Attack of the clothes and the killer heels...

This may sound a bit bizarre but I think my clothes have got it in for me. Hmm, on reading that back I may want to think about altering it, given my fragile mental state at the moment. You just know that if I went doolally in a sweet shop and started hurling around Curly Wurlys that my psychiatrist will read this and say ‘aaah, paranoid delusions eh?’ and I’ll have sealed my own fate.

I should really explain, I don’t think it is just my clothes but my footwear as well...that sounds even more bizarre! How can I really elucidate on my material fear? I have never found a comfortable outfit that hasn’t been a pair of pyjamas (and even they seem to ride up in the middle of the night to show my chest!). Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting that we should all wander around completely unfettered (Scotland is far too cold for that!), I just think that it would be nice to own an item of clothing that doesn’t feel the need to start a career in comedy or assault.

You see, I don’t think I own a single item of clothing that hasn’t betrayed me in some way – blouses that have burst their buttons disgorging my breasts, skirts that have ripped open at the slightest provocation, cardigans that have entangled me in various inanimate objects, tights that roll down my body so that the gusset ends up at my knees and worst of all the footwear that has torn the skin from my heels, broken in two or simply caused me agonising pain regardless of insoles and other various gel based solutions.

I think that it may have started in my childhood. When I was about 13 or so at school I was running to a class when my knickers’ elastic emitted an enormous twanging sound and they fell down. Now, I don’t think I have to explain the logistical problem in running with an underwear malfunction but I think you get the picture. I was so embarrassed, not only at that but at the fact that I had to corner my P.E. teacher to explain the problem and seek a safety pin. The women could barely contain her amusement as I desperately attempted to pin the now massively oversized under crackers. I still to this day remember the shame that must have radiated all over my face as the teacher said ‘hmm, that is a problem isn’t it?’ smirking and holding out the safety pin.

Apparently, so I am told, when I was a child I used to take my clothes off all the time and run around the garden and house. I sincerely hope that I consigned my nudity to just the house and garden as I am not sure at what age I stopped this odd behaviour as I can remember very little before my eighth birthday but according to my parents I had this sort of obsession with running around nude...oh yeah, I used to wear wellington boots too...along with the nude thing. Like I said, I sincerely hope that my nudity and rubber fetish are far behind me now but I think that this perhaps goes some way to helping me understand my problem with clothes.

I always hated clothes shopping, even now I sort of decide what I want in my head and go searching for that rather than run through the whole selection in each store. If I don’t see what I am looking for I don’t tend to buy anything. I think my hatred of clothes shopping comes from my deep rooted memories of desperately wanting a pair of ‘Clarks Magic Steps’ (I believe that’s what they were called) shoes with a key in the heel but my parents wouldn’t buy me them and I remember being really miserable about that – I was about 5! I also think that clothes shopping with my Dad was always a truly awful experience due to the fact that it generally ended in an argument. I love my Dad to bits but he never quite grasped the fact that I am a girl and should be wearing girls clothing. You see, when my parents divorced when I was fourteen I stayed with my Dad and with him being a man with no real experience of what it is like to be a fourteen year old girl he tended to treat me like a boy as he had experience of being a boy. For example, when I had to go shoe shopping with my Dad he would pick up a pair of shoes and say ‘These are lovely, we could get you these?’ and they would be hideous, male shoes in sizes far greater than my tiny feet. I would say that I didn’t like them and immediately he would break into the ‘you never like anything that I pick out as you’re just trying to be awkward’ argument so generally any pre-school year clothes shopping trip would be sullied with my Dad being confused as to what to buy me and me wanting some sort of totally inappropriate shoes that would hurt my feet and fall to bits as soon as it rained. I developed a sort of pavlovian reaction where if my Dad said ‘Those shoes are falling off your feet, time to get some new ones’ or ‘Your jumper has a hole in it, we’d better get you some new clothes’ I instantly felt stressed and anticipated a row so the shopping experience was forever ruined.

I envy men on the clothes front; no matter what men wear they always look ok. You never see a man having to hoist up a boob tube every five minutes (mind you, in Edinburgh anything is possible), I have never seen a man have to take his shoes off because although they looked great in the shop they are agony to wear, if a man has his flies down he isn’t so mortified that he has to hide in the toilets for the rest of the evening. For example, a friend of mine wandered outside a pub for a cigarette and I happened to notice his flies were down and I asked him if he had been to the loo and he said ‘Aye, why?’. When I tried to discreetly indicated that he was showing his bits to an Edinburgh street he smiled cheekily and said ‘Och well, you know what they say – it pays to advertise’ and with that he deftly drew up his fly and continued to smoke happily! He wasn’t even drunk! I once fell out of a dress I was wearing and I cried for about an hour!

A dear friend of mine once told me that most mornings he gets out of bed, runs his fingers through his hair, gets dressed and sets off to work without even having to look in the mirror. He also said that even if he does look in the mirror he generally thinks ‘yeah, I look ok’ and it’s true, he’s a handsome chap. I did a quick poll of a few of my male friends and they said pretty much the same. They also said that they didn’t have any sort of problem with any of their clothes, except for bowties – bowties are of course evil, for anyone who has ever attempted to tie one if you have managed it then well done as they are a complete pain.

Anyway, if I run through a few examples of my wardrobe malfunctions it should give you a better picture as to why I generally think that my clothes are plotting to injure or embarrass me...

