as small as a world and as large as alone

8:46pm August 13, 2013

girljanitor:

fuckyeahmedicalstuff:

loversneedlawyers:

A man with OCD recites a poem about his one true love. It’s heartbreaking.

To everyone who ever said “I have OCD” just because they’re organized, tidy, super clean, meticulous…this is what OCD looks like. 

How about we stop using that term so lightly. 

This is a very good poem, and it’s a very good example of what OCD is actually like, rather than the weird pop culture concept that’s arisen in the last two decades or so.

But, speaking from my perspective as [metaphorically] the person he’s talking about, the one who was the “one true love” of someone with a severe mental illness, “You owe me love because it’s the only thing keeping me from falling apart” is one of one of the most unhealthy, destructive, and abusive things that will keep you enmeshed longer than just about anything else. Especially when you’re 14 when it starts. Especially when you’re developmentally disabled AND mentally ill. Especially when everyone tells you *you* are the REAL “crazy one” in the relationship, and that you’re lucky to have anyone willing to put up with you.

This narrative isn’t extricable from society, or who is considered entitled to time, care, consideration, love, and patience, and who is considered the PROVIDER of these things, rather than the recipient.

It’s all well and good to applaud a realistic description of OCD from someone who actually has it, but this entire poem is shitting all over another person’s autonomy to say what she will and will not have in her life.

The reasons he was given are valid reasons.

Staying with someone because they think being with you “fixes them” is, in fact, a mistake.

“How could she leave me when she owes me so much” is never going to go over with me. It’s the same old song with different lyrics.

I’ve never been in a romantic relationship with someone who pulled that on me. But I’ve been in a… it was never even really a friendship because she got me into it by invading my space and guilt tripping me and manipulating me and buying me things and doing things for me and saying I owed her back.

She was basically one of those stalkers who believe they have a relationship of some kind with someone they’ve only seen on TV. She literally told me she was already my friend in the introduction.

And I wasn’t even the main person she was stuck on. That person ended up in the hospital for reasons that seemed to be related to the fact that she already had health problems and this person was a serious energy suck. And I don’t mean someone who is tiring because she is unusual in some way. I mean she spent an hour talking to me once and she got more and more energetic and I was so drained by the end I slept for three days.

And she pulled crap like that, the "you can’t go away because I need you and without you I can’t function” stuff.

And it matters to me less that she was mentally ill, more that she was manipulative and never heard a boundary she wouldn’t deliberately cross because she could, and got people to stick around and get drained by her by claiming she needed us and we fixed her and stuff.

I still remember when her main person was in the hospital and she basically was ANGRY AT HER FOR BEING DEATHLY ILL.   And tried to blame this person for getting sick. Or “she shouldn’t have gotten to know me if she was this sickly, I NEED HER.”

I should have turned her away forever the day she barged into my apartment and declared we were already friends and that she moved here because she saw me on TV and tracked me down. But back then I didn’t know how to assert myself. I learned after she put my life in danger one too many times.

By put my life in danger I mean…

The first time, it was coming into my apartment with a contagious respiratory illness and demanding to talk to me. By the time I got her out, whatever damage had been done had been done. I wrote her an email saying NEVER to do that again, and reminding her that with bronchiectasis I am more at risk of a cold or flu going to pneumonia, and not getting able to clear the pneumonia.  Her response wasn’t an apology. It was “I was so upset and I couldn’t reach anyone else, I NEEDED you!"  After she gave no indication she wouldn’t do it again I put a sign on my door saying to turn around and walk away if you have any contagious lung disease.

Then when she got the respiratory flu, she began following my support staff around demanding they provide her services as well as drive her to the doctor. They were trying to back away and avoid her germs to avoid contaminating me, but she followed them around begging and saying she couldn’t breathe. They told her if she rely couldn’t breathe to call 911. She never did.

She was always driving her wheelchair in traffic, endangering not only herself but any drivers. And then lying about it in really weird transparent ways.  My visual processing sucks. In new places I go meaning-blind and lose the ability to identify things by sight without great difficulty.

So she wanted to show me someplace. And I followed her. I could make out her wheelchair but not much else and vision and comprehension and motor response were heavily divorced from each other.

So we went there and back. And i gradually pieced together where we’d been and what we’d done. And she had led me off  the sidewalk, to cross a busy street in the middle of the street, then stayed in the middle of the street for the rest of the way there and back.

When I figured it out I confronted her about it and she lied and lied and lied. (Including things like ”[other person] rides in the street with me all the time" and “people didn’t see me joyriding down the hill in the center of the street, they saw [guy who looks nothing like her] who borrowed my manual chair” and “that part of the street isn’t REALLY the street” and “I didn’t know!” All of which were false, plus she’s a terrible liar, it’s not heard to pick out the difference in body language.)

So I told her how much danger she put me in, that I KNEW she knows she goes in the street because she goes to such trouble to lie about it, and that she isn’t the only one who could get hurt:  she could have gotten me injured or killed, and she could have hurt people in cars or traumatized them for life if they killed her.

But seeing as nobody but her mattered, I got a letter saying “why did you attack me out of nowhere like that, I’m your friend and I didn’t do anything!”

I explained that she was the one who hurt me, I wasn’t attacking her I was trying to defend myself. And that since she seemed to care more about her feelings than what she did to me, I was through, and not to contact me in any way shape or form unless I initiated contact.

She did contact me many times by email and in person but I ignored it.  I’ve learned from a previous stalker that writing back to say I TOLD YOU DON’T CONTACT ME just makes it worse.

But there were many times before this that she managed to rope me into spending time with her by that “i need you, don’t go” stuff. I feel really bad for the main person she spent time with though.  She basically wouldn’t let that person have a life, and the other person couldn’t bring herself to cut it off. I’m always afraid for that persons physical and mental health.  And it’s very much her telling that person she could never live without her, threatening suicide, and doing the “you fix me don’t go” thing.

Except that person doesn’t fix her. That person IS HER FIX. Big difference. And it’s a horrible place to be.  She basically gets addicted to people, and then goes into withdrawal if they aren’t there, drains them dry, and calls that love and friendship.

And I can sympathize.  I’ve been in a similar position to a much much lesser degree at a hard point in my life.  But I was willing and able to change. She wasn’t, and never saw any need to change. In fact her life’s dream was to be adopted by people who would care for her like a child, forever, and give her endless time and affection. .

But however she feels. And whyever.  Nobody owes her their time or friendship.  And people who wanted to get away from her were neither evil nor abusive.  And in general especially when your idea of socializing is to drain people dry and bask in the energy they give you?  People have GOOD REASON to avoid you.  No matter how needy or miserable you are.

(What sort of terrified me was that she liked to hang out with severely/profoundly disabled folks and tell everyone what they were really thinking.  And she’d do the same to me when I became unable to type.  She got a lot of ego out of the idea she was good with nonverbal people and animals. She actually hurt and terrified animals while claiming to be good with them, including a hamster she traumatized so bad he needed rehabilitation to get used to humans again.  Don’t talk to me about her poor cat. But she was drawn to anyone of any species who could not use words, so that she could build entire imaginary relationships with them and they couldn’t argue back. I think she was attracted to me for the same reason.  She was disappointed that i typed more than she liked and my body had changed so I didn’t frenetically stim anymore.  Real me wasn’t as good or as pliable as imaginary me.)

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