The unCommon Exposè
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The unCommon Exposè
Growing up with an OCD mum
Hear Ruby's detailed youth and how she grew up with a mum who lived with extreme Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
Ruby's insight will shed light on the disorder and the impact it has on the person and those involved. Ruby's mum has passed leaving her with questions, but you can hear how her memories and experiences have impacted the way she raises her children.
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Hello and welcome to the podcast, the first recording that I've done in about 12 months. So I'm really excited. So as always, I'll get you to introduce yourself and then we'll crack on with your story. Cool. So I'm Ruby. I am 30, almost 31. You have to think of it. Feeling very old. I do have to think of it actually. Once I hit 25, I feel like it all just kind of starts blurring. Yeah. And I have three kiddos. So I've got a six year old, a four year old and a one and a half year old.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Cute.
SPEAKER_00:Cute. Yes, and today I'm going to be telling my story about growing up with a parent that had a severe mental illness, obsessive compulsive disorder, which a lot of people know what that is but not really understand what it actually means because it was a very popular thing to say that you can be OCD about something by just having some tendencies that might make you want to have things in order. And it's not the case when you actually have a person that you live with that is diagnosed with it. It is a completely different kind of ballgame.
SPEAKER_01:It's different. debilitating to
SPEAKER_00:a certain extent yes and i can have some um i have a letter that my mom wrote when she was i was 15 so i don't know i'd have to do the math to figure out how old she was but it was after she'd been diagnosed for a while um she was very late diagnosed she was already in her late 30s by the time she was diagnosed so she lived with it for a long time before she actually got around to um investigating what it actually was
SPEAKER_02:is your mom still
SPEAKER_00:no so she passed away but not related to her illness just She's passed away. Yes, exactly. Sorry if you hear my baby in the background. He is running around. Yeah, that's fine. We have another one with a baby in the background. They kind of act. So do I just dive in? Yeah, start from the beginning. Well, essentially I was raised by my grandparents. And I knew this story growing up because it was told to me by them and by my mum. I had a good relationship with my parents. Um, so yes, I was aware that it was not normal to be raised by your grandparents, but I saw my parents a lot. Um, but essentially I lived with my grandparents from the age of five months old until I turned six and they were not young grandparents. They were seventies when they took me on as a five month old baby. Um, and as I said, I knew the story growing up and my sister lived with my parents and I live with my grandparents, but in around maybe 2021, I actually found found well actually my friend's mum gave me a book that my mum had given to her and it had this letter in it that I had never read I'd heard about it like I'd heard my mum talking about it but I'd never actually read it myself so I read it which was horrible to read because it was kind of like reading about myself but then not being able to discuss it because my mum passed away so a
SPEAKER_01:letter to you or just a
SPEAKER_00:letter it was a letter that she actually wrote for other sufferers that the doctor would then give to people that came in and like presented with the same symptoms to kind of i don't know give them hope or give them understanding of what they were kind of dealing with less
SPEAKER_01:isolated maybe it
SPEAKER_00:was yeah the letter was really like saying exactly what she was suffering and how she felt suicide was her only option many times and that the doctor she went eventually at my dad's insistence because i almost died from her mental illness which is why my grandparents raised me So at the age of five months, she took me to the doctor, which is still a doctor that I see today. And I take my kids too. So if he ever retires, I don't know what I'll do because he saved my life and he probably saved her life. But I went at five months old. So do you have an older sibling? You said you have a sister. She's older. She's two years older than me. And she, as far as I can read in the letter, she was actually looked after a lot by my grandparents as well. But then when they took me on, she kind of went home to them. But in my memory, she always lived with my mom and dad. So I don't, I don't really remember. I can probably trust the letter more than my own memory though. Yeah. Um, so sorry, you're saying you're five months. So she took me to the doctor because I didn't appear to be growing. Um, and he discovered that I was basically starving to death and my mom did tell me this, like growing up, she would tell me like I was starving and like nanny and papa had to take me on because I was not thriving in that. But then reading the letter she wrote about how she couldn't bear to touch me because I was contaminated and she would beg my dad to feed me water instead of her being able to touch me so she just wasn't feeding me she said she would spend hours every day like cleaning cleaning cleaning and they wouldn't be able to make food because she couldn't bear to bring like fruits vegetables into the house she had to wash all the ingredients that she brought in like really really debilitating and so
SPEAKER_02:when
