Chapter Twelve:

Eruption

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     Few years stand out to me like 1998. In 1998, OCD erupted in my life, like a violent volcano, which became a constant stream of thoughts, worries, panic, and distress.  I continued to obsess about HIV, but I also developed obsessions and compulsions with topics related to safety, responsibility, and culpability (think: “blame-ability”). By culpability, I mean the topic of “whose fault?” and “whose fault” certain outcomes would be. Essentially by this, I mean I obsessed about whether various hypothetical undesirable outcomes would be “my fault.” 

(It is interesting to pause and consider the prevalence of the topic of culpability in the daily narratives of our lives. It is everywhere. Think of how often the following thought processes occur in your daily life:

 

 “I better not do this,....

 

(or)

 

 “I better not do that…. “

 

(Why not?)

 

 

(You could get in trouble…. /You’re not supposed to….)

 

      “Would that be my fault?” Was a phrase/thought that echoed in my mind endlessly, from morning to night, and it wouldn’t stop or quiet down– not for many many years— and yes, it was devastating.

 

      The compulsions for these obsessions were and still can be, checking, or verifying different things either physically or mentally. This means verifying mentally by thinking or in other words, ruminating.

 

       In 1998, I, rather suddenly, began to check door locks and light switches when leaving the house, I also checked excessively, the barbeque, propane tanks, water faucets, stoves, at random times, and I would also check the roads while I was driving to make sure I hadn’t hit anybody (without realizing it!)  No, it didn’t really make any sense which only added to the desperation I felt. I would check, and also ruminate, on many other things too, including, but not limited to, whether I was gay, whether I might have killed somebody and not remember it, whether I was a pedophile, whether I might have done something terrible while I was drunk, and on and on it went…. It was also during this year, 1998, that I started “checking” for blood and hypodermic needles everywhere I went, before I sat in a chair, or before I touched anything in public, in cars, under desks, even in the bush when I was hunting,...!  I would constantly check where I was walking so that I didn’t unknowingly step on a used needle syringe (which didn’t make sense either because I was wearing shoes and because there were no used needles anywhere!!). While all of this was irrational, still I couldn’t stop myself. I did all of this while going to university in Saskatoon, and my life was a kind of double-life- which consisted of my real thoughts and feelings as mentioned above, and, then my contrived or “put-on” demeanor and behaviors that I displayed to other people in any kind of a social or public interaction, wherein I essentially pretended that I was “fine.”

 

       All of this is relatively easy to explain, and if you have OCD then you will understand what I am referring to by checking, but if you don’t know what I am referring to, I am saying that I would doubt my perceptions and I would feel a very strong level of anxiety most of the times I shut something off, or many times when I merely thought of a trigger…. Usually the thing in question was something that could conceivably be the cause of injury to someone or damage to somebody’s property (or both), even if the probability of danger associated with the thing was extremely low- I would panic about shutting a light off or shutting off a water faucet, because even though the light would appear to be off or the door appeared to be locked, I would still get an extremely strong surge of anxiety and I would try to stop the anxiety by turning the light back on and then off again or re-locking the door etc..! I would panic about the iron being unplugged or not. I would panic when I unloaded a firearm. This panic response was so unpleasant that I began dreading leaving the house (because of locking the door), or shutting off lights, or using the barbeque or cooking something on the stove. Even using my guns….I would panic if I didn't feel “certain” about things, and it was and still can be very difficult to achieve the feeling of certainty, although in recent times I very seldom have these thoughts or feelings. In 1998, The feeling of anxiety was nearly constant, and so too, was the urge to get rid of the discomfort. I lived in a constant state of panic and distress and I was very sad and ashamed and utterly exhausted at the same time, because of all of this. When you feel the jolt of adrenaline and panic manifested as a sensation in your head, in your stomach, and in your chest and heart area, those experiences in themselves, create a sense of urgency that there is something terribly wrong. You feel so anxious that you actually experience trauma. In other words, anxiety is trauma.  Anxiety and panic are traumatic experiences. When you feel trauma several times a day, for days, then weeks, and then months and years, then you become extremely sad, angry, and depressed. This was a complete crisis. I was living in a full blown crisis.

