Look at what you’ve got

A memoir in the making.

I haven’t been doing a lot of my “own” writing lately. Most of the writing I’ve done is for the newspaper.

But the pull has been there once again to work on my memoir.

I knew I had various documents in my computer files, scattered here and there between two big folders. But I had the sense that I really hadn’t done that much work on it. And where to begin?

So I looked at what I’ve got.

I went through the files and printed out things I’ve written, mostly over the past two years. I was amazed at what I found. I didn’t remember doing so much writing.

I had about 30 files with over 32,000 words written. If you look at it in terms of pages, with the standard page holding 250 words, that’s 131 pages.

It’s a draft, mind you, so I’m nowhere near finished. But it’s a good start. And it gave me a great sense of satisfaction.

Sometimes we get stuck in our thinking.

We think we’ve not accomplished enough. We think we’ve failed because we haven’t done enough. We think we’ll never start a project, much less finish it.

This can be especially true if we’re struggling with anxiety, depression, OCD, or another issue that sometimes distorts our thinking and makes us afraid.

It may help to sometimes take the time to look at what we’ve got, what we’ve done, what we’ve created, what we’ve accomplished, and feel good about it.

Pull out the creations, print out the words or photos, make a list of our accomplishments, talk with a good friend who knows what we do. Enjoy the feeling of accomplishment.

Then get back to work, of course.

Please share in the comments something that you have accomplished recently, no matter how small it may seem to you. 

Looking back: Josephine

I have found that even though I’m not actively working on my memoir, memories and remembrances from the past come to me and want to be told. So I’m making them little stories to share.

Today’s post is about Josephine, my great-aunt and the doll that she gave me.

Aunt Josephine was my father’s aunt, so my great-aunt. She was my paternal grandmother’s youngest sister. The photo below is one taken of my great-grandparents and their daughters. Aunt Josephine is the little girl on the right on the front row. My grandmother is on the back row, second from the left.

There were brothers in the family, too—quite a large family—but none are in this photo.

My grandmother died when I was 4 years old, so I don’t remember much about her. Two of her sisters, Josephine and Ida, who is standing beside Josephine in the photo, were like surrogate grandmothers to me growing up.

I didn’t think of them as that when I was little. It was only when I was an adult did I realize how they played that grandmotherly role with me.

Aunt Josephine played another important role in my life. She had been the one to introduce my parents to each other. She was the youth leader at my mother’s church in the 1940s, and she thought she and her nephew would get along.

Aunt Josephine was fascinating to me. She loved antiques and collected a lot of things. Her husband built a little building beside their house for her to store her treasures.

Her house was so different from mine. It was full of stuff. There seemed to be no order to anything.

Sometimes Aunt Josephine’s mood would be low. She looked greatly fatigued, like she could barely move, and her eyes looked sunken in.

I remember her visiting our house one hot, summer day. She looked drained and sad. But she sat down at our piano and played lovely tunes by ear.

I understand now that the way she kept her house and her low moods may have pointed to depression. At the time, it just seemed like that was the way she was.

One day, for some reason, she gave me a doll she had found somewhere in her treasure hunts. I was little enough to still be playing with dolls, and I liked this doll’s pretty face and what was then long golden hair.

I held on to the doll, and some years ago, after I had had her in storage for a long time, I decided to refurbish her a bit.

All of the photos of Josephine the doll in this post are "after" the changes.

One side of her head was bald where her wig was halfway off, and the hair itself smelled moldy. So I tore off the wig and gave her a good bath.

I bought a bag of doll hair. It was in individual ringlets. I hot-glued each one to her head, giving her a head full of dark hair.

Why dark hair? Because Aunt Josephine had had dark hair before it turned white, and I wanted to name my doll Josephine.

I added a pair of glasses because I liked the look.

The dress she has on in these photos is an old baby dress—one of mine, I think. And she’s wearing my baby shoes.

I would like to dress her in clothes that look like a girl would wear around the turn of the 20^th century. Someday I will.

For now, she sits in a rocking chair that was mine as a child. And she reminds me of Aunt Josephine.

Do you or did you have any relatives that fascinated you?