SPEAKER_00:she went to the doctor she actually didn't tell him why I was like that so he prescribed formula and as far as I can gather she couldn't bear the thought of taking formula into the house so she chose to give me to be raised by my grandparents because she couldn't stand the idea of having to deal with another like thing to bring into the house I guess so
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:and like it was hard to read that because I'd always known that it didn't seem weird to me growing up because it was just what it was for me like I live with nanny and papa I went home on the weekends and that was just how it was but then like once I'd had my own children I was like I can't imagine giving your own baby up and like she was choosing that over me in a way but I can also to understand that she didn't she wasn't able to help it so
SPEAKER_01:no
SPEAKER_00:eventually after that happened she went back to that doctor and said like this is what I'm dealing with and he sent her to a psychiatrist and then finally got given the diagnosis I believe and then she read a book about it and that really like helped her understand like what was actually going on and then she was in therapy for many years until I was able to go home at the age of six when I think I was almost in grade two when I went home um but from her letter it says I didn't want to go home any earlier which I don't remember if that was true or not but yeah yeah so I didn't I don't have any memories of my parents until after the age of school starting like I can only remember being like very vague ones of being in their house but like none of playing with them or anything like that so but I only remember my nanny and papa so that was kind of my early life and then I said to you before we started like a lot of people will talk about OCD and I have OCD and like I said I didn't talk about it when I was younger because people would say like oh yeah I have that or like yeah it's like that for me but like as a child growing up I didn't I think I missed a lot of the things that my sister probably has to deal with more in her adult life because I wasn't exposed to it so in some ways it was probably like almost better for me to be raised out of that environment because my sister definitely has more like tendencies around cleanliness and stuff like that but because we're both so aware of it we both kind of like refused to
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:be controlled by but she's definitely more like germaphobic than i am yeah um but when i moved home like we weren't allowed friends over we weren't allowed if we went out of the house we had to have a shower even if we just stepped one foot out of the front door we had to go back in and have a shower we weren't allowed to get dressed in the house our clothes were in the garage and like in winter that was just like hell and it was like that up until high school like all through primary school we never had anyone come into the house ever like people did not could you go
SPEAKER_01:to friends houses and then come home and have a shower
SPEAKER_00:and yes go through the process so i spent a lot of time at georgia's house so you know georgia yeah so i like spent a lot of my childhood there and her mom would take me in which was really nice but we always felt like we were missing out like not being able to have sleepovers and stuff but um that was just that was just how it was and it was yeah it was hard growing up in that kind of of like it was a very very controlling environment and if we tried to do you know something that we weren't allowed to do it would be like hysteria like from your mum yeah like she could not deal with it or like even just like school work like we couldn't bring our school books into the house so like we weren't ever allowed to take things in from home to school either so we were never allowed to like show and tell or like if we were doing some kind of project we couldn't bring
SPEAKER_01:stuff from home
SPEAKER_00:to do so it was it was hard um how did how was your dad obviously they stayed together yeah they did um he he never seen he did a lot of the housework i do remember that like he would do the mopping on the weekends and he would do the folding and the washing and that kind of thing um but he he went to work and he came home and do
SPEAKER_01:you remember if like she would get hysterical
SPEAKER_00:if he i can't no i can't remember that as much no but it was almost like before she was diagnosed she was so focused on the cleaning everything was spotless it merged into being afraid to tackle it and it actually merged into going the other way and if dad didn't do it like we were going to live in dirt and squalor because she was too afraid to clean it she spent a lot of time in bed like from the age of grade 3 when I moved home so I was maybe I was around 7 I can't remember I moved home and we went to school Francis and I would pack our own lunch boxes and it would just be yeah and we were seven and nine and it would just be like packaged stuff like never fruit vegetables nothing and we would just put it in our lunchbox make our own breakfast wake her up to say goodbye walk to school we'd walk her from school she'd still be in bed she'd get up do the dishes go back to bed like she would spend so much time in bed and that was all through childhood like that and then it was only once i got into high school that i think she really kind of made some like improvement and i don't know what brought that on um because i don't remember her changing medication she was on 15 pills a day i do remember that because i'd always think it was funny that she's in the food court like popping like 15 pills yeah just on the