Psychology Today: Creative Types Have a Self-Critical Eye
Now this makes sense. I know if they were to study theater folks, especially actors, they would find a much higher then average percentage of OCD then the uh, “normal” population. I don’t have any figures on that, but I have seen it speculated numerous places and in my own experience it is very true.
I don’t know why that is, possibly because, for one, … Read The Rest >>
I think, at lest for me, the hardest part of living with OCD is the isolation. Yes the anxiety is not easy, the compulsions are exhausting and all of that. But it is the isolating nature of OCD that grinds me down. I am not just talking about the being different. That we are. And most of us go to great lengths to hide the exact nature of our illness. … Read The Rest >>
This was a little piece I wrote some years ago that I just came across. It’s just a little sketch on my being diagnosed.
She sat there reading a year old Time magazine. She was too thin and had dark circles under her eyes. There was something stretched about her.
She and I were alone in the small waiting room. Was she crazy too? What hell had she been living in? I thought, watching her study ancient news.
The room, like any other room in this new hospital was seriously neutral in color, browns and beige’s, the lighting indirect. Functional comfortable furniture lined the walls. There was a low table in the middle of the room covered with old magazines with the address labels peeled off. I couldn’t read. I wanted to smoke, to pace, to be anywhere but here. On the wall were pastel watercolors in gallery frames, I wondered if they were chosen for their calming effect.
The secretaries laughed about something. The sounds muffled by the sliding glass window that separated them from us. I looked over at the girl. She hadn’t moved. She hadn’t looked up when I came into the room and was, even now, fixated on her magazine. I had chosen a seat on the far side of the room– there was something about her that said not to get too close. We sat there. The only other sound, the occasional rustle of a well-read page being turned.
Earlier, when I came up to the hospital, I could see that they had begun the demolition of the old facility. Sitting there I could feel an occasional rumble as the wrecking ball undid in seconds what had taken years to build.
That’s where it all started, I thought, twenty years ago, in the old main hospital. Life sure seemed to be circular at times. Now I was back to see if I could start again.
Remembering the dark, shiny green and yellow walls, the cloudy worn tile floors, the small heavy rooms. Sights, sounds and smells came back to me. Antiseptics and decay. My draft board had assigned me to work there. The worst of the worst jobs were given to me. It was policy. Total isolation, that’s where I worked. I cleaned the rooms of those so sick that no one could go near them without being gloved, gowned and masked. Tuberculoses, meningitis, pseudomonas, unknown viral infections. After finishing I would have to dispose of my protective clothing in special receptacles near the door and then disinfect myself. Then on to the next room and the next over and over. My hands and arms became raw from scrubbing with those little Betadine sponges that smelled so much of cinnamon. I remembered some of the patients.
Cid was a student at the U. The doctors had been amputating one of her legs, piece by piece, just ahead of the bone cancer. Her stump had become infected with pseudomonas. She was from Australia and her family was unable to be there. Her fiance was in the army, stationed in Europe. I was one of the few people that would sit and talk with her. We became friends. She married shortly after getting out of the hospital, was pregnant in a couple of weeks and died a few months later. The Doctors said that her pregnancy had caused the cancer to explode, wildly and decisively.
My remembrance was cut short when the door across the room from me opened and a gum chewing secretary called out my name. I followed her down another beige corridor to another beige room. This office had a window overlooking the destruction of old main. The view partly obstructed by the thin white slats of venetian blinds. There was a desk, empty except for the telephone with three of its buttons lit, a forth blinked on as I watched. Three chairs in the same style as the waiting room, a potted plant and another pastel on the wall finished the room. A comfortable neutral room. Sitting there waiting, I watched the silently swinging wrecking ball. I could see what was going on out there but I couldn’t hear it. The sealed window keeping not only the sound but the heat and dusts out of the air-conditioned beige. A section of wall fell after the impact of the ball, raising a large cloud of heavy dust. I remembered the asbestos wrapped pipes that had snaked everywhere through the old hospital. Wondering if they had removed all the carcinogen before knocking down the building, I made a mental note to make sure I stayed upwind of the demolition.
“Hello, I’m Doctor…” Something.
Turning to the door I saw an attractive woman at least ten years younger then me. Her badge said Department of Psychiatry.
Keeping my hands in my lap I said, “Hello.”
Twenty years I thought. Be honest. Don’t minimize.
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I find it encouraging that folks are looking into stuff like this…
we make money not art: Design for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder
… but this particular application doesn’t strike me as a particularly great idea. For one it wouldn’t relieve the checkers anxiety at all. I am not a checker but I can guarantee that OCD would find a way to mess with this. One wouldn’t be certain (and OCD is all about the need … Read The Rest >>
The blackout was not too big a deal for me. Annoying and an inconvenience for sure. Without a mechanical means of moving air, like a fan or air conditioner, my apartment quickly takes on the atmospheric properties of Venus or maybe Mercury. Not conducive to continued living. It’s also too dark to read with out artificial light. I suppose I could have fired up the oil lamps or a candle or two…what’s a few more … Read The Rest >>