Several years ago, I battled anorexia and became very thin, too thin, and once I had gotten through some of the mental issues I had with losing weight and started to gain a little weight I actually started to feel a little better about myself. I bought lots of new clothes as all my clothes were baggy and shapeless and my new clothes helped to heighten my confidence. I bought a beautiful skirt that had a zip right up the middle that could be unfastened both from the top and the bottom. The skirt was great until the zip started to play up. One morning, wearing the aforementioned skirt and tottering happily to work in heels that were clearly dangerous to someone as seemingly accident prone as I am a builder caught my eye as I walked past. He grinned and said ‘morning darlin’! ‘and I smiled in a way that I thought would perhaps be coquettish and said ‘Good morning to you too’. As I walked to work, several men eyed me up and down and I was sort of surprised but was enjoying the attention. Anyway, I got halfway to work before I thought ‘hang on, I’m not all that, why are so many people being so nice to me today?’. I looked down and to my horror I found that the zip had leapt its way to the top of the skirt and it was barely clinging to me at all! As I mentioned before I have a morbid fear of tights and the whole creeping down the body palaver so I always wore stockings and on this day they were fishnet stockings and I was also wearing very tight black lacy panties. I think there was initial shock then the hurried zipping up of the skirt while blushing profusely as I mentally worked out exactly how many people must have thought that I was some kind of exhibitionist. It wouldn’t have been so bad but I worked out my terrible wardrobe error at the train station in front of a crowd of bemused looking commuters!

The previous situation wouldn’t have been half as bad if it hadn’t been followed a few days subsequent to this by another skirt wrapping itself around my ears as the wind blew it up like Marilyn Monroe without the glamour. So yet again, Haymarket station got a good view of another item of my underwear drawer.

Then there was the bra that would spring itself open if one of my friends touched my shoulder! It was always one particular friend, I used to think that perhaps he had a magnet up his sleeve and was somehow performing a trick worthy of an escapologist – sort of a proxy escapologist as it was my chest that seemed to want to do the escaping!

There was the crocheted cardigan that managed to entangle itself around the lock on my bathroom door and rendered me incapable of movement for half an hour.

I had a beautiful satin blouse that seemed to think that my bra was attractive enough for everyone to view and without my knowledge would pop open button by button until I had to ask a platonic friend to monitor the situation and alert me should it reach critical.

Those are just the embarrassing items of clothing, I haven’t even begun to unfold the tales of the violence of the slacks, the terrible tale of the of the tumble down Arthurs Seat or the cowboy boots that forced me to meet my friends’ parents in a state of shock and filth.

Every pair of trousers, jeans etc that I have ever owned seem to magically grow and shrink as I wear them. Thus meaning that I feel that I don’t need a belt at the start of the day and later they end up hacking the inside of my thighs to bits as they sink lower and lower until I am hoisting them up every five minutes.

It was suggested to me that I should try a thong; I was told that as underwear goes they are sexy and comfy...I’m afraid that I found them as sexy as being sawn in half and they were by far and away the most uncomfortable things I have ever worn – and that’s saying something! On the two occasions I wore a thong I ended up going home and resorting to the comfy pants within an hour of trying them. Maybe they are comfy for women whose bottoms are tiny and peachy but with my voluptuous buttocks I’ll stick to the safe option.

As for the tumble down Arthurs Seat; I was taking a walk with a friend of mine in Edinburgh about ten years ago and he suggested climbing Arthurs Seat. Now, to say that I unsuitably attired for what he had in mind would be an understatement, I was wearing a long dress with stockings underneath and a pair of boots with ridiculous heels but he assured me that it wasn’t too bad a walk. Although he had lived in Edinburgh most of his life this experience didn’t seem to extend to walking up the huge hill as he took me the wrong way and we almost ended up rock climbing – and as you can imagine, in heels that’s not an easy feat! Anyway, halfway up we found the easier way to get up and we finally made it to the top. It was amazing! It was cold and incredibly windy, but amazing. We took in the scenery then decided to go down the easier way. It was still quite a trek and my friend gleefully ran down the sloping grassy hill shrieking with delight as he did so. Not wishing to be outdone I followed suit. Running in heels is not easy as any women will tell you but for some reason the boots hurled me forwards a lot quicker than I anticipated and I ended up almost cartwheeling down the hill! My dress went over my head on the first rotation and all of the shocked hikers around the hill were treated to the sight of my underwear again! The worst thing was that I tumbled for quite a distance so I wasn’t able to even regain my dignity until I had collapsed at the bottom laughing – well, let’s face it, when you have publicly humiliated yourself what else can you do?

Then there were the cowboy boots that wanted to ensure that meeting my friend’s parents would be memorable to them for all the wrong reasons. It was my friend’s birthday and he had invited me to a wonderful little cafe that served the sort of food that I had never experienced (I had to ask what a guinea fowl was). I wasn’t really sure what to wear, smart or casual? In the end I plumped for a glitzy top with a pair of jeans and my new cowboy boots. Pleased as punch with my outfit I strutted down to the city centre. Unfortunately as I got down to Princes Street it had been raining a little and the cowboy boots I was wearing didn’t have anything in the way of grip and as I stepped onto the curb after crossing the road and I lost my footing. I hit the wet paving with quite a thud, scuffing the skin from my elbows and palms as well as muddying my jeans and grazing both my knees. A lady picked me up and I tried to sort myself out but I was shaking and bleeding and very muddy. When I met up with my friend my exact words were ‘I’ve had a bit of an accident...’ and he smiled as he is used to me being generally accident prone and he led me in the direction of the cafe. So, on meeting his parents I had to decline the handshaking and shakily explain that I had to go and clean myself up. I remember standing in the toilets dabbing ineffectually at my bleeding knees with wet tissue paper and thinking ‘great, now they’re going to think I’m a complete idiot!’. Hopefully they didn’t but I certainly thought twice about wearing those boots again.

With a similar pair of boots I managed to go over on my ankle and hurtle down the stone steps at Edinburgh zoo leaving me bruised and laughing at the bottom – my friend who was with me couldn’t pick me up for laughing!

On Valentine’s day many years ago I was happily walking to university when the sandals I was wearing broke in half on one side and, as I was halfway between home and university and there was no bus service between the two I had to hop about 2 miles home at which point I realised that I had forgotten my keys and I had to ring the doorbell desperately hoping that my landlord or landlady were in so I didn’t have to sit outside with one sandal on. Thankfully they opened the door and I started my journey again with sensible if ill matched footwear.

So you see, I think my clothes and shoes are on a mission to thoroughly disgrace me. As I write this I am happily wearing a pair of pyjamas having thrown off my clothes as soon as I came in this afternoon and I have still felt the need to cover the web cam on my netbook to ensure that it doesn’t magically switch on with a sensor in the monkeys face on the pyjama top and reveal my chest to all the people on my account! The next time you see a girl who has tucked her skirt in her pants or has lost the ‘beauty tape’ on her revealing dress, please tell her immediately and have a heart – it’s the attack of the clothes! :)

The bus fuss...

