A Poem: "OCD Fingertips"

My thumb throbs
The heat from the tip
Just beside the nail
Where I peeled the skin
Bit by layer by thumbprint ring by
Exposed blood vessel
Pooling underneath thick layer
Tough skin, reddened
Still I dig, clippers under nails.
Here I've forgotten
What the digging nail searches for:
Uniform skin,
Throbbing heat,
Pulsing pain to pick up pen.
Or it is simply for that sensation?
thick on raw skin, tip to nail,
As I run thumb over thumb
For hours after.

Therapeutiversary

This winter marks my ten-year anniversary of starting therapy. My original intent was to write and post this before 2015 had ended, but true to form I have been procrastinating on it, stuck on its importance to me, on the importance of each word for what needs to be said. All of this is on top of the fact that I've been sitting on another post for ::cough:: over a year now--I got stuck on feeling like I had lost the point. I ultimately abandoned it so I could allow myself to move on to write this piece.

Ten years ago I didn't know I could do that--you know, move on from something. 

Ten years ago I didn't know thinking how I do (and more to the point, getting distressed from said thinking) wasn't typical, wasn't necessary...

Ten years ago I didn't know I had a choice, that I didn't have to live like this.

Ten years ago what I knew is that I had a phone number from my doctor, and a need to eat between class and play rehearsal. So as a friend drove me down the road to Wegmans for subs, I called:

     "Chemical Dependency or Mental Health?"

     "Mental Health."

My friend giggles, and apologizes.

     "Please hold."

 But I giggle too. I'm not offended, the words "Mental Health" felt foreign and surreal coming out of my mouth. I tell her it's okay, and she tells me it's going to be okay. The woman on the phone returns and continues taking my information, eventually giving me an intake appointment date a month an a half, almost two months out-- unless I had an emergency, of course, and then maybe I could go in sooner. I was admittedly disappointed the date was so far out, but as I hung up the phone and got food and talked with my friend about how shitty it felt to be 16 and making my own therapy appointment, I couldn't help but also feel hope. Finally, hope.

I don't remember my first therapy session nearly as much as I remember that phone call, and that counselor retired several months later anyways. However, from that office came my psychiatrist for the next nine years. 2015 was a year of intense transition for me, one of much loss but ultimately of much gain as well. Both the losses and gains have sent me reeling, both mentally and physically, worse than I've been in a long time. If you do the math you can see my mental health treatment was one of those transitions. It wasn't until I faced having to find a new one that I realized how much of a repore had finally been established between my therapist and I. For a long time now I have been one of the lucky ones who looks forward to each session (aside from the usual anxieties about obligations, of course) because I truly get something out of it. However, I remember when I didn't get so much out of it because I didn't put as much in. I know I praise the benefits of therapy up and down all day long, but I feel the need to take the opportunity to say you still have to put some effort in, and it takes time. It's still working on yourself, and you still have to, at some point, make the choice to open up to the person you're sitting across from if you want it to be effective. It took a relationship in which the guy, who did not himself necessarily "believe" in therapy, came in to all of my therapy sessions for me to value having the open, non-judgmental, third-party forum to get perspective from. The first session after that relationship ended I literally asked myself what the fuck I had left to hide anymore, and have never looked back...

...So it's been a rough transition, from a professional who's known me since high school to one who knows nothing about me at all. My treatment is also now taking the form of psychiatrist for medications and someone separate for therapy. I was lucky enough to be referred to a new psychiatrist who seems to work well for me, which has opened the door for a new leg of this mental health journey-- I am now seeing a psychologist with OCD as an area of expertise for therapy. This first appointment I remember much more clearly (I'd hope so, since it was only a few weeks ago...). After several months of insurance hiccups and phone tag, I had finally made it and was nervous as hell. I've had more therapy intake appointments I care to admit (for specific kinds of therapy over the years), and this one wasn't a whole lot different... until he starting asking about my obsessions and compulsions. My mind went rather blank at the question--what if all the things I had listed in my head as obsessions or compulsions weren't really? No one wants to go to the doctor in excruciating pain only to be told to go home, there's nothing wrong with you. I did the best I could to spit out a few items of "what I do" and we moved on to more background. What was different was watching him notice all the little things I do that I couldn't seem to say, things people often take months to pick up on. We discussed the type of therapy he does for OCD and an initial plan of action. I left his office to find it unusually warm for December--a sunny Tuesday afternoon--and as the sun hit my face I finally felt it again--a glimmer of hope. I'm ten years in, and I'm going to be okay.