"Turn around, now. You know your home's back there."

I have noticed that my OCD has gotten much worse in the past few years.  It is starting to take over.  It's the very reason I don't post more often.  I can't just sit down and bang out a quick blog post.  It doesn't work that way.  I often have ideas of things I would like to write about.  The act of sitting down and writing about what's going on in my head is not so easy.  I have to write and rewrite and rewrite everything.  I review and edit.  I review again.  And then again.  Everything must be perfect.  If I am not happy with my grammar I will rewrite whole paragraphs.
That is really the tip of the iceberg, though.  The hand washing has gotten really bad.  I wash my hands all the time.  I've always been that way to a degree but it has become an absolute hindrance to whatever I am doing.  I want to wash them right now.  And I know they are clean.  When I cook or prepare food, which is all the time because I am obsessed with what I put in my body, I find myself washing my hands over and over.
I was just upstairs trying to study Spanish.  I could not concentrate because I was constantly dusting my desk and the various things on it.  I was rearranging everything on the desk again and again.  I could not get out of that part of my head.  It drove me to stop studying, altogether.  I feel like there is a layer of dust on my fingers from wiping the desk down.  I still feel like it is there.  I keep rubbing my fingertips together to disperse the dust.  And there's no fucking dust!  Despite knowing this I will continue to try to release my skin from this nonexistent dust.
I always feel like my house is cluttered.  It is not, really.  In fact, we just cleaned the whole thing.  There will always be clutter!  Unless I am living in a stainless steel box that is wiped free of dust and dirt every 5 minutes there will always be clutter.
And in these moments when I am overwhelmed, instead of losing control of myself, I regroup.  I know there is nothing I can do about it.  I refrain from going crazy.  Images of myself rocking back and forth in agony flash through my head.  I am scared I can end up that bad some day.  I can lose all control over my compulsions, OCD or TS driven.  I can see myself crawling into my head and huddling as close to myself as I possibly can, desperately wanting to be put out of misery but ill equipped to ever make that happen.
Last week, I hit a very low point.  My fiancee and I drove from Colorado to California for a wedding.  Half way into the drive we stayed at a motel.  She made a very strong effort before we retired for the night to find a good place to get some breakfast the next morning.  She spent an hour looking for places online.  She knows how picky I am when it comes to nutrition.  She found a place.  In the morning we went there and couldn't get in because of the wait.  I said we can eat wherever she wants to.  I was trying so hard not be  a pain in the ass.  I was trying to make her life easier.  I was bottling up my frustration and resigned myself to dealing with the situation, the reality that I would have to sacrifice and eat crap food.  Eating crappy food is not OK with me.  I will be tortured for days over what went into my body that I did not approve of.  But I was trying not to bring all of that shit to the forefront.
We ended up going to a Starbucks drivethru.  She got coffee and an egg sandwich.  I got nothing.  We had some almonds in the car.  I snacked on those.  As the ride continued she insisted I needed to get something to eat.  This turned into a fight.
And then I completely lost control.  Any restraint I possessed disappeared.  I just couldn't take hiding all of my craziness anymore.  All of the frustration I feel from battling and hiding my OCD and TS took over.  I cried hysterically for a long time.  I wanted to die.  I really wanted to just die.  I remember saying, "I just want to be normal.  I don't want to live like this anymore."  At that moment I absolutely felt that way.  I was so defeated by Tourettes and OCD.  I was against the ropes and getting the shit beaten out of me.  I was devoid of all my strength.  I cried and cried.  I hated that my fiancee knew about any of my bullshit.  I don't think she realizes how bad the OCD is.  I told her about the TS but never really went into how bad the OCD is.  I felt I was better off when she didn't have any inkling as to why I may be crazy.  It was better when my "craziness" seemed like a bi product of my intelligence or eccentricity.  But here we are.  She now knows where it all comes from.  In that car, at that moment I felt naked.  I couldn't look at her.  She was driving and I sat in the passenger seat sobbing into the window.  I craved death.  I wanted to no longer coexist with the demon in my body and brain.  He won't leave.  I felt like it was me who needed to go.  I haven't felt that broken by the demon in a long time.  I just ceased to care about anything.
I am alone now.  I flew back to Colorado and left her there, as was originally planned.  She has work to do out there.  She has our two dogs and I have the solitude of an empty house.  Honestly, I think I need this time away from the three of them.   I need some space.  I need some time to regain the strength I used to command in order to get me through this constant battle.  For that is what it is.  A battle.
If eating breakfast can draw so much conflict inside of me, imagine what other battles exist inside my brain on an hourly basis.  OCD pushed me close to my limit last week.  It brought me down.  And all the while, the tics were kicking me on the ground.  TS and OCD are in cahoots.  They work together.  Bullies.  When one pushes, the other pushes harder.
I am still here.  I am still fighting the good fight.  Waiting for the bell...

