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A Season in Hell (standard:non fiction, 1760 words) | |||
Author: kmjog | Added: Apr 22 2002 | Views/Reads: 3270/2196 | Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes) |
This is a personal account of a 4 year horrendous depression that finally lifted. | |||
 A SEASON IN HELL I have suffered from clinical depression for four years. I have had OCD an anxiety disorder for 15 long years. Both have waxed and waned over the years. This is a personal account of four years that were living Hell on earth. I remember how the OCD started. I was a waitress at a busy restaurant in Carmel, California. I loved my job and I was a good waitress. A new manager came on the scene. He was either hot or cold. He was an alcoholic and when he was on a binge he would yell and scream at the waitresses. He particularly picked on me because I never talked back to him for fear of losing my job. I was not depressed until years later. I went to work one day and the manager was gone. They said he was dismissed for stealing money out of the cash register for drugs. I was relieved but they got a woman manager who was rather unfriendly and harsh. I finally found a job at another local restaurant. The OCD waxed and waned over the years. It was very manageable for 12 years until depression set in also from a sales job that I had. I knew what clinical depression was because I previously in my life had three short bouts with it. My husband is a landscape contractor. He wanted me to go to a hardware store to buy a rake he needed. I was in the garden department when I saw a bunch of insecticides. I immediately felt contaminated and had to go to the restroom and wash my hands. I just had to go wash my hands like I had some horrible poison on me. That was the beginning of the Obsessive Compulsive disorder. They say that tremendous stress can cause it. I started thinking that when I passed by a pedestrian in my car that I had hit one and I had to check if I had by looking in the rear view mirror. I had an episode of OCD when I was 13 years old so I knew I had to get some help. The OCD will not go away on it's own. I started therapy with a psychologist and I still continued to work for the alcoholic manager. . I have been to many psychiatrists and psychologists over the last 15 years. In desperation in March 2002 I made an appointment with my family doctor. I had heard that B-12 shots were sometimes given to patients with a severe psychosis and they made remarkable recoveries. She said that she had heard that but had never heard of a B-12 shot being used for depression. She would not give me one and I was upset. I went to the drug store and bought a bottle of B-12 vitamins and went home and took five1000mg tablets. It became extremely severe in March 2002. In that month I began obsessing more and more at my volunteer waitress job. I could hardly concentrate on taking orders because of the horrible, intrusive thoughts that were racing in my head. I would take an order and I had to double check each ticket to make sure I had charged them the right amount. My obsessional thinking was mostly religious in origin. They were senseless thoughts like if I wore certain dangling earrings they would offend God and then I would be punished. If I watched a movie with a lot of swear words in it; it was hurting God. I could never fiqure out why some things that I did would hurt God. .Hundreds of thoughts like this tortured me every day. I knew they were not really real but a part of me almost believed that they were. I also had developed severe scrupulosity just since January 2002. It previously had never bothered me in my 57 years of life. I had worked 4 different part time jobs. They were relatively easy jobs like being a food demonstrator in a market handing out samples of food or coupons. I would not cash any of the checks I had received because my OCD voice was telling me I didn't do the jobs completely right and I would be punished by God if I cashed the checks. It wasn't until 3 months later that I was finally able to cash them. Scrupulosity is a form of OCD. People who have it become overly concerned with morals and honesty. I will describe what a typical day for me was like. I woke up in sheer terror. I immediately started praying hundreds of times “Dear Lord please help me to function.” I felt like I was waking up to a nightmare. However, I was not dreaming for it was as real as the grass is green and the sky is blue. My depression was an agiated type. I had been jogging since 1992 and was not about to give it up. It was the one Click here to read the rest of this story (84 more lines)
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