I don't know if it is just me, perhaps I have a sign on my face of which I'm unaware or maybe I have the sort of face that says that I am eager to please, but people on buses regularly talk to me. I don't mean 'Ooh, this weather is terrible isn't it?' or 'The price of bus fares gone up again? Gosh, I remember when it was 50p' etc. I'm talking about random non-sequiturs such as 'That was the pub!!! That's where it happened!' or 'Did you have the sprouts?'.

Today was another example of bus passenger conversation that completely threw me. I had to go to the hospital this morning as I was given a set of tests last week and I was told to provide a urine sample. To cut a long story short I messed up the test and, for reasons that will remain undisclosed due to not wanting to get into the ickyness of the situation, I had to return to the hospital to pick up another sample bottle. My OCD has led to extreme agoraphobia over the past few months and on several occasions, going out of the house and even to the hospital has led to panic attacks. Today I was incredibly shaky but I just about coped. Anyway, I was riding along on the bus, attempting to go home when I decided that I would get off at another stop past my flat and then get a bus back - don't ask, there was a logic there but it's probably not worth analysis. Just as I passed the flat an elderly gentleman in the seat in front of me suddenly spun around and said loudly 'I used to live round here you know'. I didn't quite hear him at first as I was wearing headphones and trying to calm down so I took them off and said 'Sorry?' and he repeated himself 'I used to live up there' he said, pointing to the bus window but not in any direction that I could really attribute to a particular location 'Have you heard of *mumble*?' As I didn't hear him and he was a complete stranger to me I felt the need to be polite and I didn't want to seem like I hadn't been listening because I had so I chose the polite option 'No, I don't think I know that' I replied and at which point he looked faintly cross and turned away. I waited for his reply but he returned to staring out of the window. A few people on the bus looked at me bemused but the man didn't turn around again. As I got off the bus a few stops later I turned to the man and said 'Have a good day' but he just looked at me as if I had said 'Screw you!' which incidentally made me obsess at to whether I had been offensive even though I knew that I hadn't - oh the joys of OCD!

Admittedly this isn't the most extreme bus incident that I have been involved in, there have been numerous other bus encounters both good and bad, but it made me think of some of the things that have happened.

Perhaps these things have occurred because of the frequency with which I travel on public transport or maybe I am just a magnet for bus weirdness but you'd think I would be used to it by now. The bus service in Edinburgh is excellent, better than I have experienced anywhere else, the buses are warm, comfortable, reasonably priced and generally on time (prior to the closing of Princes Street and the subsequent tram network building works anyway - but that's a whole different conversation for another day). As anyone who lives in Edinburgh knows, it seems much easier to get around Edinburgh on the buses than by car.

Now, I wouldn't consider myself the most unsociable person in the world but as I'm sure that anyone who knows me would probably tell you that I am utterly inept when it comes to small talk. I don't know what it is but I just can't manage small talk with strangers, I can happily talk to people about anything as if I have known them for years but ask me to have a conversation about the weather and I end up nervously talking about something wholly inappropriate like sex and then I feel embarrassed but can't stop talking. It's not a pretty sight, my burbling nervously away. I also noticed another horrible trait I have when attempting to be polite - I can't seem to control my facial expressions properly. Yesterday on a bus (again!) a little dog was on the bus and was sniffing at my legs inquisitively and the dogs owner said 'Don't worry, she's ok' and I replied 'She's just trying to be friendly' and I smiled but as I caught sight of myself in the reflection in the bus window I looked like a clown attempting to go to the loo! My smile was sort of forced and wonky because I was nervous but I must have looked positively maniacal! I got off the bus shortly afterwards as I was so embarrassed.

I've spent a lot of time on buses over the years, my Dad is a bus driver and I think that my enjoyment of travelling on buses must be in my genes. I love just sitting there watching the scenery go by, perhaps that's one of the reasons on a long list why I have never learned to drive. Anyway, I digress...

Travelling on buses a lot has led to several incidents that I have never forgotten for various reasons and some people I know may have heard about these incidents.

While on an Edinburgh bus I got on and noticed that the bus was crowded but there was one seat facing backwards in front of a rather sleepy looking elderly gentleman. There were people standing in the aisles which should have been an indication to avoid the man but I thought 'how bad can it be?' and I seated myself in front of the man. Within seconds of the bus setting off the man raised his head and bellowed 'MMMMoooooonnn Riiiiivvveerrr!!!!' and proceeded to sing 'Moon River' interspersed with him tapping my leg and yelling 'Come on blondie!!! Sing up!!!'.

I wanted to say no, I wanted to pretend that I hadn't heard him but he continued to yell at me so I ended up loudly singing 'Moon River' and 'Oh Danny Boy' with the man, facing the entire rest of the bewildered bus passengers. I really wanted to get off the bus but I had heavy bags and all I wanted to do was go home so I effectively performed several musical numbers to a busful of people coerced by a random drunken man! Oh the shame!

A few years ago I had been on an all night drinking session with a few mates and I stayed at one of those mate's house. I staggered out of their house at around 9am the next morning having had no sleep at all and for some reason I decided that I wanted to go do a bit of shopping in Princes Street before I went home. After wandering around like a zombie for a few hours I decided that I needed my bed so I caught the bus. Now the only reason I am setting the scene in this way is because I want you to know what state I was in when this occurred. It was summer and it was warm on the bus and it had become infested with flies and wasps. One of the wasps flew to the back of the bus and was zzzing around madly. People were shuffling around and trying to avoid getting stung when this guy stepped forward, took a piece of paper out of his pockets and unceremoniously squished the wasp. A girl cried in horror 'oh, you didnae have to kill it!' at which point the man turned around and on a hugely crowded bus said 'I like killing things'. There was a sort of stunned silence before a guy at the back said 'ooookkkaaayyyy'. The man then asked the passenger next to him the following horrifying question 'Have you ever killed a rat?' and he proceeded to explain how to kill a rat, he moved on to explaining how other animals can be killed and I hurriedly got off the bus in fear. Now, maybe he was just joking or perhaps he was a professional pest controller but I wasn't sticking around to find out. Most of the other bus passengers followed suit and perhaps that was his motive for saying it, it was a crowded bus after all. It was sort of simultaneously horrifying and comedic.

