Sorry, But I'm Too Busy To Kill Myself Right Now

The fact that the entire month of February went by without one single blog post from me is a testament to the fact that I am entirely too busy with the chaos of daily life, unable to manage things enough to make time for that which is most important to me. However, since much of my activity this year has involved helping others through difficulty with unexpected challenges as much as dealing with my own, I don't feel that it is totally wasted.


Unfortunately, far too much of my time (and likely, yours as well) is spent communicating with the companies which provide the products and services on which I depend about the fact that their products and/or services are not working and/or being administered properly, and ironing out the difficulties caused by those malfunctions. It's part of our world, I suppose, but a very wasteful part of it, nonetheless.


The only solution is for everyone to pay more attention to the details of what they are doing in an effort to avoid careless mistakes, but it is not a realistic expectation, it seems. Such is the lament of an obsessive-compulsive person like myself.


In my last post, I was reflecting on the loss of a friend to an apparent suicide and the fact that, regardless of how I die, it would be nice to know in my last moments that I had left a message of some sort to my dear ones - some last words, if you will, and that perhaps it might bring them comfort after my death (and perhaps even while I'm still living). In fact, it is in an effort to relieve some anxiety that I do this... anxiety about the possibility that I would likely be prevented from killing myself by the fact that I hadn't yet crafted a clever suicide note even if I really really needed to kill myself, like if my limbs were all rotting off after finding myself stuck between a couple of boulders while vultures eat me alive. (Yep. That's how those of us with severe anxiety think. We actually consider that outrageous things like that could happen. Didn't know this seemingly overly-optimistic gal could be so concerned about such unlikely events, eh?)


I can't foresee myself ever committing suicide, but I'm pretty sure that most of those who have done it didn't see themselves doing it, either, until they reached the breaking point. I believe that, for the most part, suicide (since our legal system considers it a crime) is a "crime of passion". Sure, there are those who have planned to kill themselves (terroristic suicide bombers, etc.) but most find themselves in overwhelming circumstances that, temporary though they may be, they simply can not bear and feel that their only hope of escaping those circumstances is to end their lives.


Of course, there are also those who suffer with chronic illnesses and their associated pain. Certainly that is an understandable (and unfortunate) reason why many choose to end their lives. I have had my share of chronic pain, but thankfully, I have developed a tolerance for it and have not experienced it severely enough for a long enough period of time to bring me to the point at which I want to end my life.


If I ever ended my life, I would have to say that the most likely culprit would also be the one thing that will probably make it impossible for me to ever do so: O.C.D.


I crack a lot of jokes about having obsessive-compulsive disorder. Unlike many who use the term to refer to those who are merely perfectionists, I am clinically diagnosed. My O.C.D. manifests itself in a myriad of ways, not all of which most would recognize as "typical". In fact, many would consider them bizarre. Regardless, the effect it has had on my life has been devastating, and it has kept me from many things which I otherwise might have accomplished.


Unimportant, time-wasting tasks take on far more importance in the life of someone with O.C.D. than just about anything else. Some are unable to prioritize at all, while others (like myself) are only able to prioritize enough to remain barely functional, maintaining the appearance of normalcy, while secretly wasting our true (and possibly stellar) potential on these worthless obsessions.


Those who are not functional at all maintain very prolonged periods of constant obsessive activity with one or a very limited number of tasks, while those of us who are able to "fake" being somewhat normal are able to take "breaks" of varying periods of time from our obsessions. This fools many mental health care workers into believing that we are more functional than we actually are, or that it's "not that bad", because they do not understand that, though we may be driving or managing to hold down a job or completing certain projects, our minds are constantly back and forth between the task at hand and the task we secretly feel the need to be doing.


Not only does the task we are doing and the efficiency of doing it suffer in quality at times due to that distraction, but the anxiety level we experience as a result causes even more mental disturbance and perpetuates the cycle of obsessive behavior, which is usually driven by anxiety to start with. Perhaps even more importantly, the stress hormones which we produce in an over-abundance as a result of this constant state of anxiety tend to cause very real physical damage to our bodies, which makes O.C.D. even more debilitating.


You don't just wash your hands a lot with O.C.D. (It's true: some don't experience the desire to wash their hands compulsively at all). You also lose sleep, are often irritable with loved ones, are unable to meet deadlines, your work is affected, your finances (and other important aspects of daily life like exercise, health, and nutrition) often go neglected... Sounds a lot like what those who are addicted to drugs experience, except that there is no "rehab" for O.C.D. You can't just "quit" the tasks in your daily life that have become a part of your obsessive rituals cold turkey the way some stop smoking, drinking, or doing drugs (insert Charlie Sheen joke here) - unless of course, you end your life.