Looking back: The little red chair

When I was a small child, my paternal grandfather lived about a mile away from us.

One day he walked up to our house carrying a little red chair that had been in his family. He wanted my father and his children to have it.

I was the youngest and the only daughter, so I ended up making the chair my own.

When I was growing up, I kept it sitting in front of an old vanity that I had in my bedroom until I left home. I could sit on the chair and brush my hair and “primp.”

 I liked the story behind the chair. My grandfather, who was born in 1885, used it to learn to walk. Someone would turn over the chair so that it set steady on the floor, and my grandfather would push it across the floor.

Apparently, someone cut the legs down short so the chair could be used for this purpose.

You can see where the chair back and the top of the front legs are smoothed down from rubbing against the floor.

Granddaddy didn’t have an easy life when he was young. His father died when he was two years old, and his mother died when he was four. He had three older siblings. Apparently he lived with different relatives growing up, eventually living with his paternal grandmother.

Granddaddy in 1889, when he was four years old.

Granddaddy when he was a young man.

The chair has been painted red since I can remember. I don’t know why someone painted over the wood with thick red paint. Perhaps it was to brighten it up for children.

Now I keep the chair in either our den or living room. It’s currently sitting in the living room, providing a seat for a stuffed snowman that I’ll keep out a few more weeks.

I have an old doll that would probably look better on the chair than this stuffed snowman.

(Note: Do you think I should try to remove the red paint and show the original wood? Would that hurt the wood?)

I have other pieces of furniture plus other treasures that have been in my family a long time. I’m trying to record their stories so I don’t forget and so my nieces and nephews and other family members will know their meaning.

And I have so many family stories to record, including my father’s writings and letters he wrote his sister during World War II.

Not all my memories are good, but that’s the way life is. The good can be remembered, and the bad can be learned from.

Do you have any pieces of furniture that have been in your family for a long time?

Interview with Grace Peterson, author of "Reaching: A Memoir"

Grace Peterson. (Submitted photo)

I am very pleased to present an interview I did with Grace Peterson, author of Reaching: A Memoir.

I met author Grace Peterson through an online writers’ community called She Writes. That led me to her blog Subplots by Grace, where she blogs about writing, does book reviews, and discusses mental health and spiritual and religious abuse.

Grace also writes about gardening, one of her passions, and has a blog called Gardening with Grace where she shares her experiences among the plants in her garden.

Grace writes beautifully, whether it’s about mental health, memoir or gardening. And she has been a good friend. She has been very supportive of me and of others facing mental health issues and just the hardships of life.

When her memoir Reaching was published by All Things That Matter Press earlier this year, I was anxious to read it.

I was so impressed with Grace’s honesty in writing about her difficult childhood, the years she spent under the influence of a cult leader, and her recovery through the help of her loving family, good therapy and her garden.

And as I wrote in my book review of her book, Grace not only “reaches” out for healing in her book, she reaches out to connect with others and help them not feel so alone.

You can read my review of Reaching on Amazon here.

Grace, Please introduce yourself to us.

Thank you Tina, for inviting me to share a little about myself and my book. I’ve been married to my best friend since 1980 and we have four grown children, a boy and three girls. I live in western Oregon. Writing and gardening are my two passions.

What is your memoir about? How would you describe it to potential readers?

Reaching begins with the story of a very fearful girl tentatively navigating a confusing world. At 14, I have my first of many sleep disorder episodes and an increasing sense of impending doom. By adulthood I’m living a double life, trying to look normal to the world while constantly dealing with panic attacks. When my fourth child is born, I’m convinced that my postpartum visions and impulses are the work of the devil. I seek the help of a modern-day exorcist I call “Brock.” For the ensuing seven years, I am blinded by my cult-like adoration to Brock and his very cult-like teachings. Eventually I seek legitimate treatment for my mental health issues and reenter society.

Why did you decide to write your memoir?

In the beginning, my intention was to sort out my thinking and come to terms with a very difficult time in my life. To do so meant going back to piece together my messed up childhood. Although I have a very good memory, I needed to clear the pervasive fog and look my history square in the face. As I wrote, I realized my project would be good for my kids to read at some point. Eventually it dawned on me that I was creating something more universal and that if I structured it well enough, it could be a best seller. Well maybe not, but hopefully people can relate to it.