Stunt my growth

Facial Hair.
     I hate shaving.  I think most men do.  Some men go through their entire lives shaving every single day.  They never even let it grow out more than a few days on their vacations.  Some men never shave.
I subscribe to both approaches.  I go through lengthy periods of time when I shave every day and I also go through stages in which I don't shave at all.  As of late, I have been wearing a beard.  It is a trimmed, short beard but a beard nonetheless.
     I once grew my beard out for 6 months without so much as a trim.  People I knew for years didn't recognize me.  I liked that.  I felt like a different person.  I felt like I was wearing a permanent disguise.
Men get to indulge in the playful enjoyment of face grooming.  We can grow a mustache or a goatee.  We can grow a full beard or sideburns.  As much as we all hate shaving, it is something we must do in our society.  And a  lot of us do enjoy playing around with our facial hair options.
     When my father was post-op in the hospital, I convinced him to grow a beard; since it was hard for him to lift his weak arms to his face, let alone shave.  He hadn't worn a beard since the early seventies.  As long as I've known him he has shaved every day.  Maybe he'll let a day go by but never more than that.  In the hospital,  he let it go a few days, then went nuts and had to shave.  He wobbled over to the bathroom in his gown, using his walker and spent 3 razors shaving.  The man has a thick mane.  He couldn't take it.  It bothered him to have that growth on his face much in the same vain as it bothers me to feel the wool of a sweater on my arm skin.  Who knows if it is OCD or not but he could not have it.  He had to have it removed.  And much to his credit, he did just that.  He struggled past his post surgical limitations and made sure that beard left his face.
     I love growing beards.  I hate having the hair on my face as much as I relish in it growing there.  I obsess over it.  If I know I am growing a beard, I think about it all the time.  I lie awake in bed and imagine the little hairs flourishing.  I think about the crop the new day will bring when I awaken.
     And then I have a beard.  I have this bushel of hair on my face.  And once it is there, I lick.  I cannot help but to play with that hair.  I play with my tongue.  I put the mustache hair in my mouth. I am constantly working my tongue all over my beard, as far as it will reach.  It is an obsessive compulsion.  Then, I grab my bottom lip with my teeth, pull it into my mouth and grab a hold of the lower beard hair.  I suck it into my mouth.  I have to feel the individual hairs in my mouth.  If I can work one, single hair between my two front teeth...oooh, that's heaven.  Or hell.  I'm not sure.  I have to run the individual hairs through the gaps in my teeth.  I will do this over and over until it feels right.  And it never does.  I will use my hands to push the sides of my mustache into my mouth so that my tongue can grab it and feel it inside my mouth.  I am not satisfied until my tongue feels the individual hairs.
     Years ago, I had a very long goatee.  It was probably 5 or 6 inches off my chin.  I used to just grab that whole bushel of hair and shove it in my mouth.  It was such relief to have that chunk of hair in my mouth.  In fact, as I type this I long for that feeling.  It is frustrating the shit out of me to not be able to do that, being as my beard is not long enough.  All I can do is force the short "soul patch" beard hairs into my mouth in a repetitive attempt to get one between my top two front teeth.  This is what I am doing now.  Over and over.  Obsessively!
     I have often tried to get my father to grow his beard.  I think his beard would look pretty cool, considering it is most certainly all gray.  I took advantage of his sedentary state when he was hospitalized.  But that was not the first or last time I made the suggestion.  A comment he made once stays with me.  He said the reason he doesn't grow it anymore is because he ends up playing with it too much with his tongue.
     Wow.  Is that just something he does because it is there and so close to his tongue?  Maybe.  I think a lot of people with beards do that.  But do they obsess over it? Is it all they think about?  Do they lie awake in bed at night, thinking about all the hairs they will be able to stroke with their tongues the next day as I do?  Probably not.
     I still wonder if my dad did.  If he obsessed over his beard.  My father.  My flesh.  My blood.  His beard. The beard he refuses to grow because his tongue traveled its established design too much.  Who knows?  I am not about to ask.
My beard will continue on.  I shall grow it and shave it.  And I shall obsess over its growth and lack thereof.