In my last blog I discussed some of my family history and where I came from. In this blog I want to change gears slightly and speak about my first experiences with OCD and how that correlates to my family.
Let me take you back to one fateful day in October of 1995. I was a 9 year old boy full of refined sugar and blissful ignorance. On an ordinary day I would be found tossing Pogs in the school yard, kicking around a soccer ball or bingeing Super Mario Bros. Life was simple and relatively stress free for this young boy. This day, however, was no ordinary day. It would happen to be one of the most cataclysmic life events any young child could ever encounter.
I mentioned in my last blog that my middle sister was born with a severe neurological birth defect called spina bifida that is now largely preventable with prenatal vitamins containing folic acid. My parents were not aware and doctors weren’t advocating this at the time. I would find out years later that doctors said my sister wasn’t likely to make it to her teenage years.
I don’t remember where I was when I was informed my sister had passed away in her sleep. Perhaps I wasn’t notified at all. My parents likely had a whirlwind of emotions, thoughts and responsibilities to juggle with. I remember very little that day. Possibly because I was too young to comprehend the gravity of the situation, or maybe it was simply beyond my emotional maturity. Nevertheless what I do remember has stayed with me for many decades.
I recall the moment my grandparents arrived at our house. My grandfather, typically a stoic man, came running into the house and straight to my sister’s room where her body rest until the coroners would eventually arrive. I can still hear his agonizing cry of sorrow. Never had I heard a man weep with such dispair. My grandfather spent much of his youth engaged in conflict with the Germans in World War 2. He would have experienced death on a daily basis. He was raised with the stiff upper lip all Englishmen were expected to uphold. But this brought him to his knees.
I don’t know that I ever processed my sister’s death as a child. I don’t remember crying upon hearing the news. I wasn’t close with my middle sister, although my mother said she had a great fondness of me. One of the few memories I have of that tragic day was the feeling of confusion. I couldn’t understand why everyone was so sad, but yet I knew the reality that my sister had passed. And so I did what any jovial prepubescent child without a clue would do – I performed. I would say silly things, I did somersaults; basically anything I could to ameliorate the situation. However futile it seemed at the time, it’s the only recourse I could conjure up in my mind that made sense. If I exude happy vibes, they’ll be reciprocal. Unfortunately this was neither the time nor the place for such antics.
My first OCD experience would come sometime after this trauma. It’s hard to recall where I was or what I was doing at the time but the thought was distinct. I had the overwhelming feeling that somehow I was responsible for my sister’s death. Shortly after this pervasion had struck me my parents took my eldest sister and I to breakfast. For whatever reason I decided this was the moment I would reveal to everyone that I had suspicion I was involved in committing an egregious act of homicide. I truthfully felt as though I was the reason she died. I didn’t know how I did it, why I did or if it was in fact actually true but I felt compelled to relieve myself of this self-perceived guilt.
To anyone not under the impairment of OCD this might sound like a preposterous claim. How could I not know whether I killed my sister. It’s black and white, a binary yes you did or no you didn’t. But in my mind it was much more opaque, the simple thought of the question was too much to comprehend. The immense feeling of guilt that followed was bearing down on me. I didn’t spend much time in rumination before I felt the need to announce my concerns to my family. I don’t recollect how they responded, but I imagine it involved some level of reassurance that the scenario I presented them with was impossible, as my sister died of natural causes. This was confirmed by a coroner who are dispatched when children pass away at home. After my revelation I no longer felt the need to revisit this thought and their words of affirmation were enough to consider the matter closed. This however would only be the beginning of a life-long journey with OCD.
Its hard to say with certainty that my OCD materialized due to the death of my sister. There are more factors at play than a single traumatic event. I have a genelogical predisposition to OCD as many of my immediate family members have varying severities of the disorder. I hope to detail their experiences in future blogs with their permission of course, and perhaps if they oblige they would entertain becoming a guest bloggers.
In my next blog I will discuss the evolution of my OCD and how it began to take form and manifest into my early adulthood.
See the world through My OCD Lens. 