Years ago, while waiting for a bus with my boyfriend at the time an elderly gentleman shuffled up to me and said 'Can you put your hand in my pocket love?'. I must have stared at the guy with astonishment for quite a few seconds as he repeated himself and I ended up replying 'What for?!?'. It turned out that his bus pass was in his back pocket (thankfully not his front pockets although I'm not sure that it made it any better a request!) and he had arthritis in his hands so couldn't retrieve it. Don't get me wrong, it is a perfectly reasonable request and I am always happy to help people but what sort of opening line to a stranger is 'Can you put your hand in my pocket love?'?!?! I retrieved said bus pass and he wandered off leaving my boyfriend at the time howling with laughter and me pondering how he got it in there in the first place...

Ok, I suppose strictly speaking that was a 'waiting for a bus' story rather than a 'bus story' so onto the next one.

Many years ago when I was thinner and much younger I had just had my hair permed and was wearing a vibrant red dress and feeling quite good about myself, an elderly gentleman on the bus leaned over to me and asked the time. I gave him the time and he said 'do you know that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen?'. Judging by the vodka he was swigging and the fact that it didn't look like his first drink of the day, I took the comment with a pinch of salt. I thanked him but he kept insisting that I was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and we almost got into a fight as I disagreed. I suppose to be fair, as I didn't know him, I didn't have any previous experience of the women he had seen throughout his life so possibly I was a bit hasty in challenging his view but I'm not exactly Angelina Jolie. So rigid was he in his opinion that I had to get off the bus several stops earlier than I had planned only to find that he followed me to the supermarket I was going to. Thankfully I managed to shake him off before things got out of hand. I'm sure he just wanted me to believe him and I know that it was a lovely compliment but it was also quite a scary experience.

Now I don't want you to think that it's just Edinburgh, I was on a train in New York and a magazine hit me on the head from the rack above. A girl started talking to me, asking me if I was ok when this man further down the train yelled that it was my fault that I was hit on the head by the magazine. I don't know how that was even possible as I hadn't put the magazine in the overhead rack but apparently it was my fault!

Admittedly my bus experiences have generally been in Edinburgh. After a guy on the bus said 'Isn't this snow awful?' I agreed and we were talking about snow in general when this other guy leaned over and angrily said 'Snow! This is nothing! In Canada the snow was up to my neck!' and I said 'Oh it's never been that bad here' and he said 'Well think yourself lucky! You don't know the meaning of the word snow!!' before turning away in disgust. It wasn't a competition! It wasn't even a conversation I was having with him, it was just general British weather chatter. Like I said, I'm not good at small talk.

Another time, while sat on a bus in a traffic jam, a drunken guy was sat in front of me and he kept looking at me and saying 'you alright?' repeatedly to me and each time I said 'yes' he continued in the same tone but when I didn't reply he started shouting it at me until I replied so I moved seats. In the new seat I was accompanied by another guy who said 'That's a wee shame, being shouted at like that, young girl like you, shouldnae have to put up with that'. I politely thanked the man and he asked me if I lived in Edinburgh, I said yes and he asked me if I was married. At the time I wasn't and said so and he asked me if I owned my flat. When I said no he said 'There's a way you could get a house y'know'. By this time you'd have thought I would be used to this but I still said 'How do you mean?' and he said 'Get yourself pregnant, that'd do it. I've got a friend who could get you pregnant if you like?'. Seriously, he asked me if I had thought of it as an option and I said 'Erm, no thank you' and he said 'Oh well if you don't want my advice then!' and turned away! I mean, what can you do! The bus was in a massive traffic jam and there was nowhere for me to escape but back to the 'you alright?' man seat!

The strange thing is, I just want to underline the fact that all of these happened during daylight hours! I dread to think what it's like at night on the buses!

So to all the bus drivers who must experience a lot more than I see, I salute you. If you've had to cope with the superset of my bus experiences, you must have so much patience and a sense of humour! And to the bus driver who said a few months ago 'I could write a book about the mad things that happen on here!', please do, if nothing else it will be cathartic!

The Fear of it all

I saw a psychologist recently to talk about my OCD and general anxiety and I was thinking about the nature of fear, seeing as that seems to be at the root of the vast majority of my problems.

Now you may think that is a pretty miserable way to start a blog post but I have been battling depression my dear reader, I will attempt to keep this post light without straying into the totally morose :) Someone told me recently that they found my blog posts boring which sort of upset me but I decided that I would write this anyway, seeing as I had something to say and wanted to say it. Plus I spend most days alone so it is nice to feel like I am talking to someone, even if no one ever reads this far.

I'm frightened of pretty much everything! I didn't think that this was the case until I was compiling an 'anxiety ladder' - basically a list of things I'm frightened of in order of how terrified I am of each. Now, rather hysterically, this lead me to actually think for once of what I am truly terrified of...and it turns out to be pretty much everything! I suppose realistically I should have made a list of things that were likely to happen and a separate list of things that are very unlikely to happen as adding all my worries to the list made it ludicrously long!

With the psychologist's help I managed to get this down to two main fears - Fear of loneliness and Fear of death for myself or my friends and family - which pretty much encompasses everything! I have always had these two specific fears but ridding myself of these fears appears impossible.

