I know it's probably going to sound funny, but since my dad died, my husband and I have struggled to get back to a good place. One thing that helped and still helps us is the motto, if you will, "Low Expectations".
I look around me now and everyone I know is struggling. We struggle to get through the days, we struggle to make money, to have nice things, to be the perfect parent, to be liked, the list is never ending. So, just setting the bar a little lower and reminding yourself, it doesn't have to be perfect, we don't have to be perfect, it can help. I know it helps me.
Especially having OCD, alot of what I feel is this need for everything to feel right, whatever that means. I need to feel clean, to feel like everything is where it belongs, to feel like everything is okay. Sometimes I'll be washing and I'll get so consumed by this process, I'll repeat it over and over without even realizing. Finally, I stop and I say to myself, "low expectations, it doesn't have to be perfect" and it snaps me out of it. Without it, I wonder how long I would go, stuck in the cycle of mindless actions.
It all comes down to the same thing. Whether it's OCD or drugs or anorexia, or gambling, it's all the same. We feel our lives are out of control and so we turn to something to fill up that hole we have inside. I know that the real answer is to face the things we try to run from. I'm working on that now.
In my last post I mentioned that my mother had been abused. Over the years, I've talked in great depth to my mother and father on the subject as they were both open to discussion.
My father went into a type of recovery from alcoholism when I was around 14. When I say recovery, I mean our life circumstances changed dramatically and he gave up the boozin' and thus stopped the abuse.
From those years on, life was fairly good I'd say. Once that happened, my parents shared alot about their lives with me. I found out my dad was abused as a kid and he watched his father abuse his mother. This is a story we hear all the time. Patterns do repeat.
My mom didn't have a father figure and so she sought out acceptance and love in the wrong places. She didn't know she deserved better. I know there may be a lot of people who would judge both, but unless you've been in the situation, you really shouldn't.
It's not to say people get a free pass because they had hardships growing up, but it's like Oprah says, "When you know better, you'll do better". You'd be fooling yourself to say that what happens in our childhoods don't affect our adult lives.
Once I understood where my parents came from I could see them as human and humans make mistakes. The one thing I always had in my life, as crazy as it was, was love. I knew my parents loved me. I think that, without it, I wouldn't have turned out as good as I did.
I realize my last post may have put a bad light on my father, but I do want to say, my father was a good father. Maybe he wasn't a good husband or a good friend, I don't know; but he was a good father...a great father!
He never abused me, but he could be cruel to others around me. As a kid, not understanding everything going on, specifically not understanding the part my dad was playing in things, I thought my mother was actually the one to blame for everything.
All I knew was that I loved my father more than anything in the world and yet my mother seemed, at times, to despise him. I didn't understand, until I got older, just why my mom was truly upset all the time. I just knew she was mean to my dad and put him down every chance she got.
Now this is important, because for all those parents out there who put down their spouse in front of their kids, I can offer some perspective. As a kid who had this happen, I can tell you, my mom might as well have been putting me down because I took everything she said about my dad personally. He was my dad, I loved him and he was part of me.
I grew up feeling like I was a bad person because my dad was a "bad person". For a lot of years I was like a guard dog, defending my dad and myself to anyone who put him down. Although I was close to my mom, it kept a distance between us.
Of course, like I said, I understand now. My dad was abusive and my mom was in an impossible situation. Still, I think both people should have handled things differently. I guess there are good and bad sides to us all.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I wasn't sexually assaulted, but no one gets out of childhood unscathed. My beloved father was an alcoholic. It's hard to say because no one wants to put their loved ones out there like that, especially since he's gone and it all seems so unimportant now. Still, the fact of the matter is, while it's unimportant on a large scale, his alcoholism affected my life greatly.
Alcoholism affects the alcoholic and everyone around the alcoholic. I believe that many of my issues with OCD have, in fact, stemmed from the lack of control I felt over living in such a chaotic environment.
When you're living with an alcoholic, especially a mean one, every day is unpredictable. There is a fear that comes from not knowing what will happen. Will this be the day he loses it? Will he and my mom fight? Will I be put in the middle? Will my mom leave? Will he go to jail...again?
OCD, as crazy as it sounds, provides a feeling of control in an uncontrollable situation. I realize, of course, the opposite is true and that it's the OCD that has control over me and not me over it. Still, I couldn't control my dad's drinking, but if I was dirty I could wash my hands and I felt control over that. It was a little piece of sanity for me.
But this is nothing new. So many people grow up in situations like these or worse and we all cope differently. OCD was my way and I'm just trying to make sense of it now. I'm hoping that sharing this will help.
