surrender to reach acceptance, acceptance to gracefully live

I am going to expose OCD through this blog with a recent obsession my daughter having a brain tumor.  I'm afraid to put this in writing because...if I do, then it might come true.  It might come true because:  when I wrote about her having bad croup on a Monday, it got worse throughout the week and she had to go to the hospital, it also might come true because: in a "success book" I am currently reading (on and off) one exercise is to write what you want to happen and then it....how do I put this....helps this "wish," to attach itself to an energy force, giving it a power to grow into your life....(roughly put).  What if it happens in the opposite way?  What if you write someone down that you don't want to happen but, you trick your brain into thinking you do want it to happen for I don't know what reason and you place that "wish" (that you don't really wish) into the universe?  I'm not writing this down to prove my theory wrong...to say "See Andrea, you wrote that blog and Aubrey never got brain cancer"  (that would be a very ideal case obviously) but rather I'm writing this down because if I DON'T because I'm afraid that it might make it come true, crystalize a waiting catastrophe (me losing my baby that I deeply deeply love) then I know the obsession will make itself bigger and bigger in head and heart and I simply don't have time or energy for that. 
Also, while I was thinking about exposing the obsession while I was rocking Aubrey she began to grab the back of her head and cry as she has been doing for the past 3 days which lead me to this worry in the first place (as I spent 2 days getting reassurance that this isn't a sign of a tumor) I decided that I was not going to write this in the blog...it's too risky, I'm thinking about exposing it and putting the obsession in writing and here she is grabbing her head...it's too coincidental, I'm going to make it happen...well, I really don't know if I'm going to make it happen but I'm going to write it down anyways....

Aubrey might have a brain tumor that is developing in the back of her brain, I may not react quickly enough due to my inept capabilities as a medical professional (because I'm not one) and when I really do get her the medical attention she needs, it's too late, the tumor has grown, it may cause her to develop a severe handicap and she will feel very frustrated losing all the skills that she has worked so hard to accomplish, like walking, running, feeding herself, dancing, talking, kicking a ball etc.  It may even kill her over time and I won't be able to make it better for her, I will feel hopeless and she might feel unbelieveably let down in the one person who is supposed to protect her from harm, me, her mother.
Now my heart is racing, my hands are sweating and I feel like complete shit....but I do have faith that I have done what I needed to do so in another angle I'm proud of myself

No Doubt

My back is killing me I have yet to make an appointment with a massage therapist because I feel like I don't have enough time or deservance (is that even a word?) so instead of doing Yoga while Aubrey is taking a nice long nap, I treated myself to continuing on one of my 4 books I am reading currently on Kindle and the one that is like saving your favorite item on your plate for last....Portia De Rossi's Unbearable Lightness.  Reading her book is so soothing to me.  While her struggles take different twists and turns they are, as I expected as soon as I watched her on OPRAH and felt an immediate connection to her mental struggles also from a similiar if not the same dark source.  I also wonder while I read her extremely articulate and elloquent words not to mention brave words....if people unlike me are taken aback at some of her thought processes that she conceptualizes in writing (so well) while I am comforted, almost hugged by her kindred struggles within her mind.  I am also so impressed with the detail she uses to describe and convey situations in her life and career even though some happened many years ago....those situations she is able to bring up where you're in the scene but apart of you also takes a step away and watches, and this part says to the person in the drama's midst "oh crap, you are never going to be the same as you were before this moment and it's going to be pretty dim for a bit" (to put it lightly). 

racing heart

Today is SUNDAY!!! and on top of it being the morbid Sunday feeling I get at the end of each week, it's also the end of a year....a holiday....all the baggage encapsulated in that....
So, my husband and I went away for the night for New Year's Eve and our daughter stayed with my parents.  Of course, I now feel like an awful mother for going out NYE and having a slight hangover the next day....so this guilt has been festering and festering...I feel like I am not responsive enough to our daughter even today I was tired (again...on my period, that makes me tired) even though I know I am being very responsive to her...but if it doesn't feel "responsive enough" or "pure" then I'm letting her down and on top of that, I'm selfish for going out NYE and not being 100% the next day and being tired today. 