A few years ago I decided to see what actually frightened me TV wise to try and somehow relieve some of the fear. I spent about 6 months watching as many horror films as I could possibly manage in my own obsessively fastidious way. Not only did this lead to a lot of desensitisation but it also lead to some pretty horrendous nightmares and thus the reappearance of my long standing insomnia. I eventually found several TV shows/characters that quite literally terrified me:

1. Ghostwatch - Yep, the BBC drama that launched a vast amount of my teenage nightmares. I watched the show when I was about 15 and despite the warnings and the clearly bizarre ending and the fact that even though Sarah Green disappeared into a cupboard never to be seen again she was on TV during the next few days, it still dug deep into some sort of deeply traumatic part of my psyche. It didn't help that my Dad seemed to think that my fear of a made up ghost on a drama was hilariously funny and this led to him shouting 'Pipes is coming to get you!' at various moments (referring to the ghost within the show). I can laugh about it now but it wasn't enormously funny at the time. In retrospect my fears of this show were laughable but you know what, I bought it on DVD a few years ago and I couldn't bear to watch it. I bought it from a well known retailer during the day and I took it home, put it in the DVD player and attempted to watch it at 2pm in the afternoon and I couldn't get past the DVD menu screen! Somehow this show led to 'a bad taste in the brain' as my husband calls it, the experience of being terrified of something that you didn't think that was that scary long after the films credits have rolled.

2. The Woman in Black - Not sure how many people have seen this drama but it just goes to prove that you don't need a huge budget of special effects and a bevvy of attractive actresses running around screaming to make a truly unsettling TV. The show was based on a novel by Susan Hill and I saw it when I was about 13. There is one specific moment that utterly chills the blood as the main character in the story is lying in bed he awakes to a most extraordinary vision. I wont spoil it for those who wish to see it but it most definitely led to the 'bad taste in the brain' situation for me.

3. Twilight Zone: Nightmare at 20000 feet - This shouldn't be as scary as it is but somehow this sort of plugged into my dual fears of flight and seeing garish faces at the window when you don't quite expect it. I tried to watch this again recently and I just couldn't bring myself to go through it again.

4. Davros: Leader of the Daleks - I utterly adore Doctor Who but just the sight of Davros has me hiding behind the sofa! I just don't know what it is about Davros' terrifying visage that troubles me the most, I think it leads back to my general fear of Daleks in my childhood. The idea that something could be so uncaring and unflinching in it's goal to 'Exterminate!', not allowing any room for compromise or negotiation, just terrifies me. This has not been improved for me seeing as the Daleks can now fly thus rendering the running upstairs for safety option completely useless.

This is just 4 of the most televisually petrifying things for me but I assure you that the full list is pretty long! Surprisingly most of the true horror films didn't really scare me that much and I found that most of the things that I find truly terrifying are those things that seem remotely plausible to actually occur.

I have been reading a book recently that indicates that, although people fear certain situations, the likelihood of these things happening are fairly slim. It gives facts and figures to back up the information but sadly it still doesn't stop me from worrying about meteorites falling on my flat or seeing a face staring through a window several storeys up. I've got that sort of 'The probability of that happening is miniscule...but it's still possible' mentality which is never going to help.

I think most of us live with a general fear day to day, there's so much to worry about and the overriding fears of the general public seem to have changed over the years.

With my OCD I worry about pretty much everything to the point where it affects my day to day functioning, the fear is often overwhelming but sometimes the fear of the opposite of something happening can be just as terrifying. Someone once told me that if a good opportunity comes along you need to grab it and not let fear hold you back. Fear of unemployment many years ago spurred me to walk into an office and ask for a job even though they hadn't advertised one - incidentally they gave me a job apparently because of my sheer courage (and a good reference helped I understand :) ). Fear of missing bugs made me strive to be as good at software testing as I can possibly be so I worked harder (and hopefully smarter). I've said on many occasions that although my OCD can often override my brain, it does have the advantage of making me strive harder at things and you can't beat enthusiasm and determination. I was told recently that my determination is palpable when it comes to beating my OCD but it is simply the fear of not being able to live my life properly that gives me the determination to carry on. So there you go, fear is not all bad I suppose.

Think of all the things you do each day or rather the things you may not do because of fear, you may be surprised. I dyed my hair a few weeks ago for the first time in my 32 year old life, what had always stopped me before was fear - fear I would hate the colour and fear that I would mess it up. I had my hair dyed a vibrant red and you know what, I love it! Fear stopped me doing it before but now I feel like a new woman!

Well, I may always fear the daleks, I may always fear things that go bump in the night but apparently I have been told that the only thing to fear is 'fear itself'...

Great, that's another fear to add to my anxiety ladder...

The fortnight of positivity!

It's easy to feel miserable in these times of financial hardship, high levels of unemployment and with winter drawing in. I've suffered from depression for a long time, which is odd considering that most people say that they think I am a cheerful person. Hmm, looks like I put on a really good show! It's no ones fault, I've been disguising my depression in the same way that I hid my OCD for so many years, now I just don't bother. I was a miserable child, a miserable teenager and I'm a miserable adult. My husband knows that if he finds me crying over a plotline in Eastenders and asks if I am ok, if I say I'm fine then it is just general depression - I do tend to tell him when something is wrong, he's not psychic. I've never really understood my depression to be honest, I just didn't want to be the kind of person who sits miserably in the corner at parties so I try very hard to seem happy. Oddly enough, trying to act happy makes me even more depressed!

The thing is that, in the grand scheme of things, I don't have that much to be miserable about - yeah I'm unemployed and have been for the longest time in my career, my health is not great but I have a truly fantastic husband who makes me feel great so surely that should cancel out depression? Nope, it doesn't work like that sadly, so to speak.

Anyway, I didn't start this blog entry to spread my misery my dear reader, quite the opposite actually. I came to a realisation about my general state of mind that has altered my perspective recently. It started last week...

For the past four months I haven't really interacted with many people at all, which explains the seeming lack of emotion in my writing at the moment. I am generally a very social person but OCD and depression do tend to make me pretty grim company! During these months I have spent most of my time in my flat and therefore the only interaction I have had with humans is my husband, my doctor, hospital staff, bus drivers (although the general conversation with them stretches to showing them my bus ticket and saying Thank you at the end of the journey) and my Dad (who coincidentally is the only bus driver I do get to have a conversation with :) ). I have spent a great deal of time watching TV, listening to the radio and reading news and other articles on the internet. This interaction has lead to a very bizarre and interesting tilt in my perspective.

