A Rough Year – Part 1

I’ve been doing a lot of fast forwarding through my history in recent blogs and there are reasons for this. Seldom did my obessions at different times last much longer than a few weeks or months and the anxiety I felt from many of these experiences were brief and manageable. I was also fortunate to have extended lapses of time where OCD simply wasn’t present in my life. Additionally I must admit that making these previous blogs about my history have been a challenge to articulate and recite memories of events that occurred 15-20 years ago. I don’t experience many of these same fears or worries any longer. That being said I’ve tried to be clear and concise about my past, and so I explain the details I know I can share without compromising. Before we begin I also need to mention this is going to be a multi-part blog due to the nature and severity of my OCD. So far this blog has attempted to illustrate the grandiosity of my disorder in terms of impairment, however I feel I may be falling short in detailing my emotional experience. My intention going forward is to convey a more personal perspective on how my OCD has and continues to influence me at a holistic level. This should give my blogs a much richer, thorough quality as I get closer to my present life.

With that in mind I want to take us back to 2010, not that long ago in the relative scope of my life. I mentioned in my previous post that I had started my career path down the road to becoming a truck driver. I had taken a private career college course and after I graduated I acquired an entry level position delivering water. I had hopes to save up some money for a house and improve my credentials for career advancement in the future. Delivering water was a difficult job physically, but at the age of 22 I had boundless energy and goals I wished to accomplish. I would go on to work that job for 2 years and within that time I had accrued enough wealth to put a downpayment towards a house. Not just any house, mind you. I was exploring the world of renting property and I was dead set on buying a duplex. I had spent months learning the intricacies of becoming a landlord and basically studying the RTA (formally known as the Residential Tenancy Act) that governs the rules of renting. My intention was to rent the largest of the 2 units and live in the other. Brittni was still in school so the decision to buy a house was mine and I was solely financially responsible. She was supportive as always, and so we both went in search for a place to purchase. We settled into a raised bungalow in Kitchener where I had immediate need to find tenants to offset this new immense financial burden. I would subsequently offer the upstairs dwelling to a group of international students from China attending the University of Waterloo. Both Brittni and I were living with our parents before I purchased the new home, so it was the first time we agreed to commit to living with one another. We assumed the smaller dwelling downstairs. The transition was seamless, borne from a mutual desire to start our lives as independent adults. Meanwhile I was simultaneously exploring new career opportunities that were introduced to me through years of driving in the industry. I applied for a position delivering concrete and I was offered the position. It was quite a vertical move upward in pay and responsibilities, however I felt I was ready for it.

By now this must sound like a scrambled coalescence of one big life decision after the next – and it was. To summarize; I mustered enough money to purchase a duplex of which I intended to rent and move into with my long time girlfriend. In addition, I was offered a career path with greater opportunities driving for a different company of which I couldn’t refuse. What could go wrong? Alot, as it turns out. Once the dust had settled from this flurry of activity, I had naively forgotten to consider the added stress and burden these commitments would require. I was looking at each milestone individually, envisioning my life rendered invariably better by each progression with little concern for what the implications might be for me financially and mentally. Regarding the former, I was fortunate to have done a certain amount of due diligence prior to purchasing our home. With the aforementioned rental income producing razor-thin margins, we constructed a modest lifestyle for ourselves. It’s the later that I most certainly underestimated and took for granted.

