I Want My Little Box Back

I feel like I have less and less time to myself these days. I do things with my church at least three o nights a week, and during the day I have schoolwork and other classes. It's starting to wear me down, even to the point to desperation. Last Sunday, it started to snow after morning service, and I started praying for the cancellations of all the evening activities. Apparently God heard me (I know he always does) and a half an hour before I had to leave to worship band practice I got my wish. I literally jumped for joy. I did not want to go anywhere.

I thought the feeling would go away after having a night off, but it didn't. I felt the same way and continue to feel the same way now. I don't want to do anything, go anywhere, I just want to curl up in my room and do my things all by myself. It's really frustrating considering the rest of my family gets really excited about certain events and I am just not really feeling it.

I think perhaps I am doing too many things at the same time. I have taken too much on and now I'm breaking under all the pressure. This is not good, and adding a job next semester will probably not make my life any easier. Sometimes I wonder if I'm really just being immature about wanting "free time", but it is a part of who I am as a person. It's the way God made me. However, I need to stop making it the focus of every day. For example, I've found my self counting down the hours until seven o'clock, which is normally when I can be by myself (for the most part) and being extremely annoyed by everything happening around me.

It does not help that my sisters are really loud at home. They seem to have to be continually cracking jokes and goofing off at one volume level: extra loud. Loudness has always made me feel very confined and anxious. It think its probably my OCD for the most part, but it's also part of my personality. I like things to be calm and contained and moderate, which appears to be the opposite of everyone else in my family. Except maybe my mom. The biggest problem about this is that they don't stop when I ask them, even when I've told them why it bothers me. I think they probably think I'm making it up and just don't want them to have fun, but that isn't true. I just want them to be a little quieter while doing it. Ok, a lot quieter.

Anyway this is mainly what I'm really struggling with right now. I just want to be alone and have everyone leave me alone in my little box. Hopefully I'll find some way to deal with it, but for right now I'm just going to be praying.

"A Little OCD?" Never Saying That Again

I have recently become aware of the fact that I have OCD. In a big way. It never occurred to me that some things I thought I did just because I was weird were actually part of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. For a long time, I thought that OCD wasn't really an actual problem. I thought it was just something someone uses in conversartion to laugh about being meticulous or particular about something. I was wrong. OCD is an actual condition people have, and is something to be taken seriously. For the past week, I had been wondering if the things I have problems with socially and other odd things I do were a sign of OCD. They are.

I took some different screening tests on various websites, and they all came back that I had moderate to severe OCD. Now I realize that things on the internet cannot always be trusted, and that I probably shouldn't be too bothered by it. However, pretty much ALL of the symptoms listed applied to me. While this was scary, it was also relieving. For the longest time, I thought I was unnormal and that something was just strange about me that no one else has and that wasn't any specific thing. It was good to know that there is actually a reason why I do these things and a name for the condition.

Something I also realized is that OCD is not just about being super organized and picky about things. Becuase if that is all it was, it really would probably not be that serious. However, there is a much bigger picture here. Feeling the need to be even in everything (i.e. constantly evening out your shirt, your food, doing something four times so it feels right.), not being able working with other people, not being able to touch other people, and germaphobia are all things I struggle with on a day to day basis and are also a part of having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Another intresting thing is that obsessions play a hand in this disorder. This doesn't surprise me at all. OCD follows a pattern of obsessions-anxiety-complusions-relief-obsessions in a circle. People who have OCD use obsessions to deal with anxiety and to bring relief. I don't think this is neccessarily an bad thing, but it definately confirmed by self-diagnosis.

I am considering seeing someone about this, I will be talking to my mom a little more about it. It's dominating my life in so many ways I didn't realize.

On the other hand, this is how God made me, and this is how he wanted me. All I can really do is pray that He would give me self control and contentment and ask Him to take away false fear and let me be at peace.