What difficulties did you face as you wrote your memoir?

There were a few times when I really had to psych myself into opening the vault. For example, in my earlier drafts, I had decided to skip the Hawaii years altogether. It was just too painful to go there. And also in my earlier drafts, I skimmed over much of the Brock years. Not only was it painful and embarrassing to come face to face with that era, most of it was spent in a stupor so recall was really sketchy. Fortunately I kept journals during those years which helped tremendously. 

What is the central message of your memoir?

To humanize mental illness. It’s all too easy to judge someone based on a snippet of observation. We’ve all seen that person who is a little “off.” We shy away because we don’t know what’s wrong or how to respond, or we’re too busy to care or grossed out. But all human beings have a story and there is a depth of compassion and empathy that comes with knowing the circumstances that surround that person. My hope is that my story, like so many others, will help humanize mental illness.

Did you experience any kind of catharsis or relief after writing your book?

I experienced catharsis at points all along in the process. As I mentioned, I had bolted the Hawaii vault pretty tightly so prying it open was no small feat. I went to the library and hauled home as many books about the Big Island as I could find. Reading about the history of the Hawaiian people helped me understand their animosity towards people who have my physical characteristics. Another form of catharsis was rediscovering the music I listened to during my teen years. I played songs over and over, re-feeling all of those buried emotions. Somewhere along the way, I was able to find closure from that very difficult time in my life which was very cathartic.

What kinds of responses have you received from your readers?

I’ve been extremely grateful for the positive feedback I’ve received and I make sure those kindnesses reach that scared, lonely kid from yesteryear. I’m an introvert by nature so I was a little worried about having my story made so public. Two powerful cult tenets are keeping secrets and not trusting “outsiders.” It’s taken a lot of years to muster the courage to break those tenets and the encouragement I’ve received has been a precious gift. It has restored my belief that most people are decent, caring and generous.  

What’s next for you in your writing life?

A calming counterpoint to my chaotic life was my pursuit of gardening. Last winter I wrote my second book, a gardening memoir. It is a much lighter read as I discuss my thirty years of blisters and blunders and how sweet it feels to have a plant actually do what the magazine says it’s supposed to do. I’m looking forward to sharing it with all of you. 

Thank you, Tina, for inviting me to talk with you and your readers.

Feel free to leave comments and questions for Grace in the comments section. And please check out her book Reaching, and her blogs, Subplots by Grace and Gardening with Grace.

Snippet of a memoir: Waiting rooms

Part of this post was first published on this blog on Feb. 15, 2012. My post on Monday about OCD and health stirred up some memories that I wanted to share, and what I had written over a year ago was a starting point.

When I was a child and teenager, I spent a lot of time waiting.

Some of this waiting happened in actual waiting rooms, places of calm in the midst of the sadness and fear of hospitals.

I was surrounded by sickness growing up. I’m the youngest of three, with two older brothers. My oldest brother is 11 years older than me. My next oldest brother is two years older.

My next oldest brother was born with spina bifada and clubfeet. As a result, he had to have multiple surgeries as a child and spent a lot of time in the hospital.

My father had a major stroke when he was 54. I was 12 at the time. His speech and movement were badly affected, and he had to retire from his job as a rural letter carrier for the post office. Later that same year, he suffered a blood clot in one of his kidneys and almost died before the kidney was removed.

My mother also had her share of illnesses and hospital visits.

So the waiting rooms in the hospitals in the nearby city were very familiar to me.

The nicest one was a large room that had real furniture, like you’d find in a private home. Chair railings ran along the wall. Paintings covered the walls.

There were volunteers stationed at a counter, and they helped visitors find their way around the hospital and answered general questions. They were usually women who wore pink-jacket “uniforms.” They were called “Pink Ladies.”

Though people came and went, there was a hush over the room. No one spoke loudly or laughed or cried where you could hear. It was like being in a church.

When I was 7 or 8 years old, when my brother was ill quite a bit, my parents would leave me in the waiting room while they went up to be with him. In those days, at that hospital, children under 12 were not allowed to visit patients.