table yeah yeah so she was on a lot of medication but she did get better um which was unfortunate that she died because it was the best she had ever been in her whole life and enjoying life and then she had like a heart attack like a bit and how how long was that period Okay. um i was 21 so i was like 13 when she said yeah eight years or so we went we went overseas twice that was really good wow that's that's because they used to travel a lot like before they had kids they traveled a lot yeah and i don't really understand how that matched up with her illness yeah i don't know how she would cope with that but they did they traveled a lot um and then they didn't for a long time when we came along money was probably also an issue but yeah and then we went overseas and she was doing really good again but yeah it was a terrible way to kind of grow up with that kind of thing
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:do you know what her trigger was so for some people like there was multiple things okay so and like my nanny and papa um they like they would tell me it was from two years old like she was oh right like she was particular about things and it just got worse and worse into her adult life yeah um but but she was it was cleanliness it was counting and it was repetitive motions that kind of thing um so she would always like be like in the air like i just knew she was counting something i don't know what she was counting or she would always have to like check the lights multiple times and that kind of thing and actually when i was 14 we had moved out with my nanny again so my sister and i actually left and moved in with our nanny after my grandpa
SPEAKER_01:voluntarily
SPEAKER_00:yeah my grandpa passed away so we moved her close to us because she lived in north brisbane
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:okay and um got her like a rental house with two bedrooms and we were old enough we were like we'll live because the house was too cramped to bring another person in and we were very independent because we had to be so we we lived with nanny um and i got really obsessive with checking things and i like recognized that in myself after a while and i was like no i'm not doing this like i refuse and i forced myself to stop because i knew the signs of it so yeah yeah and so it is um because it is um genetic like you can have is there yeah you can have the genetic disposal to like predispose to have it so yeah so i was we were always very aware that we didn't want to kind of go down the same path yeah yeah so it's a chemical imbalance in the brain yeah okay um and that's just that was just her life and it was it was hard growing up because she wasn't shy about telling us that she felt like she would commit suicide or she would tell us how she would imagine doing it like she would be like i just imagine throwing myself into the train tracks to escape like that kind of thing
SPEAKER_01:how traumatic for you
SPEAKER_00:and it really sucks because that is like built into my brain so if i'm having a hard day with kids like my first thought is like oh i just want to like die right now and i hate thinking that because i don't i don't want to but it's like hardwired that was like her coping mechanism yeah so i'm like i don't want to do it but it happens and now i'm like really like i think both my sister and i are so terrified of putting our kids through anything
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:that we're just so like hyper aware of not wanting to be bad parents that we're probably like overcompensating but it is what it is like you can't avoid that kind of thing when you grow up in that kind of environment yeah
SPEAKER_01:and it just generational trauma isn't it you'll
SPEAKER_00:do something that you'll and everyone's got it everyone's got certain generational and we had like it sounds very doom and gloom we had a great childhood like i don't look back on my childhood and think i missed out on things like to me i had like my nanny and papa i had my mom and dad and like once i went home we we did heaps of stuff like we went places on holidays we saw movies like we did all of those things and then in the letter that my mum wrote she would say she dreaded taking us to the shops because it was just a nightmare and I never realised that she would have been really struggling with that because I knew she struggled with things but I was like yeah we go to the shops we go to the movies and stuff but she said it was like her own personal hell and like we were begged to go to the parks and she couldn't take us to parks because she was scared a dog would have like done a poo and we would step in it or something like that so it's like so like sad thinking back to it because I'm like we had a great childhood but I'm like did she hate it or but even worse is I can't even discuss it with her yeah there's no closure yeah there's no closure it just sucks yeah sounds like obviously only from an outsider from what you've said in 10-20 minutes like she sounded like she had lots of love though yeah pushing through all of those things she was she was a good mum and like she we never wanted anything like we never went without like my My grandpa obviously helped financially because she never worked. Like she could not work. So like my dad worked and then my grandpa and grandma, they were both, they're all English. They migrated here in the year before I was born. So there's something called the British pension that they pay any British people. I don't know. I don't know why. I don't know how it works either, but I do know what you're talking about. My grandparents got both the Australian pension and the British