I know it's late I want to be able to go to sleep but my heart is racing like crazy.  All day I had a sense of impending doom, which I get often and my OCD mind tries to trick me into thinking that "this time it's different...." well, I suppose it could be but....I'll label it as OCD anyways. 
Our daughter is also developing a cough and tonite, she had a difficult time falling asleep because I know she doesn't feel quite right and she was uncomfortable.  I hate watching her suffer in these moments (writing watching her "suffer" is a huge trigger right now, I'm scared those words will make her REALLY suffer and give her Cancer....which I have also been obsessing about today, her having cancer and me having stomach cancer....ughghg more triggers)  when she turns her lips into a frown with a slight quiver and cries in little coughs...I feel like I'm causing her the pain and I'm doing something wrong that is making her so uncomfortable and so sad and I hate myself for not knowing how to make it go away....it completely breaks my heart and I feel completely responsible for her pain. 

stuck in the house

It's been a rough week with the weather and I have not had a chance to get out of the house much, today, I didn't leave at all, last week, I went three days without leaving the house because the roads are so terrible.  Being stuck in a house all day long, with my daughter for a very short period of daylight is like a breeding ground for OCD, not to mention feeling fatigue from a lack of stimulation and conversation (toddler babble can only do so much for me....and I feel like an ungrateful mother saying this, possibly leading to me losing my daughter for this utter and selfish lack of appreciation for our conversations).  If OCD is like athletes foot, my foot is moist, hot and wrapped in a sock!!!!
Since my last therapy session, I have been doing better at not trying to do an exposure when I'm already stuck in an OCD cycle....instead I respond "I'm not playing" when a thought or worry pops in my head.  That has been working so the OCD has begun to go toward even more vulnerable places for a cheaper shot.  All day long it said: "you are a terrible mother, your Aubrey is so sweet and innocent and you are failing her all day long just by being you because you are a bad, damaged, charcoaled person, you break her heart in all of her moments with everything you do and feel."   

PMS...a premenstrual syndrome or poisen mental shower?????

So, I had a crappy case of insomnia last night due probably to my upcoming .  I'm laying in bed dead-eyeing our clock with the green numbers bouncing off the screen taunting me, my heat is racing, I've read, I've done breathing, read more, did more breathing, and read some more but I could not fall asleep.  Then, the poisen began to pour upon me and I pondered the crisis it presented with everything I had except ACCEPTANCE so, of course, that notion being my one and only umbrella I was soaked in agony.  First, I began to become excited about a recent purchase I had made and my husband and I had been working on diligently before going to bed....SHRINKY DINKS!!!!  (I found them after 20 plus years of missing them).  I couldn't wait to put them in the oven and watch them curl and shrink!!  Then I thought, this would be fun to do with Aubrey someday too like my mom used to do with me....then I went to enjoying a moment and then I went to OVEN!!! What if I stuck Aubrey in the oven and made her stay in there at 325 deg?????  Oh my God!!! This thought broke my heart over and over again, I know I could never do that to her but I decided that instead of letting this idea pounce my soul I would expose myself right now, I would come up with a long drawn out terrifying scenario of me doing this horrific act to my sweet baby girl until I didn't not feel any more pain (I tried to neutralize it in my head with by doing an exposure which sounds more like a compulsion with a mask.... The Joker wearing a Batman Suit if you will....)  And boy did it backfire, each time I tried to have an internal exposure with this scenario, it did not get any better, I felt terrible, I think almost to the point that my mind couldn't handle anymore (my mind in these moments is like a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder, with just two personalities....bully (OCD) and unbelievably wimpy kid (not OCD....mother, wife, human, child, innocence.....)  so I thought "Man I must be getting my period soon because this feels like PMS (and I know I am) but then I thought....wait, should I be getting it soon????  Did I miss it????? Why can't I be more organized and write this stuff on a calender??????? WHAT IF I'M PREGNANT????!!!!!!!!! but, my husband and I use protection because we are not ready for another little one yet......WHAT IF I'M PREGNANT FROM A SEXUAL ENCOUNTER WITH SOMEONE ELSE WHERE I WASN'T USING PROTECTION AND I JUST DON'T REMEMBER THE ENCOUNTER!!!???????????  A few weeks ago, I had a girls night with my friends, we had a few drinks but I remember most of the night.....but I don't remember every detail????  What if I was more intoxicated than I thought I was?????  What if I took a stranger in a closet at a club and had sex with him and I don't remember.....What if someone drugged my drink too????? and it happened so quickly (the sex) that my friends didn't even remember me being gone for a significant amount of time???????????  Oh crap!! I'm pregnant with a child that is not mine and my poor innocent husband sleeping beside me, he's going to divorce me....how will I support myself and Aubrey, will I lose custody because I'm a drunk mother who has sex with strangers in bathrooms and gets pregnant?????  How will I figure out who this baby's father is????  Will I secretly resent the child because it reminds me of a mistake I made and don't remember that tore apart my family?????  What if I got an abortion, OH MY GOD am I really contemplating that....(5 minutes of rationalizing why I know I wouldn't have an abortion, including an Albert Einstein reference....)  on and on and on.  I know I shouldn't have done this but I did anyways, I knew I had a pregnancy test in our bathroom so I decided instead of me lying here in bed trying to accept this traumatizing scenario along with what I just attempted to do in terms of exposure where I purposely harm/burn my daughter (writing this is really exposing too because CPS could be contacted due to this thought that I am now manifesting in written text on the INTERNET)  while at the same moment I think about how terrible of a mother I am going to be tomarrow when I got no sleep and won't be present for our daughter (it was 3 a.m. by this time....my daughter gets up around 6:30 a.m.) I thought my best bet for getting to sleep was to take the test...so I did....not pregnant!!!  Luckily I have a therapy appointment tomarrow :) and I'll learn a better way to cope with pms (spike ocd symptoms) and I must say I went through the day not beating myself up about my night....which I rarely do so I am proud of myself for that.