I always had a book with me, and I would sit in one of the nice green armchairs, my always-present purse tucked up against me, and read. Sometimes I would look up and stare at the paintings or the signs on the wall and on the swinging doors that went back into the main part of the hospital.

One night, I wasn’t kept waiting downstairs. I was allowed to go up to my brother’s hospital room.

My mother came down to the waiting room and led me back through the swinging doors into the part of the hospital that was usually forbidden to me.

I don’t remember what she told me at the time, if anything. But I had heard enough talk to know that my brother was very sick.

I remember walking into my brother’s room. He was lying in bed. He was very pale. He lay as if exhausted. He didn’t look at me.

My mother lightly pushed me towards the bed.

I stared at my brother. But I didn’t know what to say. So I didn’t say anything.

I stood there for probably just a couple of minutes, and then my mother took me back downstairs.

Years later, my mother told me that the doctors were afraid that my brother wouldn’t live through surgery scheduled for the next day. So permission was granted for me to go to his room to see him. As my mother put it, the nurses “looked the other way” as she led me to his room.

My brother made it through the surgery fine.

Remember the concerns I expressed in my post about OCD and self-doubts about health?

It has become clear to me that I have a difficult time believing I’m sick “enough,” injured “enough,” because I’ve seen a lot of illness in others, especially family members.

I was the lucky child. I didn’t have physical disabilities. I didn’t have serious illnesses. I was the one fortunate enough to be waiting in the waiting room.

It’s not an earth-shattering realization, and I don’t want to start complaining about my every pain. I’m grateful for my overall good health.

Of course, for all my good physical health, even as a child I was beginning to show signs of mental illnesses: OCD and depression.

Those illnesses were more hidden, though. Less talked about.

Perhaps some of us who have dealt with low self-esteem, perhaps as a part of depression, have this way of thinking: other people are worth concern. We’re not.

That’s not a healthy way of thinking. All of us are worthy of concern from others and ourselves. It’s OK to ask for help from others. It’s OK to express our pain and sadness.

And what a blessing it is to know that someone is listening. Thank you, my dear blogging friends, for listening.

Being a child with OCD and depression

Me in sixth grade.

If you’re of a certain age, you probably grew up before bicycle helmets were the norm. You probably sped around your neighborhood or along country driveways on your bike, not wearing a helmet, spinning the wheels, taking sharp turns that kicked up the dust. I was one of those kids.

My brothers and I grew up in the country, on a farm, with woods to play in and barbed wire fences to climb under. My mother knew we were somewhere on the farm, but she didn’t always know exactly where we were.

It’s a wonder we lived to grow up.

Have you ever said that, thinking of the scrapes you got into as a child?

Of course, a lot of children did get hurt. I’m all for bicycle helmets and any measure that keeps kids safe and unharmed. I’m glad that we know more now about safety and are willing to do things like put helmets on our kids before they get on a bike.

I’m glad, too, that we know more about mental health today than when I was a child. We have a long way to go to overcome stigma and to ensure that everyone who needs help has a way to get help. But more information is more readily available now than even just a few years ago.

For the past few days, I’ve been asking myself, how did I live to grow up? Not physically, but mentally.

I sorted through lots of papers last week, putting away things in file folders. I found a folder in my file cabinet that contained old health records of mine.

Years ago, I had to provide my employer a copy of my childhood vaccination records. Along with the shot record, the pediatrician’s office sent me a copy of all of my records.

I looked through them last week for the first time in years. A lot of the doctors’ writing is unintelligible, but a record of my visits from babyhood on was there.

On June 17, 1975, I was 12 years old. I was seen for a routine visit. In the nurse’s notes, it states, “Feels tired always—not sleeping well.” The doctor noted, “tired and waking up crying.” He ordered blood work and, I think (the handwriting is not clear), urinalysis and TB test.

Nothing else is noted.

The next entry is for June 12, 1981. I was 18 years old. I was seen for my college physical.

I remember being 12. I remember how the dark dread of depression had descended on me in the springtime of that year. I didn’t understand why I felt so bad, so hopeless, so unhappy.