To say that I was in over my head would be putting things mildly. I was now responsible for so much more than I was accustom to while living with my parents. House maintenance and repairs, bills and expenses, budgeting and rent collection, advertising, tenant issues, etc. Pair all of that with having to navigate changes in my romantic relationship and learning a new job in the unforgiving construction industry. I was overwhelmed. And so Brittni and I decided one fateful day that we should go for a walk to release some of my newfound stress. We went on a path uncharted to us that lead to a bridge over a major highway. We made it about half way across the bridge when we stopped to watch the cars driving underneath. That’s when I felt it hit me like a freight train. My mind was metaphorically on fire. I just had a thought that I could lose control of my bodily functions and thrust Brittni over this bridge. No one was around to stop me and it would have been easy enough to overpower her and simply throw her over. In that moment I was frozen in time and space, fearing I could reenact exactly what I saw unfolding in my mind. I literally couldn’t move, my legs and arms locked in position. I could think of nothing else and nothing else mattered in that moment. I felt weak, lightheaded. My heart was pounding at what felt like an impossible rate. Brittni not aware of my mental adversity, carried on and proceeded to the other side of the bridge. I was reluctant to follow – what had just happened to me? I couldn’t tell her what I had just endured – what would she think? She’s dating a psychopath, no doubt I told myself. And so in a matter of what must have been minutes on that bridge starring aimlessly, lost in a downward decent into the pits of my destructive conscious I managed to collect my awareness enough to pull away from that bridge and finish the rest of the walk in eerie silence. As soon as I got back to our apartment I immediately looked to video games to escape my present moment. Anything to get me away from what I just experienced. Try as I may to numb my mind, I was pulled back into my present crisis of which I had no resolution and no way of overcoming. I could feel the tension in my mind growing. I had no recollection of where or what Brittni was doing in that moment – all I was aware of was that I had this thought and I was mortified. This defied everything I felt I knew about myself. I’m supposed to be a good person – I’m supposed to protect and cherish my significant other, not visualize her untimely death by my own hands. I honestly didn’t know what to do with myself, so I sat there in my computer chair paralyzed with fear and anxiety. Brittni was likely none the wiser, assuming I was enjoying my free time partaking in leisure. Hours had gone by at this point, and I knew it was only a matter of time until we would interact once more. I knew these feelings all too well; but never had I ever expressed them to Brittni before. I had the compulsion to make Brittni aware of what to this point was one of the most brutal and gut-wrenching experiences I had ever encountered. I felt she deserved to know what had happened on that bridge, but I couldn’t wrap my head around how you explain that to someone who trusts you with everything, including their life. I struggled trying to muster a cohesive string of words together, battling with whether I should even tell her and what her reaction might be. Somehow when I finally emerged from my endless rumination, I hesitantly spelled out as best I could how the events unfolded earlier that day. I really don’t recall exactly what iteration of words I choose to break the news..what I remember most is how it felt.

I had encountered a full mental break down unlike any I had ever experienced. I sobbed in her arms as I told her everything that happened that day. I told her how I was essentially hiding from her, afraid of being around her for fear of reigniting those very same anxieties. She was equal parts perplexed and sympathetic. I genuinely don’t think she understood what this was and where it was coming from. I had done a very good job hiding it from my family, and an especially good job hiding it from Brittni. I don’t remember how the rest of the day unfolded, and I really don’t remember what Brittni’s words were in response, however she offered warmth and acceptance. On some level I did feel that sense of relief I had grown accustomed to when discussing my previous incidents with OCD – but this felt different. I felt a shift in my consciousness, a true lack of understanding about how and why I had experienced this. The term OCD was still not on my radar, and I hadn’t linked all of my previous episodes together yet. This would set me on a path of exploration, scouring any source of material I could find on the internet about what this might be. That’s where I first heard about this disorder on a forum group dedicated to people suffering with mental disorders. As I read other people’s stories I quickly saw many striking similarities between their symptoms and mine. Stress is often a catalyst to bring the onset of OCD, and this was as clear an indication as there ever had been of what I’d been suffering from.

This blog has touched on just the beginning of what would become one of my worst and longest battles with OCD. I’ve shared only one moment of which would become many that set off a very rapid and degenerative quality of life that quite effectively brought me to my knees. In part 2 of this blog I will discuss how I would develop and experience multiple OCD themes simultaneously, breaking down in front of my family and going to see my doctor for a medical assessment. Stay tuned!