Lately I have felt a lot of peace and serenity, my mind has been quiet and I've been enjoying the little things in every day. I have serenity, the serenity that I hear so many people talk about, but it is pierced by waves of anxiety, in which I have to remind myself that I am okay, everything is okay, everything will be okay. There is an ebb and flow to this. And then I wonder if the fact that everything is actually okay - isn't exactly the problem.
The past several days I have had more anxiety than serenity and I immediately question where my faith is at, because people always say that your level of fear is proportional to your level faith. I find the anxiety almost unbearable. It feels intolerable. Things are going really well - I got a raise at work and was bumped up a class year at my firm, I'm healthy, I'm happy, I am financially secure, I have no complaints, nothing I want to change, nothing I can't handle, what the hell is the problem? I am overwhelmed by the thought that if everything is this okay right now, something must be about to happen. I am waiting, I am ready for it, I'm even looking for it. And while I am looking for it and anticipating it, I am trying desperately to alleviate it.
What is most amazing is that I used to live my entire life under this kind of stress and anxiety - I just didn't know that what I felt was not normal. I didn't know what it felt like not to have an undercurrent of turmoil running through your life and bubbling up into everything. I think I felt this way, literally, since I can remember. It wasn't until I got sober and stayed that way for a while that I felt what I imagine most other people feel. I felt it in a really physical way - the stress go out of my life and my body. But when I no longer have anything significant to worry about, I start to worry about things like how much I'm eating and whether I might lose my job. Sometimes I become obsessed with these things. When I become obsessed and my anxiety level goes up, my OCD kicks in. This is something I don't really talk much about - I have a lot of shame around it, in much the same way I have shame around be an alcoholic.
People often say they are obsessive compulsive - but I actually am, in the clinical sense. What I mean by that is the fact that OCD is characterized by irrational thought and behavior patterns. It isn't simply that I check the stove 5 times before I leave the house to make sure that it's off, even though I know it's off because I haven't used it in days and I also checked it yesterday - it is the fact that I check the stove 5 times because if I don't, I might find out I have cancer again, or I might lose my job today. When I was a kid, I was plagued constantly by a feeling that something bad was about to happen - so I would do whatever I needed to do to alleviate it. Sometimes it was washing my hands until they were bloody, sometimes it was checking the lock on the back door and the downstairs windows before bed, sometimes it was not eating certain foods, not wearing certain clothes, my favorite was probably unplugging the toaster and coffee pot every night.
I realize now that none of this is surprising. I grew up in utter chaos and dysfunction, with an actively alcoholic mother and a father who I think meant well, but didn't know how to show it or what to do. I think we were all sort of at a loss the entire time we lived in that house together. The OCD was nothing more than a way to feel like I excercised some control over the uncontrollable. As if unplugging the toaster can prevent my brother from dying in an accident. Much of my irrational thinking as a kid had to do with something happening to my brother - God help me if I had been left in that house alone.
I don't know if anyone ever really knew this about me, certainly no one ever tried to help me. I have never taken any medication for anxiety and I have never felt like it impaired my ability to live. I learned, as a really little kid, how to control it. It creeps into my life, even now, but I know how to talk myself out of it. I know that if I can't eat dessert because my brother might die tomorrow if I do, I have to eat the dessert to prove to myself that nothing will happen. Every once in a while, when I feel as crazy as I have these past few days - I just give into it. I don't eat the dessert, I check the iron - that I haven't used in weeks. My coffee pot is unplugged today.
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