I thought perhaps it was because I was a bad person and needed to be “saved.” At the revival at my church that May, I tried to get saved, but the prayer I prayed didn’t seem good enough. I found myself praying over and over, trying to get the words right, trying to get my thoughts in line with the words, just right. If I got it wrong, I had to do it over.

Prayers could also keep my family safe, I believed. But God couldn’t hear my prayers if I had sin between me and him. So I had to pray for forgiveness, and then pray a certain way for protection. Over and over.

Any thought that was bad had to be confessed, and I didn’t know who to confess to except my mother. Thinking of something bad was just as wrong as doing it, I believed. If I even thought I had a bad thought, I had to confess it to my mother.

I was also washing my hands a lot. I couldn’t seem to get them clean enough. As soon as I washed them, they became contaminated again, and I had to wash them again. If I spread contamination and someone got sick from it, it would be my fault.

Yes, I had OCD and depression. I was consumed by them.

My parents knew something was wrong. But professional intervention for my mental problems stopped with that visit with the pediatrician in 1975.

I got help for my mental health when I was in my 20s. When the psychiatrist diagnosed me with OCD and depression in 1990, she called me “high functioning.”

How did I end up high functioning? How did I live to grow up?

I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers yet.

Life was different in 1975. My parents made certain choices based on who they were at the time, based in part on how they were raised.

I hope I’m past the blame stage.

What I choose to focus on now is helping to break down the stigma surrounding mental illness. I want to help educate others about OCD, depression and other mental illnesses. I want to help encourage others to get help.

There’s no need for anyone to live like it’s 1975.

My writing life: Random 5 Friday

When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being many things, including an archaeologist, a music teacher and a private detective. I’ve had numerous jobs over the years, among them teaching English and being a health educator.

But one thing has always been in the background: writing. That’s what my Random 5 Friday post is about this week. I’m linking up with Nancy’s A Rural Journal.

1. I work as a newspaper reporter for a weekly newspaper. My job title is actually staff writer. I applied for the job almost on a whim in 2009. I saw the ad for it in the paper, and I thought, I could do that. When I was much younger, I dreamed of being a journalist. I applied and got hired, and it’s been a wonderful experience overall.

2. I’ve been writing since I was a little girl. Pictured above is the copy of a story I wrote when I was in first or second grade. It’s called “The Foolish Cat.” It starts out this way (misspellings and all): “Once there was a foolish cat. He never did anything for any body and he just thought about him self. One day when the foolish cat was at school, a girl named penny droped her books. She must of had six books. Will you please help me pick up my books asked penny? I will not said the foolish cat.” The story ends with the foolish cat becoming a nice cat.

3. I love words. I love how choosing just the right word can affect the whole meaning of a work. I love words with layers of meaning. Reading and writing make me happy.

4. When I was in my 20s and in graduate school, I wrote mostly fiction. In a creative writing class I took, the teacher kept telling me she didn’t hear my voice in my writing. I got frustrated and started turning in poetry, and she said she heard my voice in that. So I switched gears for many years and wrote reams of poetry. I think it helped me learn more about the power of the individual word.

5. Now I write what I most enjoy reading, nonfiction and creative nonfiction. I’m working on a memoir about growing up with OCD and depression. The work is in bits and pieces. I need to set some goals and get more serious about the work.

To read more Random 5 Friday posts or to link up, visit A Rural Journal.

What has been in the background of your life? What do you love to do like I love to write?

P.S. I have been getting slammed with spam. I went back to not allowing anonymous comments to stop it. If you're unable to comment, please send me an email.

A bit of memoir: Walk everywhere, eat according to plan

This is a bit of memoir about a time when I probably had a type of eating disorder, or was moving towards developing one, though I’ve never discussed it with a doctor.

I don’t know whether or not the eating habits I developed were related to my OCD. According to an article on the website of the International OCD Foundation, eating disorders and OCD are separate disorders, but they have things in common.

Thankfully, after this particular time period passed, I never had the problem again.

But when I remember this time, I remember it almost as a warning to myself.

***

Walk, walk, walk. Walk fast, keep walking. Walk, walk, walk. No buses. No cars. Just walk. Walk, walk, walk.