pension. So they had no money issues. So we never went without it. Like we always had birthday parties and we probably overcompensated. We had heaps of toys to play with. Like we were never bored. We were just like housebound. Yeah. Unless we were going out and then we were out. Like we couldn't just, we never played in the garden. Like we never played outside. We never played in the garden. If we went out, we went like to somewhere and then we would come home and have a shower and that kind of thing. Yeah. So it was, it was a very like controlled lifestyle, which I think brings up a lot of stuff with my kids. And I did go to therapy about this because I, Like, when my kids were really young, I would be so anxious that they're going to grow up and hate me. And then the therapist was like, that is years away. Why are you stressed about this? I'm like, I just am. Like, I can't help it. But, like, Josh and my sister's husband are like, you spoil them, you spoil them. Like, I can't help it. Like, we just want them to have everything. We want them to have the world. So that's probably because we never went without. Like, we just got whatever we wanted. Yeah. That was just the overcompensation for... not having a regular childhood I guess yeah
SPEAKER_01:and not being able to have closure yeah that would be so that I think I would be really struggle with
SPEAKER_00:yeah and it's annoying because when she was still alive like there was never a need to talk about it because we all lived through it together and she was getting better
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:so we never really discussed it because there was like we obviously didn't know we had limited time that's none of us had kids yet so we were just getting older all together we were doing stuff as a family like it was getting really good but then my sister and i both agree since we've had kids it's like so much worse because there's so many things you wish you could talk to them about
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:and like my dad is still around but he's 80 80 he just doesn't remember like you can ask him questions and he's just like i don't know like 30 years ago and he was an old dad obviously like he was your mom an old mom she was 12 years younger than dad it's a big guy but she was 37 when she had me oh wow yeah so she lived 37 years of her life with this undiagnosed illness that she didn't understand what was happening to her she was going crazy so yeah mental
SPEAKER_01:illness is different yeah then yeah
SPEAKER_00:yeah
SPEAKER_01:what what type of mom now you've been to therapy and you've probably had some coping mechanisms and things what type of mom would you describe yourself as now
SPEAKER_00:then um um I think I like, I'm obviously much more aware of just my own self, my own reactions and that kind of thing. I think I'm probably like, I would say relaxed. I would definitely describe you as relaxed. I haven't seen your parent lots, but yeah, I don't know. Like I do. Oh, thank you. I do not want to eat it for you. Thank you. Um, I don't sweat the small stuff. Like if they like, not so much here, but because we're renting this house. I'm a bit more like cautious about what I allow them to do. It's a bit more stressful. But in our old house, which we own, like I would let them do messy play. I would let them get into stuff in the backyard, like play in the mud, like do whatever, paint yourself, I don't
SPEAKER_01:care.
SPEAKER_00:I do allow a lot of like messy kind of things because I just wasn't allowed to do that as a kid. And like my eldest loves that kind of thing. So I'm relaxed about it. It doesn't bother me if it takes... if an activity only takes five minutes to clean up, but it gives them 20 minutes of enjoyment like that, it doesn't stress me out, but it stresses Josh's out. Oh yeah. That's what's funny is because like, and I've asked his mom this, I said to his mom, like, did you let Josh do like messy stuff as a kid? And she was like, not always. I would say like, don't make a mess, don't make a mess, don't make it. And it's like the first thing out of his mouth, like any kind of thing, like don't make a mess, don't make a mess. So he wouldn't get so stressed out if I'm like letting them get messy. But, I'm relaxed. But like, I wouldn't say I'm permissive either. Like if it's something that I'm not going to allow, I'm not going to let them do it. I'm not going to get away with it. But yeah, it's just there. I mean, we've got three of them. You can't have a picky battle. Like you can't be, um, in charge of every thing that goes on when you've got three little people to please. And like Josh worked away when I had Brody. So the girls had to kind of do things by themselves when I'm like trying to put them to sleep or whatever so they they're pretty good and they don't usually do things that they're not allowed to do
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:um but yeah i think i'm i think i'm strong and i think i get stuff done because part of me has that control aspect like i grew up living in a house that i know people think ocd means really clean but i grew up in a house that was never clean
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:she cleaned before i came along but but like i said it went the other way and it was messy and dirty and cluttered and clutter just like stresses me the hell out now like I can't handle having too much clutter I get rid of stuff a lot um and then I get rid of stuff before I'm done using it and then I have to buy it again and that kind of thing so it did affect me in that way but so some people say that I'm a bit too like obsessed with cleaning like Josh was always like who cares we'll get done tomorrow and I'm like I don't want it done today because I like to look at it and see that it's clean you know like and you're probably like