 

     You may have heard people speak about getting help. When I was 22, in 1998, I had gone to my parents and told them, several times, about my situation, but it was nearly impossible to convey to them the true severity and gravity of my situation. A big reason for this was because I would struggle to explain exactly what I was experiencing. It was too bizarre, and I was too ashamed. My experience of near-constant panic was bizarre, but that didn’t nullify its effects on me. Do you know what it is like to try to explain to someone the bizarre contents of your otherwise rational mind? Your “insane” day to day life? That you feel crazy and that it is constant, nearly incessant, day in and day out, and that it has been going on for over a year? Do you know what that is like? To even attempt to speak about that to another person is extremely daunting, and requires enormous courage and enormous strength that I didn’t possess! That is the paradox of it. People who have what I have, have all of their power and strength channelling into their imaginations, and they cannot stop imagining dreadful situations, nor can they stop their own physical reactions to their imaginings! And this causes a great amount of shame!

 

      It feels better to simply suffer in silence than to speak up, and when you do attempt to speak up, it is extremely difficult to articulate in full honesty what is actually taking place within your own mind. I couldn’t bring myself to say exactly what I was feeling when I shut off the light or when I shut off the stove or a faucet, or when I unloaded a gun, or when I imagined yet another bizarre scenario! My inner critic would impatiently say to myself “ Like, the gun is either empty or loaded, end of story right?” What was so complicated about it? Yet, I knew what I was experiencing, and I felt the feelings and I thought the thoughts and I also thought I shouldn’t be thinking or feeling them, and I didn’t want to feel them, but I couldn’t stop them from happening! Every morning I would wake up and the nightmare would continue. I would think “maybe I have HIV” in between feeling like I was going to “lose my mind” if I didn’t check the faucet to make sure it was off, or check the emergency brake on the car or the door locks,.... It was an endless nightmare. Every time I opened the fridge or turned on the stove I would dread closing it or shutting it off, in case I was engulfed in panic. My whole day was Hell from the time I awoke until the time I fell asleep. People make jokes about those who can’t control themselves,... about the insane asylum,... but I couldn’t control myself at all. The urge to check or to perform a compulsion— that urge was far beyond strong! The pull produced by obsessions is indescribably powerful! I really couldn’t enjoy anything in life. I couldn’t do anything without having an intrusive thought. I didn’t know how to respond or what I was going to do in the future. I looked normal. I could also pretend to be normal. But I was completely and utterly destroyed and completely abnormal!

 

      In the summer of 1998 I was in Saskatoon, working at Earl’s restaurant. I was at a complete loss. Earl’s was a place to “see and be seen.” It was a stylish place with tasty foods,..., and attractive staff,....  but, all I did, both at Earl’s and at home before and after work was panic, worry, obsess, and pretend to be normal, so, I, after a couple of months, gave up and quit the job. I went back home to Prince Albert.  It was a terrible summer! Everyone around me was living their lives,... working their jobs, going on dates, enjoying life!  But I was in the exact opposite situation. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t date, and I couldn’t enjoy life. With each passing moment I felt my frustrations multiplying, and that my life was passing me by in this horrendous state, and that I was  completely helpless. It certainly added to my worry and frustration to see everyone in their normal healthy states. I just wanted to be normal too. I began to resent (envy) normal people (including my family) little by little. If someone made a crack about my appearance or my behavior, I had little tolerance of them and I was quickly furious, even if I let on like nothing was wrong. Consciousness equaled Doom. Life was a horror movie and my mind and body were the screens on which it played.

