Snippet of a memoir: Anxiety at the football game



Me in sixth grade.



  In the fall of 1974, I was 11 years old and in the sixth grade. I was very shy and timid. I could talk with my friends, but being around people older than me—teenagers—or anyone I didn’t know made me silent and unable to carry on a conversation.

  It was hard for me to know what to do with myself when I was part of a group. I stood awkwardly or looked for somewhere to sit that seemed safe. I felt like everyone was staring at me. I felt like everyone thought I was ugly and stupid and certainly not cool.

  I didn’t know it then, but I was probably suffering from generalized anxiety disorder and social anxiety even then.

And obsessive-compulsive disorder was beginning to make stronger claims on my life.

One Friday night, my second older brother and I went to the local high school football game with a neighborhood group of kids, siblings that lived nearby. I wanted to go because I liked to hang out with these other kids, and it was fun to go on outings despite my shyness.

When we arrived at the gate to the football stadium, my brother and friends went up to the ticket counter and bought their $1 tickets.

I hesitated. I was too scared to go up to buy the ticket, not sure how to act. I had the money in my pocket, but I was too afraid to get it out and offer it to the people at the ticket counter.

Then my brother and friends started walking away, into the stadium. I didn’t want to be left behind—the idea of being alone there was frightening—so I followed them in. Without buying a ticket. Without paying my way.

I can still feel how guilty I felt, the heaviness that hung over my chest, the adrenaline that shot through me.

My brother said, “You didn’t pay. You need to go back and pay.”

“I did pay,” I said. I was too embarrassed to admit what I’d done, but I was also too afraid to go back and pay for a ticket.

So now I had a lie to add to my crime.

I didn’t watch the game. Even if I had understood football, I wouldn’t have been able to get the guilt out of my mind and my heart. Every now and then my brother would remind me that I hadn’t paid, and I would lie again.

I was near the breaking point by the time we got home. I went into my room, took out the dollar that I should have spent going into the football game, and tore it up. My reasoning was that I wouldn’t benefit from having an extra dollar.

Of course, that was just one more crime I committed that night.

I don’t know how much time elapsed before I told my mother, but I do know the sense of guilt hung on me and didn’t let go. I knew what I had done was wrong, and I was sure I was in trouble with God because of it.

One day I started crying and couldn’t stop. When my mother asked me what was wrong, I told her the whole story.

My mother did not tolerate stealing or lying. But she was gentle with me on this one, probably because I was so upset and so obviously sorry.

“Well, ask God to forgive you,” she said,” and put an extra dollar in the church collection plate.”

And I did.

I was wrong to go into the football game without paying. But this incident illustrates to me my burgeoning case of OCD.

That was the first confession that I remember giving to my mother. It would soon become the norm for me to ruminate over my sins, or what I thought were my sins, and confess them, known sins and all, to my mother.

I would desperately search for forgiveness from her and from God, praying the same words over and over, trying to get them right.

“Oh, Lord, please forgive me. Please forgive, please. Oh, Lord, please forgive me. Please forgive me, please.”

  Have you experienced anything like my football game experience because of anxiety?

Conviction of sin

My spiritual life is very important to me, but I do not consider myself to be very religious. I was raised in a Christian home and am a Christian. I belong to and attend a Methodist church.

I don’t believe being a Christian puts me on a higher plane than those of other religions and beliefs. I believe in a God that lives within all of us.

I am at peace with that understanding. That sense of peace is a far cry from what I felt for many years.

Religion, especially fundamentalist Christianity, mixed with obsessive-compulsive disorder was a quicksand that sucked me in and mired me in guilt and doubt. I was an easy mark for the accompanying obsessions and compulsions.

When I was about eleven years old, I began my compulsive prayers for forgiveness and for the safety and health of my family.

This compulsion was based on my belief that how I prayed, what I prayed, and whether or not I was a good person affected not just my life, but the lives of those I loved. I was obsessed with the belief that I had to be “right” with God or something terrible would happen to my family.

I also prayed for my own salvation, especially after I started attending Christian schools at age 12. The need to be saved was drilled into us at school, and salvation came from following a certain formula of prayer.

My fellow students seemed to be sure of their salvation. But I didn’t have that reassurance.

I wanted to be sure that I was saved. I don’t think I was so much afraid of going to hell when I died, as I was afraid of the depression of knowing I wasn’t saved, and therefore, never having peace of mind about it.

I was also concerned because I was taught that God couldn’t hear our prayers until we were saved. So prayers for protection of my family wouldn’t go through if I wasn’t saved.

When I prayed, whether for forgiveness, for my family or for salvation, I said the same words over and over, out loud or to myself, until the words became meaningless chants, not said to God, but to myself.

These chants, especially the ones in my thoughts, created within me a constant rhythmic beat that I tried to stop but never could. The beat played in the background even as I talked with others and went about my daily activities. It reminded me that I wasn’t saved yet, that I still needed to deal with God, that peace was elusive as long as I failed at my prayers.

I never knew what made a prayer “right” or “not right.” There was a magical way to say the words, silently or out loud, but I found that magical way only by repetition and by accident. At some unpredictable moment, I would have the sense that I had gotten it right, and I could stop for a while. I had protection. My family had protection, at least until I sinned again.

I questioned my prayers and my state of mind during those prayers. Was I concentrating on the right things? Did I have to use certain words? What feeling was I supposed to have in my heart? Was the feeling a physical one? The lifting of that heavy feeling I felt so often? With these questions, the doubt of my state of salvation returned.

Eventually, when I was in college, I think I just became exhausted with it all. My prayers and my attempted beliefs in a fundamentalist system had brought me no peace and no satisfaction, just exhaustion and anxiety and endless prayers.

And I began to question what I had been told by my teachers and fellow students. Who said they were right?

I had also gotten seriously depressed, and for a long time that overshadowed my OCD.

For many years, I stayed away from God and from anything to do with religion.

Today, I pray, but not in the same way. It’s more of a meditation, a sometimes wordless expression of my needs and helplessness. And there’s more gratitude included. I also recite poetry and prayers such as the St. Francis of Assisi prayer.

I still crave peace, and I think what I’m doing now is moving me closer to it than the old prayers.