For example, last week I was feeling particularly down as my OCD seemed to ease up for a few days then came back just as bad and this often frustrates me. I was unable to have a shower due to the fear and I spent about two days in bed, just sleeping and crying for the most part (Gosh, this really is a miserable blog entry! Apologies, there is a point to all this and it's a positive point so stick with it). When I spend any long period of time in my flat I do tend to lose touch with reality a little and it's easy for me to develop odd opinions based purely on what I have ingested informationwise over the course of the day.

Now, when watching TV my husband and I have differing tastes when it comes to quality entertainment - my husband very much enjoys documentaries, comedy shows, programmes about boats and ships and informative science shows. I on the other hand like some of these shows but I am queen of the guilty TV pleasure - as much as I want to give the impression that I am an intelligent person who watches sophisticated shows, there is still a part of me that clamours to watch mindless trash. I believe that there is a time and a place for informative shows but there should also be lots of time for the nonsensical fluff that clogs the TV. Oh and the adverts! The glorious, brightly coloured banners of the commercial break! Apparently, I was told that when I was a very small child I used to cry through the programmes and when the adverts came on I used to dry my eyes, sit up and pay attention. I am not sure what the adverts were like in the late 70's and early 80's but I'm sorry to all the people trying to sell me things - it's not like a baby can advise their parents to buy things is it. Anyway, I digress...

Last week I watched TV programmes on the following topics:

How an erupting volcano could possibly trigger another ice age
How an asteroid could wipe out the human race and pretty much all other life on the planet
How the bee population is dwindling and this could widely affect the food chain
The chances of us being able to find another planet to live on
Climate change and the effect of global warming
Crime in the UK
Shows about accidents and the terrible consequences
Shows about World War II and the loss of lives
A show on what is the most likely thing to end life on earth
News in general
Medical dramas

I've got to tell you that after a few days of feeling down and watching this kind of content, as you can imagine I was pretty much distraught. It's kind of my own fault though, I should have had the TV company put up a banner at the bottom of my TV stating 'Enjoy apocalyptic programmes responsibly'!

You see, as well as the other mental issues I have I also have been described as a 'naturally anxious personality' and so these shows, coupled with my unemployment and general feelings of uselessness as a member of society made me feel particularly depressed. It's easy for relatively small risks to have a big impact on me when I am particularly nervous. For example, after watching a particularly graphic programme on car crashes last week I point blank decided in my head never to get in another car - which is not really massively practical.

It's not the TV's fault, it didn't choose to turn itself on (actually our TV does have a habit of switching itself on during the night but it doesn't choose the shows that I should watch!). It's not the fault of the makers of the programmes or the broadcasters, in my case it's my fault for tuning in when depressed. Perhaps I should have sensors attached to my tear ducts that means that the slightest hint of misery and the TV tunes into something that I enjoy, like Scrubs, Wildlife S.O.S. or Frasier. Never mind a porn filter on my internet access, I need a misery filter!

I mean, I understand that generally good things seem to be more newsworthy than bad things, misery in TV shows is somehow more entertaining that watching happy people living their happy lives - soap operas would be ludicrously boring if everything went perfectly for every character. It reminds me of something my Mum said when I was a kid - while watching a film where the main character was given a quest I asked my Mum why they didn't just choose a different way of doing the quest that seemed easier and my Mum said 'Because if he did that the film would only last five minutes wouldn't it?' which in retrospect explains a lot of things about the shows I watch.

After thinking about my general environment recently, I came to the following conclusions:

I'm spending too much time in the flat not communicating with people properly
I'm watching too much miserable TV
I'm reading too much miserable stuff on the internet
I perhaps may have watched too many horror films
I haven't been listening to much cheerful music recently

Now, the getting out the flat part is not too easy and I will work on that but as for the other points, I'm going to surround myself with only positive information for the next two weeks and, in some sort of bizarre self experiment, attempt to lift myself out of the depression. It can't do any harm surely?

So my poor husband is saddled with me listening to cheerful music (not sure if listening to The Smiths while writing this blog entry really counts :) ) , watching TV shows that could be classed as light entertainment, taking positive steps each day to improve my health situation like attempting to learn to relax and generally attempting to think positive thoughts. It's not as easy as it sounds but, as people kept annoying me by saying 'try to think positive thoughts' I figure it's worth a go.

Two weeks of 'positive thinking'! Not sure how it's all going to pan out but my hopes aren't high :)

To all those who want to say 'I told you so'... :)

It was my birthday last week and, because I am a melancholy person at the best of times, I was reflecting on what I have learned over the course of the last 32 years. I came to a rather scary conclusion - even if age does lead to wisdom, your kids are never going to believe any of your advice until they get old too!

I found it frankly terrifying the other day that I referred to something 'in my day'! I'm 32, not 82! This led me to think about all the times when my parents or anyone older than me would say 'you'll understand when you grow up' - and I hate to say this and it truly pains me to admit that they were generally right.

For example, when I was about 14 I had my first boyfriend - he was a nice guy and we spent lots of time together but he became distant after about 6 months. This may have been down to the fact that my parents were divorcing and I was a bit of a mess and therefore was being a stroppy little diva - I can't remember the reason but he split up with me and I was totally devastated at the time. I moped about listening to Morrissey and The Smiths and The Cure, crying profusely and shouting at everyone that 'they didn't understand how I felt!!'. Now, looking back on this, perhaps I was a bit over dramatic but at the time I just thought that it was the worst thing that could ever happen - Ever! And at this time my Dad, going through a break up of his own, simply said 'you're 14 and in a few weeks time you wont even know what the fuss was all about' and at the time I really resented that comment - didn't he know that I was in pain! The truth was that after about 6 months my pain had eased and I had another boyfriend. It's not that I didn't care about my first boyfriend, I did care very much, it was just the mere fact that what my Dad was trying to say, in a possibly more tactless way, is that time heals pretty much just about anything - but I didn't believe that, well...not at the time anyway.

I didn't understand why my parents divorced, but as I got older and had relationships I started to realise how things can go easily downhill.

