I'm Over It: Thoughts from an Obsessive Compulsive
Nowadays, having Stage 4 cancer is no longer a death sentence. With the emergence of radical surgical procedures, more effective chemo drugs and a slew of cancer vaccines entering clinical trials, hope is a tangible reality rather than a pipe dream.
I have been told that one should avoid religion and politics at all costs in your blogs, yet I’m a rebel! (Insert maniacal laugh here). No, really, I’m just kidding. “The God Pile” is actually just a phrase that I use for boundary lines.
It was a drop dead gorgeous Saturday when I was driving out of the parking lot of my complex. I slowed my car to a stop so that I could check an email before entering the street. A beep from a car startled me. Unexpectedly, I felt a surge of anger. I immediately drove into the street and pulled to the side to let the road warrior pass. Despite tinted windows, I figured the driver was a she because of the Hello Kitty stickers plastered all over her car.
I woke up one ordinary day and realized this was the day that I was going to face my fears. As I’ve previously mentioned, I harbored a deep seeded fear that maybe all the critics were right and I was “crazy” on some level. This was a recurring theme for me- Did I mention that OCD can be a wee bit repetitious? Although I recognized the pattern, I was stumped in regards to how I could fix it or if it could be fixed. Then, a thought hit me or rather, more of a question, “Are you ready to be professionally diagnosed?”
For most of my life, I, secretly, feared that there may have been a hint of truth behind people’s accusations that I was crazy. I emphatically denied it, but still, there was this nagging sense that maybe I was lying to myself. I could say with all honesty that this was my greatest fear. That was until March 4, 2012, the day my mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. This diagnosis annihilated any of my previous ideas of fear and what arose was a terror that I never could have imagined.