 

     In September of 1998 I returned to Saskatoon and continued going to University. This was probably the worst thing I could have ever done,....For the most part, I was growing steadily more angry and distraught about my situation. It makes sense if you think about it.  I had been conditioned and moulded by my culture, over the years, into a person who now believed that the entire goal of my life and the only thing that really mattered was to end up having a high-paying job and being thought of by my peers as being “successful.” These values had created a massive problem too, because by this time, I had started to really dive in and dissect and question these notions, of what it was that was actually my ‘goals,’ and more importantly, what it was about the goal that was motivating me, and I could not and would not allow anything but the purest form of the truth to serve as the answers to my questions. This continuous questioning became one of the main activities of my daily life and although I was suffering with OCD and anxiety, I was able to effectively begin to understand and see the truth about many aspects of my paradigm and world-view and my ideas on “success.” I was deeply troubled by what I was doing with my life, and by the way I was thinking and also by what I saw happening all around me. I was deeply troubled that I had adopted these superfluous and shallow materialistic ideals that permeated the culture around me, and I felt I had to rethink everything. In my view society was a complete disaster, and everywhere I looked things were in total disarray according to what I believed to be the morally correct way to live!

 

     The morally correct way to live, I had come to believe, and still do believe this, is one in which people work at that which they are intrinsically interested in. I realized that if I worked and studied and somehow found employment doing something that I found intrinsically engaging, because of the content of that subject matter, then I would always be in a state of happiness and positivity because I was always doing what made me happy, intrinsically. The opposite would be to do something only for the extrinsic values associated with the activity. To put it very simply, I saw that doing something that was genuinely interesting and that I “believed in” was paramount to true happiness. 

 

     This concept was something that I had arrived at, after months of contemplation and thought. I was formally introduced to some of these ideas while reading the book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” in 1995. At that particular time, when I read that book, I was going through the throes of panic and the reverberations of the anxieties that I had felt a couple months earlier as outlined in the chapter “disaster in Japan.”

 

     After that incident, that continued to drag itself out indefinitely, I had cut my study time back and I had devoted a large portion of each day reading books and searching for some answer to “my problem.” I read several books and they were helpful. I read “To Have or To Be” by Eric Fromm, and The Buddhist bible, as well as the Christian Bible, and I gleaned several guidelines from those works, but just then, I received a book in the mail from my mother called “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey, and in that book, the author asserted that the fundamental most important factor for  happiness for Human Beings was to live a life of doing things that were in harmony with their highest and most supreme values. Following that, Stephen Covey described seven habits that he asserted if implemented, would bring about very positive results in anybody’s life. These habits are:

• “Habit 1: Be Proactive® ... 

• Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind® ... 

• Habit 3: Put First Things First® ... 

• Habit 4: Think Win-Win® ... 

• Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood® ... 

• Habit 6: Synergize® ... 

• Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw®”

 

  This meant that one had to know what they stood for, and that they had to actively contemplate and think about their own values before starting out on their journey.

 

     At that same time, since I was so critical of myself, and more and more critical also of everything and everyone, especially notions that existed about “success,” since I was always thinking the worst-case scenarios, I looked at my professors with skepticism and the entire student body in their zest for learning and their thriving wellness and health, well, I resented it- no!..... I fucking LOATHED it!

 I was thoroughly disappointed with most of my professors and the university experience as a whole. It seemed ridiculous that the idea of “higher learning” consisted of going to a lecture, watching a person talk and recite facts or opinions from their notes, and then to be expected to take notes on these opinions, and then to be expected to memorize the facts and opinions and to answer questions on an exam or essay…? There was little to no originality of thought involved, and the marking system was so overtly biased…. To make matters worse, nobody at university talked about what It would be like to feel insane from morning to night, and to be obsessed with ideas that caused you to be in a state of perpetual panic, at the very time that you were in your peak biological state for reproduction (the proverbial prime of my youth)! I didn’t care about Shakespeare or James Joyce or Walt Whitman, I mean, how could I? Instead I was busy barely surviving my own “real” tragedy!”