Incidentally, at 15 after my second boyfriend dumped me after about 6 months I wore black clothes and mourned the end of the relationship for about a year. I was a seriously overly dramatic teenager! That's the point though, at the time you think that it's the end of the world.

I also thought about other things that people had said to me over the years - for example 'When you are a teenager and in your early twenties, time seems to go really slow but once you hit late twenties/early thirties - time just flies!'. When I was 26, a friend of mine said this to me in the office I worked in. I didn't believe him at the time, he was older than me and in my head I just thought 'that wont happen to me!'. How could I ever be so wrong!

Another of my friends used to talk about going to DIY stores and buying furniture for his home and I, at the age of about 26, would rib him mercilessly and call his trips to furniture stores 'Dawn of the Domestic Dead' while mimicking a zombie (you get the picture) and he said 'one day, you'll be the same'. I laughed and said 'no way! I will never be like that!'...

...Cut to approximately four years later and I was stood in a popular furnishings store buying cushions and vases and wondering where to put the new lamp I had just picked out when I had a moment of clarity. I thought 'Oh no, he was right!' - and he was. Not only was I turning into the exact thing I had mocked but I was enjoying the purchase of household furnishings!

When one of my friends was planning his wedding several years ago he was telling me about choosing the design of wedding invitations and I said 'They're just invitations, I can't see what the fuss is all about' and he replied 'One day, when you get married, you'll understand how important they are'. Again, I just laughed it off but then last year when I was painstakingly applying miniscule champagne glasses outlines to bits of card for my own wedding, I could kind of see what he was getting at.

When I was single, people constantly told me that when I stopped looking for the perfect man that I would find him. I thought that was rubbish, until the moment when I looked at the man who is now my husband and realised that the perfect man for me was right under my nose and I just didn't realise. We celebrated our 1st year wedding anniversary last week and he makes me so happy - I really should listen to people more.

Another thing I have gained clarity on is the way that people can manipulate you for good and bad and how I didn't realise how right those people were that said 'when you look back on this, it will all make sense'.

How unfair is that?!? That you sometimes only truly learn that people are right after you have done the wrong thing? I suppose that really the phrase shouldn't be 'you learn from your mistakes' but rather 'after you have done something stupid, you truly will know why'.

I was such a pain in the bum for most of my life, never taking advice or truly believing that when people say 'you'll understand when you're older'. The funny thing is that, even though I have been through a fair amount of stuff in my life, no one will take my advice! Is that the punishment for not listening to my elders?

So, to all those people who said that I would understand things better as I got older - okay, you were right! you were right! you were right!

If anyone wants me, I'll be eating humble pie...

Smoke Free, Wheat Free, Alcohol Free and too much Free time...

My OCD has finally reduced me to this, sitting in front of the PC unable to go outside on my own and having to be looked after for a large amount of the time by my wonderful husband.

Don't get me wrong, I really like our flat - it's warm and safe and contains a large amount of fluffy bears - but staying in the flat for pretty much the best part of the last month is not my idea of a good time. I'm not being held here against my will, I could leave any time I wish - except I can't.

My OCD has reached epic proportions and I seemed to have developed some kind of agoraphobia which seems to mean that any time I need to go out, my husband has to come with me for reassurance and seeing as he works full time it's not always practical.

I never thought it would come to this, I'm under the care of my psychiatrist and my hormone/chemical levels are being checked. I have lost almost 2 stone due to stress and anxiety (which, while certainly not a good way to lose weight has made moving around slightly easier for me).

Anyway, I didn't decide to blog today to tell you all about my woes, not at all, I just thought that with the credit crunch, recession etc that I would discuss giving up my vices.

5 years ago I was a relatively heavy smoker, I guess you could say I was binge drinking a fair bit of the time too - although to be fair, my idea of binge drinking was drinking 2 glasses of wine on a saturday night then nothing else for a week. Perhaps you might have called me a sporadic drinker. I ate chocolate, lots of it - sticky, gooey, moreish chocolate. Essentially my diet wasn't exactly what you would call healthy.

Anyways, in 2007 my OCD caused me great distress and I gave up smoking - as terrible as it sounds I didn't give up for my health or because the cost was starting to get galactically high, I gave up smoking as I was so worried that an unextinguished (is that even a word???) cigarette would cause a massive fire and I couldn't cope with the responsibility of that happening. I always stubbed out my cigarettes and got rid of them but you never quite know if there are definitely out. So I stopped smoking, just like that. Well...I say 'Just like that', three little words that do not in any way shape or form convey the sheer torture of giving up smoking. Now, I know what you're thinking, that being a non smoker is a good thing and I should have felt healthier...but I didn't, not at the time anyway. I craved cigarettes, all I wanted was just one, that's all, I could stop anytime I wanted! Except...except that wasn't strictly true was it - I actually started smoking in the first place attempting to show someone how non addictive cigarettes are! What a fool I was!

I had tried a few things in the past but nothing seemed to replace that craving. Now, before I go on, I really do wish to say that I feel 200% better as a non smoker and I would encourage anyone to give up smoking where possible. However, when giving up smoking I had no way prepared myself for the hacking cough and hideous chest infection that I got just after quitting. For me, getting through the first three months was possibly the most unpleasant period of my life health wise - just to reitterate though, definitely worth giving up smoking. It took about 6 months before the cravings really subsided and after that it's been pretty easy.

I gave up caffeine and anything caffeine related about 10 years ago so I was ok there - the next thing I had to give up was alcohol. Aaah, alcohol - a glass of chilled wine with a meal or the riotous tequila slammer - so good and yet so incredibly bad if I have too much! In order to get through my OCD bad patch I had to dispense with the alcohol altogether in order to prevent my condition from worsening - believe me, I held off the giving up of alcohol for as long as I could but when I was scrubbing my hands raw and crying with the fear of contamination and the sheer anxiety of worrying about the door not being locked, I had to concede that the OCD was back big style and my relationship with alcohol had to stop. For the moment anyway.

I gave up chocolate last month, I suppose strictly speaking that was down to the fact that I couldn't go out anywhere alone to get some and I had sort of said to my husband that I was giving up chocolate so he didn't buy any - bless him.