Shine!

Potential Loop Tape

I have done loop tapes in the past, I am thinking about doing another one with everyday worries that dance/prance/stomp around in my mind on a daily basis

Aubrey may choke and I will fail to save her because I was unable to perform an adequate emergency response

I might give her something that is a chokeable item by mistake when it is time for her to eat

Aubrey might be exposed to germs that I failed to erradicate

These germs that I failed to erradicate could cause serious bodily damage or kill her

Aubrey might become a victim of a medical mistake causing brain damage and mental retardation because I brought her in for a treatment that I could have avoided

I could miss something that my instinct tells me because I think it's OCD and fail to save my daughter as a result

I will do selfish things today despite Aubrey's reliance on my presence as her mother

I may cause a car accident because of my lack of focus causing the death of Aubrey

Aubrey may have or develop cancer

My exposures could cause Aubrey harm, especially the ones where I imagine something bad happening to her because my mind might be powerful enough to create that reality

just ocd...

Since my last blog/exposure I have been feeling more empowered but the past two days, I have noticed some worries trying to make themselves louder in the back of my head so I thought I'd take note of them and see where I can do some exposure. 
Tuesday was our daughter's first birthday and we had a wonderful day all and all, but I am slightly bitter that in the back of my head I was thinking about "what if she died on her birthday????, how traumatic that would be....." I began responding to that "what if" with...."ya that wouldn't be something that I would be joyous about...." and left the notion at that.

Today, I am getting ready for a sleepover we are having tom. with a family friend's daughter whom I adore but, the last time we had her over, (she is 7) she was sick and our daughter got her illness times 1000 (the croup when she was in the hospital) so I'm worrying about her spreading germs and if I made the right decision in exposing Aubrey to her even though it will be after a school day so, she probably will have some germs......(when I do my exposures, I have to keep in mind that yes, these exposure put Aubrey at risk but paradoxically I do them for her because I need to be a mother that let's my daughter live in the world and not in a bubble that is quarantined by my ocd) So....I am choosing to have Kayla over for a sleepover, I will probably be worrying about germs the majority of the night, it might be an unhealthy decision for Aubrey and she may get sick and....I am NOT going to Lysol everything that I think might get her sick from the night because ultimately I can't lysol everything I am going to be particular about certain things that are triggered so really I can't be completely germ free for the night 100% so, I'm not going to brake my back trying to have control over 10% that doesn't make any sense. 

Also, my husband and I are going to a wedding in Cleveland without Aubrey and she is staying with family friends because my parents are going to the wedding to.  We will be away from her for 24 plus hours yikkkkeeeesssssss!!!!!!!  and it's 2 hours away ahaahahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   So, naturally, I think that because I am selfish and am excited about going to this wedding even though I am not leaving Aubrey with family, that she is going to die.  The friends she is staying with are very close to me and they are celebrating Thanksgiving that day with more family so, they are going to take Aubrey with them, in a car to someone's house I don't know...my initial reaction was "how incredible, Aubrey gets to have Thanksgiving with my best friend and her family" and then OCD set in....she is going to die in a car on the way home or she is going to choke on food that someone at the Thanksgiving gives her...either way she's dead and my selfish ass went to a wedding....still contemplating how to exposre myself to this.  I am almost convinced that she's not going to live past next weekend (this is when we are going) so, each day is seemingly getting heavier....I need to work on an exposure to this.