Walk off those calories. Walk off what I eat. Walk off those calories.

Eat according to plan. Eat according to plan. Eat according to plan.

That was my mantra for the first semester of my second year in college. Walk everywhere. And eat according to plan.

Things were not going well.

I had moved out of my first suite and into another suite with three new women. While they were nice and we got along, it was a change, and I wasn’t handling change very well.

I wasn’t handling anything very well. I walked around in a fog, unhappy and hopeless. I was afraid of everyone and everything. I went to class, I did my homework. And not much else.

But I did walk everywhere, and I did eat according to plan.

I had been to the doctor’s office the previous summer and my mother had found out that I had gained 10 pounds during my first year of college. She expressed how she felt about it—“I knew you had gained weight”—telling me that if I didn’t watch it, I would gain more.

I wasn’t overweight, but I decided to lose weight and get back down to my starting college weight, which was really underweight.

I started out by counting calories. I knew the calorie counts of all the foods I ate, and I ate pretty much the same things day after day, at the same time of the day, day after day.

I wrote down everything I ate and the calories and constantly added them up during the day. And I felt particularly successful if I could keep the calorie count low.

I lived in campus housing away from where the classrooms were. I could have taken a campus bus to class. But I didn’t want to be on a crowded bus. And I wanted to walk the calories off.

So I walked to class every day, and went early so I could avoid walking through the bigger crowds of other students.

I remember every morning at around 10 a.m. I had a break between classes and sat in one of the wide windows in the classroom building and ate a cereal bar. I knew the calorie count, of course, and that would get me through until I could make it back to the apartment to eat lunch.

Because I avoided the lunchrooms on campus. I avoided being around other people except in class.

I lost weight. I got back down to my starting-college weight, and maybe even a little lower. I was definitely underweight. And tired. So tired.

But I felt triumphant, too, that I could lose the weight, that I could control what I ate and how much I moved.

The feelings of hopelessness and despair, the desire to be alone, the fear of being around others: I know for certain that I was depressed and anxious. I didn’t seek help for those things. Instead, I walked everywhere, and ate according to plan.

A snippet of memoir: Making butter

Me at age one.

The path that took me from the first signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder and the accompanying depression when I was a child to the official diagnosis sitting in a psychiatrist’s office when I was 26 is not a straight one.

Though the OCD and depression have affected me most of my life, I remember times when I didn’t obsess about sin, dirt and danger, when I didn’t wash my hands and pray constantly to try to rid myself of that sin, dirt and danger.

I was born in 1963 and grew up in South Central Virginia, in the Piedmont area of the state about an hour from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west.

My father was a full time farmer when I was born, and my mother was a homemaker. They brought me home from the hospital to two older brothers, one 11 years older and one two years older.

My mother has told stories about how much I slept as a baby and how the doctor told her to wake me up to feed me because I wasn’t gaining weight as I should have.

I don’t believe my mother was deliberately not feeding me enough or was neglecting me. But I do think it was probably a relief to her that I slept a lot and was a low-maintenance baby. She had a lot of other responsibilities to tend to.

Our farm was a full working farm. We had milk cows, beef cows, pigs and chickens, plus my father raised tobacco. There were animals to care for and crops to tend and things like butter to make and eggs to gather to sell.

One of my earliest memories is watching my mother make butter.

For some reason, I don’t remember her churning the milk from our milk cows, though of course she did. What I remember is what she did with the result of the churning.

I remember her at the kitchen table, holding a golden yellow ball above a glass bowl of water, splashing it and washing it off.

At the same time, she moved her hands quickly, turning the ball and smoothing it.



Butter press.



Then she pushed the ball of butter into the wooden press her father had made. She pushed the butter in tight with a small wooden paddle.

Inside the butter press.

The butter pressed up against a flower design inside, and when she pushed the butter out on wax paper, it was round with petals imprinted on top.

I have that butter press now, and it brings back good memories.

Have you ever lived on a farm? Would you like to? What about living on a farm appeals to you? What old way of doing something, like making butter, would you like to try?

