What planet am I from again?

WARNING:  The following posts contains womanly-girly-stuff content.  As in periods.  Nothing graphic, but if you don't like reading sentences that have the word "period" in them ("period" referring to MENSTRUAL CYCLE), then don't read ahead.  The word "pee" is also ahead.  You've been warned.  Thank you.

  Today was so wild. 

  For the past few days, I’ve been stressed out about my period being late.  The last period I had came two weeks early and lasted a whole 7 days instead of the 3 days that I’m used to.  So this one I’ve been expecting is almost a week late.  My eating habits have been poor again, as in I can only muster enough motivation to eat at most 1 meal a day.  I know that my lack of eating in the past made my period 3 days long and almost non-existent.  I was worried that this was the case for this month’s period and have been pretty angry at myself.  I’ve been slightly panicked but pushing the panic to the back of my mind.  I know how sometimes my body will delay my period more if I’m stressed, and that would be unfair to myself to get worked up and then have my period come even later due to the stress about it being late.  So I kept pushing it back in my mind, except for those moments of desperation when I realize it isn’t here yet.  I shouted out to the universe and my uterus to start my period soon.  I can’t wait any longer.  So today, I felt unusually happy and secure.  I was determined to have a positive and fun night, too.  When night came, I started making a friendship bracelet out of embroidery floss that I bought earlier.  So far so good.  Then I screwed up the pattern and realized that I had to undo most of what I’ve done so far and went into a complete panic.  I’d keep realizing each step I did wrong and then would go over the steps in my mind repeatedly until I knew for sure I was doing it right.  But then no, I wasn’t.  I’d screw up again.  I could hear myself in my head screaming at the top of my lungs.  I could feel a panic attack around the corner.  “Calm down, it’s just a knot,” I kept saying to myself out loud.  Then I continued to talk to myself out loud.  This helped me for the most part.  But then I would mess up again and the scream in my head would get a little louder.  Then people in the outside world started messaging me on MSN and on Facebook.  I have never wanted to be alone so much in my life.  I couldn't give my energy to anything but this bracelet and people were demanding my energy.  This made me panic even more.  I couldn’t figure out how the hell I managed to avoid a panic attack when I could almost see it in my head.  It was right there.  I could literally feel that edge of the cliff in my mind that I was about to fall over.  I could feel my mind take a few steps back from that edge almost immediately.  I couldn’t believe it. 

  I started to try and talk myself out of making the stupid bracelet and even starting over on it, but my OCD kicked in and wouldn’t let me just stop.  I had to finish.  This wasn’t a good stopping place for me anyway.  So, I kept going.  Finally, after calming down tremendously, I got to a good stopping point in the pattern I was working on.  I forgot to mention that I was watching Fringe episodes online while I worked on the bracelet to keep one side of my brain occupied while the other side was controlling my hands to make the knots in the bracelet.  After almost falling into a panic attack, I watched an episode that immediately touched me.  From beginning to end, I watched the plot unfolding and was touched by this unusual love story being told.  I could not believe how moved I was!  Of all the touching episodes so far, this one really REALLY got to me.  The episode finally ended as I sat there crying and holding my work in progress in my hands.  That episode was so beautiful in more ways than one and I couldn't believe how passionate I felt about what had happened.  I was finally at a good stopping point with the bracelet, too.  I cleared off my bed and took a trip to the bathroom—still crying. 

  Now, I usually pee in the dark because I’m paranoid about someone watching me pee.  My bathroom window faces the street in front of my house and I know that if someone looked in at night with the bathroom light on, they would see all.  I can’t begin to imagine someone seeing me pee.  So, I peed in the dark and decided to check if my damned period had started yet.  Hahaha.  There’s a small night-light in my bathroom that is just barely bright enough to see what I needed to see but dark enough to not illuminate my peeing figure to the world outside my house.  Lo and behold, I started my damned period.  I laughed for a good while after that. 

  I figured that writing all of this was a fun idea but am probably still under the influence of the first moments of my uterus shedding an egg.  When this is going on, it feels like everything is really important and I have to make note of it immediately.  My goodness… humans are weird. 

Thanks for reading.

Picture:

Such a cute happy cow getting a scrubbin'!
(Found this picture on http://www.cuteoverload.com (where I find most of these pictures))

OCD Behaviors

  Yay for bloggies!
I have a few things to write about tonight.  First off, in about 55 minutes, it’ll officially be my 23^rd b-day.  Wooo!  Tomorrow is also the last day I have to drive up to school for the rest of the month since it’s the end of our fall semester.  I’m getting a final critique in my Painting class and then hitting the pizza joint afterwards.  It’s going to be a lot of fun.  This semester was incredible in comparison to my previous semesters.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I get really really good grades, too.