SPEAKER_01:Your mum was clean but then she went the other way. But now you don't want to go the other way. Exactly. So you've mentally got to stay on top of it.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't witness it when it was like that. Clean? Yeah. From what she says in the letter, it was like every surface was spotless but that's not my memory. My memory is like clutter, not being able to touch things, like can't face, sorting through paperwork, that kind of thing. So it wasn't so much like dirty. It was more just like merging into like hoarder territory oh just like stuff everywhere because she couldn't bear to tackle it
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:so it just like pile up there was just stuff everywhere and like my sister still lives in that house with my dad and her three kids and husband like it's a full house um and she's been doing like lots of work still trying to there's still trunks in there from when they moved from england and that was 33 years ago
SPEAKER_01:wow
SPEAKER_00:so yeah they never never got through that stuff
SPEAKER_01:and is your sister disposing of these things
SPEAKER_00:or um it's been a um a two-way battle because she'll come across stuff that she thinks they can get rid of but then my dad will be like i don't know i'll keep that and then he like puts it in his room and then she's like now it's just in the house instead of in the trunks like yeah but yeah she has been getting rid of stuff um but she's a lot more sentimental than i am like i'm like chuck it but she's more like but she's emotionally attached to a lot of it because it's from her childhood whereas it had no meaning to me yeah yeah that's just what it was like wow that
SPEAKER_01:must be Sounds like you're kind of in a good
SPEAKER_00:place. Aware and... Like, more just like... i've accepted it as it was what it was and there's never going to be closure about it yeah um yeah but like ocd can be a really hidden disorder and like as with my mom you can you're okay you can mask really well like as far as people were aware they didn't know the extent of how bad it was because i feel like if people actually knew how bad it was like my sister and i probably would have been removed
SPEAKER_01:okay
SPEAKER_00:but
SPEAKER_01:did she voluntarily voluntarily give you to your grandparents is that how that went
SPEAKER_00:yeah she chose to and that was before she had any kind of diagnosis so there was never kind of any investigation yeah yeah of course yeah okay so i do have the story that i um mentioned that my mom wrote that i typed up um just to keep it um so i was just gonna read it out yeah um so it was written in 2008 so i was 15 at the time and she would have been ah just over 40 no just over 50 so in the past 34 years since the age of 16 I suffered a mental disorder known as obsessive compulsive disorder I have commands that things must be done a certain way you know that no one could possibly know or understand what goes on in your head you know that what you do is irrational but you can't stop it there are also there is the impossible non-stop mental pain to endure and it consumes every waking moment of every day in 1993 after having lived with the disorder for 21 years I finally had to seek help and only manage this at my husband's insistence. Not just the person with the disorder suffers, the whole family experiences and suffers from it. Normal life literally comes to a standstill. To sit and tell my doctor of this haywire condition after hitting it for so long was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I was referred immediately to a psychiatrist sent on to a clinical psychologist who diagnosed severe obsessive compulsive disorder. The psychiatrist suggested I read a book entitled The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Working and suddenly my pain, my confusion, my inability to have a life had a name. It was a disease and illness and I wasn't going mad as I had begun to believe. The professional help we sought came just in time. We had at home a five-month-old daughter who did not seem to be growing. completely obsessed by the illness i'd stopped caring properly for the baby the commands came constantly to clean clean clean the baby would cry and i would insist my husband comfort her give her water i couldn't stop i couldn't even approach the baby while i was dirty by the time the cleaning was done i was too exhausted to eat so even when i did feed the baby there was very little milk for her she was not growing the way she should have been Our doctor, then unaware of the illness I kept such closely guarded secrets, sent us to a pediatrician who found nothing wrong with the baby but that she was starved from being well below the normal weight for a healthy five-month-old. He immediately prescribed formula and totally unable to cope, I gave my daughter to my parents. They got the baby past crisis point and then raised her to the age of six years old. A beautiful schoolgirl who did not want to come home on a regular basis until 1999 after I had been in therapy for my illness for six years. At its worst, OCD completely consumes the sufferer's life by the time we sought help i felt there was nothing left of myself just a robot that had to answer to the demands of the illness i felt as if i had no emotions no feelings except hate and anger for years i felt so angry at everything and yet had nothing the compulsions can take many different forms some sufferers are obsessed with the need to clean some with the