In a nutshell, everything that has gone wrong in my life that wasn't merely a matter of bad luck (and there has been plenty of that as well) has been a direct effect of me having O.C.D. Many of the "mistakes" I've made in life haven't been a result of me "making bad choices" as much as simply side effects and/or consequences of my inability to make a choice at all, often suspended in time and losing an awareness of anything other than the overwhelming force inside of me that makes it unbearable for me NOT to record the U.P.C. code on every item in my house. (Thank you, Apple, for making that easier to do with my iPhone. Seriously. That's where the time to blog comes from - instead of writing them down or entering them in a computer manually, I'm able to scan them into an inventory program in the phone.)


That particular manifestation of my O.C.D. is thought to come from the fact that I once lost everything in a house fire and the fear that, if I don't keep track of everything in my general vicinity, I might experience the trauma of waking up with a house burning down around me again someday. (Don't worry. It's not supposed to make sense.) But, back to my point: The extreme anxiety I so often feel in life that probably drives much of my O.C.D. behavior, if it ever became severe enough for me to want to kill myself, would likely lose out to the urge to complete a great many tasks before I did so, and since, with O.C.D. no task is ever truly completed, I would never get around to dying.


Does this mean I'm immortal? Hopefully not! While I love life itself and, imperfect and full of strife though it often may be, I even love MY life. Still, I have no desire to live forever. The fact that at some point all of my frenetic activity will one day cease and I will one day take a (to borrow an S.N.L. skit phrase) "final dirt nap" is sometimes the only comfort I find in the chaos that life so often throws my way (and that which I often, though unintentionally, make into even MORE chaos). In other words, the reason I don't want to live forever is that all of these obsessive rituals make a person REALLY. FUCKING. TIRED.


Several therapists have told me that they see strong symptoms of attention deficit disorder (A.D.D.) in me as well. Ironically, I believe that it is this very disorder that allows me to become distracted enough from my obsessive tasks that I am occasionally able to get other, more important things, done. (Uncle Greg, since you are a psychiatrist, PLEASE immediately take this information and formulate a cure. I know you can do it, Graig! My life depends on it! But hey, no pressure.)


When I do finally take that final dirt nap, I think it might be nice if this blog post were read at my funeral. Not only would it help others understand a tiny bit of what those of us with O.C.D. actually  go through, but it might also provide a bit of humor as well. (By the way, I don't really want a dirt nap. I want an URN nap.)


I'm too busy to actually sit down and write a thorough "goodbye" letter or eulogy for myself, because, since that is something designed for the end of my life, it falls at the very end of my very long to-do list.


Anyone charged with speaking at my "fun-eral" would likely say something like: "She lived life to the fullest... sort of. That is to say, when she wasn't scanning U.P.C. numbers from that bag of socks and toiletries she bought at Walmart, that girl really knew how to have fun! Why, sometimes she would crack jokes while getting the dishes squeaky clean in preparation for putting them in the dishwasher, and I'll never forget that time she streaked across the football field so she could count the number of steps it takes to get to the other side, and her impression of "The Count" from Sesame Street when she counted the number of green beans on her plate. Yep. That Angela really knew how to live!"


Indeed.


(Indeed has six letters, and if you ever want to know how many letters are in just about any word you speak in a conversation we're having, just ask. I can probably tell you before you finish the question. Question, by the way, has eight letters, yet oddly, the word "eight" has only five, five has only four, but EUREKA! Four actually has FOUR letters, making it the perfect spelling of a number for a "mini-Monk" like myself... consider it the O.C.D. version of a prime number.)


So there. More than a month after I promised I'd write some thoughts on my life to be pondered upon my death, I finally got around to constructing this blog post. And, if you're reading this, it means I also managed to proof-read it and post it.


And now, here is my final message to you.


Dear Friends, Family, and Acquaintances:


Because I care enough to not leave you with the torturous question of "why?", I am writing this suicide note before I kill myself. The reason I'm killing myself is: _____________________. You'll have to fill in the blank yourself, because the more I think about it, the more I realize there are many many reasons why this life is just too much for me to handle, and by the time I alphabetize them all in a list, the suicide note will have become far too long to be considered anything other than a manifesto, which will mislead you into thinking that I'm crazy in a few ways that I'm actually NOT crazy.


I'm going to go kill myself now... as soon as I finish alphabetizing my underwear by color, or maybe by pattern, or perhaps numerically according to the U.P.C. number if I can look it up before I get distracted by something else I need to do. You see, I can't possibly finish my last will and testament without having a complete inventory of everything I own listed alphabetically by category and cross-referenced.


Oh, for fuck's sake. Forget it. I'm too busy to kill myself right now.


Love Always,


A.