Searching for Meaning While Living with OCD’s Endless Questions

I go through the motions. I try to get a little work done in the house. It makes me feel like this house is disgusting. No matter where I look, there are things to do. I’m worried that I won’t have enough time to get it all done by Christmas which is over 2 months away. I have pulled stuff out from under the stairs to see what I can get rid of. I put on my headphones and eighties music and try to find some joy in it. I don’t. The more I try to go through things the more and more I don’t feel like doing it. I want to just tuck it all back under the stairs because then I don’t have to think about it. Is this too small? Does this mitt have a partner? Does this sheet have a bottom matching it somewhere? Old towels and sheets are good for dogs and cats when you need to take them somewhere in the vehicle but exactly how many tubs of old sheets do you actually need for the random amount of time you take animals to the vet? Well maybe I will get foster dogs or cats again, rabbits, or some other thing to fill my time.

I know I have talked about clutter before, I have talked about anxiety, I have talked about being overwhelmed and then as an added bonus I have talked about the times why I wonder why we are here filling our time? There have been many nights over the course of my life that I have layed in bed wondering when the end is the end and why I am physically, laying here breathing and in a week, 2 years, 10 years, or forty years, I will be a dead cold body in the ground.  I know I have mentioned this before, but it is a thought that comes and goes and then it just grinds at me, like the cheese grater at Olive Garden when you forget to stay at the stop.

There are many subsets to OCD, and I know from the majority of my symptoms that my main one is Harm OCD, but I am pretty sure I also have an inclination to lean towards Existential OCD at certain times. On google, Existential OCD is characterized by searching for answers to unanswerable, abstract queries. With this kind of OCD, you may be preoccupied with the philosophical aspects of life. You may feel that it’s impossible to continue living until you find an answer to your unresolvable questions.

I remember discussing these thoughts that I kept having with a therapist many years ago. Like most OCDs that are fear, and uncertainty based on the treatment is to learn to sit in that uncertainty. I was told just to assume that when you are dead and buried, you are just dead and buried, it won’t matter because you won’t know your dead. That brings me zero comfort and I guess it’s not meant to bring me comfort, it’s meant to silence your mind from an unsolvable problem. It doesn’t though, it just makes me fear it more. It makes me ruminate more on what the point of it all is. Why am I here just filling my time with going through endless piles of clutter? How boring that I have to take up some of my minutes and seconds breathing by doing things that are absolutely mundane.

Maybe it’s just Thanksgiving and we are supposed to be so grateful for everything. I guess I am grateful for my life, but it bothers me what is the purpose of it? Why can everyone just keep working on their merry way and I have to be unhappy trying to solve a question that is never going to be answered. 

It frustrates me. 2 plus 2 equals 4. Problems should all have answers. I WANT the answer key!!

The thing is though that no matter how bad I want it, and no matter how many times I think about it, one million, seven hundred and forty-five, it will not be the one million, seven hundred and forty sixth time I think about it that I will understand it.

Nope, I don’t know why birds fly, why grass is green, why the earth doesn’t stop turning so we can see the sun everyday, why fire makes you warm, why little children love mud puddles, I mean there are thousands and thousands of why’s. Why don’t they keep me up at night? I guess because regardless of what the answer is, the statement will still continue to be true. Birds will still fly even if I don’t know why, the grass will remain green even though I don’t know why, and life and death will happen without me knowing why. Of course, I can have my beliefs about what I think happens and what I think the purpose is, but it doesn’t change the fact that I may or may not in death find out the real answer. It shouldn’t change my life though right now.

OCD really sucks sometimes as it looks for different ways to make you upset with yourself. What a cruel disease you are OCD. You OCD are wasting my time on this earth, and you are most definitely not what I want to waste my breaths on. Everything else has some sort of purpose, cooking, cleaning, entertainment but OCD has nothing.

My new idea is to call my OCD a name to distinguish it as what it is, obsessive lies, so shut up Noreen, go pick on someone else tonight.

Chat again soon, 

Michelle