need to check things some have to count some have to collect insignificant trivia some collect rubbish at the height of my illness it would take us up to three hours to rent re-enter the home after having been out for the day so intense was a fear of contaminating the home and so incessant were the demands of the cleaning routines sometimes it would take me half the day to do one night's washing up sometimes i would get stuck in the bathroom for four or five hours unable to stop working i would often get stuck in a particular activity or thought pattern and even though experiencing considerable discomfort because of this and having the desire to move on i was completely unable to do so I would emerge from the bathroom around midnight to find my husband in the chair asleep and I would collapse into mine, too exhausted for us to even consider preparing a meal. Sometimes we would not eat for nights on end. All food had to be made from a tin or a packet. To even consider bringing vegetables or fruit into the home was impossible. However, in order to eat, I had to remember to take the tin of soup or beans to the shower with me to wash it. If this was not done, I couldn't touch the tin, nor could I tolerate my husband going to the cupboard to get one. He would comply because I would become totally hysterical if he attempted to do otherwise. engulfed in an uncontrollable rage. I would find it so difficult to breathe. We lived on coffee and biscuits, although I would even find it difficult to open a packet of biscuits. Shopping would be difficult. I was terrified of supermarkets, the trolleys, the baskets, everything on the shelves. To me it was all so dirty. Other shopping was very testing. I couldn't touch anything. Any new clothes, books, DVDs, toys always had to be washed before going into the home. I even had to wash a new bar of soap in case it might be dirty. Going out held no pleasure. I would do anything to keep us all inside, even if we were out of food. riding on buses sitting on seats it filled me with dread we couldn't even go for a walk or visit a park in case a dog had been there my children would beg me to take them to a park but it was agony for me I would try and fight back against the thoughts but they always won I was completely unable to open my own front door for 15 years going outside would automatically mean getting dirty if I had to go out the door I would change into my dirty clothes and afterwards I would change and shower many times I considered suicide I saw it as the only way of getting peace a quiet place away from the endless commands rituals obsessions and compulsions I was sure my husband and two young daughters would be better off without me. In the midst of all of this, we were also trying to raise our other daughter, a girl of two. My mom had been looking after her, but once they took over our infant, our two-year-old came home. She loathes my illness as much as I do and longs for the day when I will be better. They cannot have any friends visit. We cannot have anyone in the house. OCD has caused insufficient amounts of chemical serotonin in the basal ganglia section of the brain. Serotonin is a feel-good chemical, one that makes you feel like things are okay. OCD sufferers never feel okay. Their anxiety rules them. They worry and agonize over the minute details of any of their particular obsessions. I don't think anyone really understands the misery of it unless they have the misfortune to experience it. Even in sleep, there is no escape. Dreams often happen having a strong OCD content and causing one to wake up. One of the side effects of OCD is the sufferers also have to cope with a very deep and very real depression. There literally seems no point in living. At the heart of my illness, when I didn't even know it was one, I would say to my husband, I go to bed unhappy and wake up depressed. The joy of having a new baby in the house was lost to the illness and its accompanying depression. I dreaded opening my eyes and seeing daylight as it meant another day to fight my way through. Even the most mundane activities seem like mountainous obstacles to overcome. OCD can respond to medication and to therapy. For the past 15 years, with the help of my doctor psychological therapy in the support of the appropriate medication I feel as though I've been climbing a sheer cliff face on the road to recovery a few times I've slipped and lost my foothold and nearly plummeted into the black abyss again a sufferer certainly does not live a life and you're not quite dead although it seems more desirable I can almost see the tuft of grass on the top of the cliff and little by little I struggle to grasp them to sit upon my own mountain and be mentally whole and well to live again and try and recapture some of the 34 years that OCD stole from my life I know I'm not alone I know know there are many other sufferers who spend each day of their life commanded by the hellish existence my doctor keeps the story on file and gives it to any new patients presenting with symptoms of OCD and I hope it might help a little that's so sad so sad
SPEAKER_01:so sad thank you for sharing
SPEAKER_00:that yeah I really hope there is no one out there living in that kind of hell yeah I feel like it's obviously more common these days to speak out about it I hope
SPEAKER_01:it is it's still interesting and while there might not be someone whose parent had OCD there'll be someone like you who live with their grandparents because their parents didn't have the ability for whatever reason to raise them so I'm sure that someone will out there listen and
SPEAKER_00:feel like they're not alone in their
SPEAKER_01:story as
SPEAKER_00:well so thank you