  I have had a never ending supply of hangnails this winter too.  The corners surrounding the cuticle on my right thumb are covered in wounds from me constantly pulling off loose pieces of skin.  I’ve tried lotion and what-not, but to no avail.  There’s not much I can do but destroy the little cuticle monsters.  There isn’t much snow right now either.  I managed to get some good sledding in around Thanksgiving before most of it melted away though!  Hopefully it snows again soon.

  The main thing I wanted to write about was my frequently occurring issues with OCD.  OCD is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and is defined by Wikipedia as: an anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts that produce uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry, by repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing anxiety, or by a combination of such thoughts (obsessions) and behaviors (compulsions).  My behaviors vary.  Since Jr. High, I’ve had the behavior of needing to arrange things in color order.  For example:  If I had a pack of crayons, I would need to arrange them in the order of the colors of the rainbow.  Imagine my frustration when I came to browns… I stuck them at the end because they didn’t belong with the main colors.  When it came to coins, it was frustrating because I wanted to arrange them in order of what they’re worth, but their sizes wouldn’t allow me to because I like arranging them from smallest to biggest as well.  I gave up with this and just made separate stacks of each coin with the head side of the coins facing up.  Those are the main behaviors that I’ve developed that are more defined and ritualistic.  Well, I guess cleaning is a big one too.  If I clean something, then everything else HAS to be cleaned.  I guess that’s not a big one…  Anyway, there’s a bunch of other little ones that I won’t go into.  The main ones right now that are interrupting my normal day are:  when I eat food, and right before I go to bed.

  When I eat food by myself, I can eat normally without any anxiety.  When I eat food around other people, I get completely obsessive.  I try to avoid eating food around people.  Not because of the OCD, but because I have low self-esteem and hate being judged by what I’m eating or how much of it I’m shoveling down.  Sometimes I like eating around people, but it’s only if they’re going to eat too.  So sometimes if I have to eat around someone, I’ll try and find an excuse to not eat at all by saying, “oh I already ate” or “oh I’m not feeling good right now.”  I feel terrible for lying because sometimes I have already eaten or I really don’t feel good.  Ugh.  But sometimes of course I’m hungry and will end up eating.  This is when the anxiety and OCD behaviors kick in.  If I have a plate full of different things, whatever pile I’m eating from has to be right in front of me.  If I want a bit of something that’s on the other edge of the plate, I’ll turn my plate so it’s in front of me.  I also do two different things at random times when I’m eating around others.  The first thing is that I make myself eat every single last piece of food on my plate, whether or not I’m full or still hungry.  I get extremely anxious if I see any extra food on my plate.  I wonder if I’m worrying about wasting food but that isn’t what fuels the anxiety.  I just HAVE to finish EVERYTHING.  The other thing I do is eat half of each portion and then try to hide the remainder of those portions.  I can feel the anxiety of worrying that who I’m eating with will see that I didn’t finish my food and will get angry at me or something.  So I either wrap up the food in a napkin or just put the napkin over the food.  If I can’t hide the food, then I’ll usually get up as quick as I can to throw it away before anyone sees it.  I’ve noticed that at restaurants, my anxiety around eating is a little better than eating at someone’s house or at home.  Although I get nervous if I don’t finish everything on my plate and I have to organize whatever is left a certain way so they don’t ask if I want to take it home.  Whew.

  My other OCD behavior involves what I do before I go to bed.  No matter what—even if I peed not even 20 minutes before—I HAVE to visit the bathroom before I go to bed.  I get this huge unbearable anxiety that I have to make sure I’ve peed before going to sleep.  The thought of waking up in the middle of the night to pee doesn’t scare me or anything… I don’t understand it.  So I’ll be in bed already and realize that I haven’t peed in a few minutes prior to falling asleep and I start to panic and obsess.  I’ll sit there and yell at my brain that I peed not even 20 minutes prior and I don’t even need to pee right then.  And then I think ok, maybe I should pee.  Just really quick.  So after I do that and get back in bed, everything is absolutely fine and I can go to sleep.  It has gotten so annoying to me because I’ll be completely relaxed in my bed and I don’t want to get up, but my anxiety explodes inside my brain and I have to do this behavior or something bad will happen. 

  I know that a good way to deal with fears or my behaviors with OCD is to just face that fear.  I’ve thought about just going to bed without peeing RIGHT before, but my anxiety gets so bad that I can’t.  And I’ve tried to eat food normally around people without worrying about what is on my plate, but I can’t do that either.  It’s a strange system of behaviors that I’m locked in for now.

  Well I’m going to stop typing now.  It is bed time for me.  Goodnight and good luck out there.

Picture:

I do not understand this picture.  It is hilarious to me without explanation.