She called me high functioning: My first visit to a psychiatrist

Dear readers,

This is a very small excerpt from the book that I’m writing about my experiences with OCD and depression. It’s the story about my first visit to see my first psychiatrist when I was 26 years old.

I’d like you to read this not just to find out about that experience, but to also give me some feedback on how you think this would fit into a memoir. What would you like to learn more about? What needs to be fleshed out or clarified? Are you interested in reading more?

And please share your experiences as you feel comfortable. If you’ve been treated by a therapist or psychiatrist, what was that first visit like? If you were diagnosed with a mental illness, how did the diagnosis make you feel?

I always appreciate your comments and feedback. Thank you!

She called me high functioning.

What the psychiatrist actually said was something like, “I would consider you high functioning since you have managed to stay in school and do your work.”



Me at 26.



High functioning seemed to be more than generous, because I certainly didn’t think of myself that way.

I spent countless hours cleaning my small bathroom. If I cooked or even just cleaned the top of the stove, I spent several hours checking to make sure the stove was turned off. Any cooking, whether it was on the stove or in the microwave, produced repeated and careful washing of the countertops. My hands and wrists were red and chapped from my repeated washings to rid myself of any germs that might hurt others. I couldn’t walk up a sidewalk or path without starring at the ground, looking for sharp sticks or rocks that could possibly harm someone. My mind was full of prayers and chants to a God I couldn’t really talk to.

I didn’t consider myself to be high functioning.

I had never been to a psychiatrist’s office before. I was 26, and after a year of talk therapy, the psychologist had decided that my depression was not going away and I probably needed some medication.

I had also revealed to her my obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms. That surprised her.

“All the time we’ve been talking, and you never mentioned it,” she said. “I would have never known.”

So perhaps to her, too, I was high functioning.

When I arrived at the psychiatrist’s office, which was located in a town north of the town I was living in while attending graduate school in northwest Ohio, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Would I lie down on a couch? Would she ask me questions about my childhood that I wouldn’t want to answer? Would she judge everything I said through the lens of Freud?

I admit that I was glad her office was not in the same town that I lived in. I desperately wanted to keep this visit secret.

The waiting room looked like all the other doctors’ waiting rooms I had been it. Muted greens and blues. Semi-comfortable vinyl-covered furniture. Magazines.

I was embarrassed as I stood at the counter in the waiting room and paid for my visit. What was the receptionist thinking? That I was crazy? That something must be scarily wrong with me because I had an appointment with her boss, who was a head doctor?

When the psychiatrist called me back to her office, she had me sit down in a chair, directly across from where she sat behind her desk. There was a window behind her desk, shining light on me.

She then started with the business of the visit. She asked me a lot of questions, questions I’ve since been asked many times by any new counselor or psychiatrist.

Why are you here today? What problems are you having? Are you sleeping too little or too much? What are you eating habits? Do you get pleasure from daily activities? Do you feel hopeless? Have you ever considered suicide?

For the OCD, the questions were along the lines of, what do you obsess about? What kinds of things are you doing compulsively? How do they interfere with your life?

It was more like a job interview than a doctor’s visit.

Eventually, she diagnosed me with depression and OCD. I wasn’t surprised by what she said. I certainly felt hopeless, suicidal and dead inside. And I had read enough to know that my bizarre habits indicated I had OCD.

But hearing her say the words, officially diagnosing me, was an experience that I would now call life changing. Before, I could simply hypothesize that I had these disorders, especially the OCD. I could always imagine that I really didn’t have OCD. I was just a sinful, bad and weird person who wasted time, water and money, all in the name of my strange habits.

With the diagnosis, I had a stamp of officialdom on my habits. They were weird, yes, and wasteful, yes. But they were also symptoms of a disease, albeit a disease I felt humiliated for having.

The psychiatrist talked about a new drug that had just been approved by the FDA called Anafranil. It was the first medication that targeted OCD specifically. She had seen it used in drug trials, had seen its effectiveness.

But it had just been FDA-approved in December, and this was January. It wasn’t yet available to the general population, she said.

So she prescribed Prozac. It would help the depression, and it might help with the OCD. Time would tell.

I walked out of her office with some hope of help. But I also walked out with self-consciousness and a sense of shame.