paper. Oh well! You know what's more important? I'm happy with what I wrote and the research I did, because it was a topic I was actually interested in, and I explored it in a way that makes sense to me.

As I look ahead to the new year, I wonder if I might dial down my intensity a little. The whole schedule where I get my daughters off to school, work/class until 5pm, dinner/clean/be with family until 7pm, do homework for 2.5 hours and get ready for bed at 9:30pm is possible, but it really stresses me out. I ended up taking off some Fridays from work to try to catch up on schoolwork. But what if I took off an hour or two in the mornings for homework? I don't have to be productive every minute of my day. 

That said, if I wanted to pile more stuff on, more stuff I could feel guilty for not doing, I have three things:

1. Learn ASL so that I can teach Petra more signs. There is an app called Lingvano for that and I'm trying it out.
2. Find a way to make stretching and maybe some strength training part of my routine. My hip hurts and I'm too young for that. No amount of biking or walking is going to fix it.
3. Dedicate time to getting rid of stuff. We have too much stuff and I just keep procrastinating taking care of it. What if I spent an hour every Saturday just finding stuff we don't need.

I feel like doing things things could actually decrease my stress in the long run, but I need a little push to put them on my attention radar. I have enough crazy plans for next year (I've got like... four presentations to prepare??). I need to remember to take care of myself, my family, and my stuff. I know some of you are thinking: "what about God?" You know, as someone with scrupulosity, I have spent a lot of time worrying about what God thinks and what is right. I have enough obsessive interest in God that it's not something I need to remind myself about with a resolution.

I have OCD. Here's what that means in my case.

There's a place in the Old Testament where Jeremiah tells his people that they will be in bondage for the rest of their life. He had just confronted a false prophet who was telling the people that they would be freed from bondage in two years. Jeremiah told the people that they won’t be free for another three generations, so they should start putting down roots–both in the form of orchards and in starting a family. God then reassures them that he will visit them after the “seventy years,” a shorthand for three generations.

I think of how hard that must have been for the Judah (the portion of the children of Israel in bondage). They didn't want to accept that they would be enslaved(?) for the rest of their lives. Who would want to accept that? 

An anonymous author on Meatball Wiki wrote on the page for LongNow:

To plant a vineyard or orchard is an act of faith that everything will still be OK decades hence.

When I read that quote, I immediately connected it to the story in Jeremiah. I thought of how much faith Judah must have had to say, "I believe you, I will settle down and believe that everything will still be okay even though we're in a situation that at first glance, seems untenable."  I cried a little bit (thankfully, my student employees were still on break). Because I am in bondage to my mental illness.  

I was recently diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). OCD can manifest in a lot of different ways. They start with a normal thought -> action resolution. Hands are dirty, clean them until they don't feel dirty anymore. Feel bad about something you said to someone, apologize, feel better. Except with OCD, the "feel better" part is never complete. 

I don't have obsessions about contamination as OCD is frequently portrayed (compulsive handwashing, wearing gloves, etc.). My obsessions center around my self-worth, wanting to know if other people are okay with me, wanting God to make sense, and wanting to understand myself. Most of these obsessions center around "what if" questions. My therapist described these kind of obsessive loops as "rabbit holes" where "the more you think, the more confused you get." 

My compulsions seems to come in three main flavors that I have identified so far: apologizing, confessing, and reassurance-seeking. This is one example of an OCD loop with confession:

Here is an example of one with wondering whether or not I have OCD:

OCD is all in my head. That means that the cure is also all in my head. Breaking an OCD loop centers around stopping the obsession or stopping the compulsion. Stopping an obsessive thought means for me, recognizing when I am going into a rabbit hole and choosing to disengage by distracting myself (preferably with something neutral or productive). Stopping a compulsion means recognizing that when I feel like I have to do something, that it is probably a compulsion, and therefore I should make an effort to not do it. One of my problems is that the feeling of being compelled to do something is exactly the same as the feeling I have associated with the "promptings of the holy ghost." This is a giant problem and I am trying not to freak out about it. Luckily, there are multiple avenues to receiving revelation. I will just assume that the holy ghost will not communicate with me anymore in the way that my compulsions manifest.

People have told me that I have good insight into myself. It is something I am actually very bad at. That is one reason it took me so long to figure out that I have OCD. Another reason is because the stupid obsessions that OCD puts into my brain feel real and rational in the moment, and the compulsions sort of work. Another reason is because my OCD is mild compared to some people's. But as I learn more about OCD, I recognize more of it in my past. There is a certain way of thinking that is common with OCD sufferers, which maybe I'll get into in another post; the short version is, I used to pride myself in not being a black-and-white thinker, but my thinking actually defaults to black-and-white thinking most of the time. It can be difficult for me to accept uncertainty, paradox, and contradictions.

OCD is not something that I will ever be completely cured of. That is why I cried when I realized that Judah had to plant orchards while they were in bondage--because that is what I must do as well. 

My friend Camilla is an artist. She is open about how scrupulosity, a form of religious OCD, affects her art. This piece is about how her OCD will be with her forever. 

Camilla Stark, "This Will Be With You Forever," 2021 piece in that business card art show in Provo