 

     It was in the fall of 1998, that I met a remarkable professor, Dr. Terrence Matheson on campus at the University of Saskatchewan, who made a positive and powerful impression on me.  Professor Matheson’s ability to masterfully lecture and to wield the English language, with his degree of eloquence and precision,..., it was amazing, and it truly inspired me. I had never seen anything remotely close. I went to Professor Matheson’s classes with no misgivings and I was continually impressed with his lectures. As for most of the other classes, unfortunately, this was definitely not the case, and as a result I lost all motivation to do well in the majority of my classes.

 

       I remained single during my university days in 1998. In December of that year I finally decided to go for a Blood test for HIV, as well as all the other major Sexually Transmitted Diseases. I had decided to do this, even though I had only ever had one sexual encounter and it had been one of extreme caution,.... I remember going to the clinic on campus at the University,...and being so nervous! Even trying to explain to the nurse why I wanted a test in the first place…. (Because I couldn’t stop thinking “What if I have AIDS?”) That was the truth,... but I thought I couldn’t say that…. I had only had one sexual partner. I had used a condom. I felt so unintelligent and so ashamed. I answered the nurse's questions and she informed me I would have to go for a blood test in a few days then wait for a couple of weeks for the results,...! That meant that I would have to wait over the Christmas holiday for my results! I didn’t like the prospect of it, but realistically, I had been thinking about HIV since the summer of 1996,... so I didn’t care! I needed to know for sure. I needed to rid myself of those thoughts and that anxiety, or so I thought.

 

    I went for the blood test, and I dreaded the whole thing, from the time I booked it, until I sat at the clinic, and still I was full of dread when I left and was walking home. The whole time I was there I was worried I might see somebody I knew and I sat there in a special kind of angst as the nurse drew the vials of blood,... I thought I was going to pass out! On the way home I stopped at Alexanders' (Restaurant) and treated myself to a hamburger, fries, and a pint of beer. I felt mixed emotions…. I was exhausted mentally and physically, but relieved that I had gotten tested. Of course, I thought and desperately hoped, that once I knew my result, that it was “negative,”  that I would stop worrying. That, sadly, was not to be the case.

 

       After the Christmas holidays, I returned to university. The day finally came for me to go back to the Doctor’s office for my test results. I thought about it anxiously, until the day came, then I nervously went to the Doctor’s office. The Doctor told me my results while my heart pounded violently in my chest,...: “Your test results are all Negative,” he said. I panicked, thinking I had, somehow, misheard him…!

 

“What?”  I asked, incredulously, looking at him in frantic horror and shame…. 

 

     He looked at me with a slightly annoyed expression:  

​

“Everything is negative, as it should be,....” he said with a calm nonchalance. He had even checked my cholesterol. 

 

“You have low cholesterol too. “You must exercise a lot…?” He said, (as if I gave a flying f####…) “Yeah…,” I muttered, begrudgingly. I had been exercising regularly, going for runs around the university neighborhood, trying to live with the constant panic, I wanted to stay as slim as I could, as if that really even mattered,....  I was relieved about the test results, but I was still anxious! But why?!

 

      This filled me with more desperation!! As I walked home, I decided I would go for a run after going home and changing my clothes, but on the walk home, I noticed that I continued scanning the ground for hypodermic needles! I desperately wanted to stop! But I kept walking and I kept scanning. I couldn’t stop scanning and checking! I observed my mind spinning and questioning and doubting and panicking and thinking,...There seemed to be no way out of the cycle. I thought to myself that instead of getting tested for HIV, I should have been seeing a psychiatrist about my obsession with HIV, with my obsessions and compulsions of checking for needles and locked doors and turned off water taps,.... I knew I should go and “talk to someone,”... I knew it, but I couldn’t accept it and I could not and would not do it. There was too much risk of being seen and made fun or thought ill of. There was too much shame. I hoped it would all just magically end. I thought of suicide once in a while and I thought of death often. I longed for relief. I drank beer. I kept pushing the boulder. It was the quintessence of suffering, and it was clear that it was a problem that was mine, and mine,..., alone.