Also, due to the pain I am still suffering in my abdomen (yep, it's been approximately 10 months now and I still don't have a diagnosis for the pain :( ) I was told to see if a wheat free diet would help, just incase it was wheat intolerance.

Now, before I continue, I just want to say to all those people with wheat or gluten allergies or intolerances - I really feel for you. Going on a wheat free diet was the most complicated thing I have done in a long long time. You see, my main diet has always been rich in things such as pasta, bread, biscuits etc so giving up pretty much everything I usually eat and adopting a wheat free diet for a month was incredibly hard. I lost half a stone purely from lack of food as it was just so difficult to find things that were wheat free. The local supermarkets have a range of wheat free foods, some better than others, but it was just so hard to think about anything other than bread! I didn't think that you could become addicted to bread but there you go, I thought that the wheatful loaves in the supermarket were mocking me, saying 'aah, what's that in your basket there? Wheat-free bread? Hmm, going to enjoy that are you?' when all I wanted was a thick slice of buttered toast. The wheat free bread, whilst trying darn hard to satisfy me was just not enough and I started craving illicit sandwiches in the wee small hours oozing with mayonaise and mustard...

Then there was the matter of wheat free pasta. Again, it tried it's best but there is just no substitute for a wheatful lasagne. So every day I ate my wheat free pasta and bread. I didn't eat any rice either as I was told to avoid that too. Essentially I existed on chicken, a few veg (shock horror) and potato - incidentally, when it comes to potato products, there's wheat in some unexpected places.

Like I said, I really feel for anyone on a wheat free diet as my husband and I only kept to the menu for a month before diving straight back into our old ways. Sadly, it didn't help with the abdomen pain but as experiments go, it was fairly eye opening.

Which leads me to the enormous amount of free time I seem to have at the moment. Recently my role at work became redundant and due to the lack of any other suitable roles within the company I find myself consigned to the unemployment queue of life.

Unfortunatley, as my OCD has worsened to terrible levels and my abdomen pain is still there, the chance of finding a job at the moment is bleak. I have a fair amount of therapy to undergo before I can even leave the house, let alone find a job.

I haven't felt well enough to go outside alone, I've found it difficult to talk to people or see my friends or even communicate at all and I worry constantly about contamination from objects in my flat so, as you can imagine, my life at the moment has consisted of hours of TV.

With all of the other things I have given up, my lack of vices, has led me to becoming addicted to Television. My free time is consumed by repeats of Casualty, Doctors, The Jeremy Kyle Show along with the newer additions such as The Inbetweeners, Torchwood, Psychoville, That Mitchell and Webb look etc. Which just goes to show that my brain always has to have something to be addicted to just to keep me going.

With all this free time and mental issues I have started to become peculiar - yesterday I had to admit to my husband that I talk to my teddy bears during the day, I don't have long existential discussions with them I just comment on the TV to them. Surely that's not too strange though, don't judge me :)

Stress and anxiety can do a lot to the body and mind - I find it extremely difficult to have a shower these days without having a panic attack. The only thing that I can successfully do on my own is go to the toilet, everything else seems to have become a team effort or tasks that my husband has had to take over from me. While I know that at some point I will feel better, things are pretty hard at the moment.

Giving up all the things I have given up has certainly been quite a journey - when do I get to be OCD Free?

Growing old in the time of 'lol'

Perhaps I am just getting old but the other day I realised that I don't think I have ever written 'lol' as part of a text, email etc. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong but I really can't remember a time I have ever written 'lol' - apart from here, and the status updates on Facebook and Twitter where I have mentioned that I have not written it in communication to people of course. Perhaps I just have no sense of humour and that the reason I have not written it is because I didn't find anything humorous enough?

Or then again it could be for the fear of getting it wrong, worrying that it may not mean Laugh Out Loud but something perverse or tremendously bad. Too often I have seen people write down abbreviations only to have to retract them as they were inappropriate to the sentence.

This got me thinking that really, when it comes to the new language that seems to have been created on the internet, SMS etc I am horribly out of my depth. You are reading the thoughts of someone who actually had to look up 'LMAO' through Google to fathom out what everyone was talking about. It just seems to me that a brand new language seems to have seeped into the technological community while I was going for long walks or playing Elite Beat Agents on my DS.

I never really thought of myself as old before, I'm 32 this year, but these days I really do find myself saying things like 'I remember when the only games console I could get was a Sinclair ZX81'. We weren't a rich family, not by any stretch of the imagination but we had that ZX81 for many years. I still remember my Mam staying up most of the night to program a game into the ZX81 which was supposed to be like Frogger but turned out to be a few x's running the length of the screen being chased by z's.

At some point we had a Dragon 32 which I have got to say, sparked within me the adoration of the first truly brilliant game I had ever played - Jetset Willy. Where else in those days could you be chased by hoovers and toilets while clearing up after what seemed to be the worlds most psychadelic party! I never completed it of course, I found out many many years later from one of the producers in my office that there was a major bug that prevented the game from being completed. Mind you, considering I could barely get even a quarter of the way through the game that wasn't going to be too much of an issue for me.

I had a Gameboy when I was about 15 (still have it somewhere - only had two games for it though). And then nothing. For years. I didn't have a games console or anything even close to that until a few years ago when I bought a Nintendo DS. I had a PC and my husband bought me a Nintendo Wii a few years ago but during that time I didn't really play a lot of games. Which may surprise people when they hear that I used to be a games tester. As I said in my interview at the time, I never set out to be a games tester - I love testing software and games had so many interesting facets to test, it was a wonderful opportunity for me. Anyway, I digress...

On my way to the doctors last week I heard a group of teenagers on the bus discussing their phones and iPods and it really made me think how far we have come in terms of entertainment. I had a battered Sony Walkman for most of my teenage years and adulthood, it took a lot of coaxing from one of my friends to even get me to look at an MP3 player when they finally arrived. I resisted CD's for a long time as I thought that they weren't as good as cassette tapes. I mean, for crying out loud - I have a Betamax video and about 40 tapes, I remember when the only face cream I could get in my town was Oil of Ulay (and for any young person reading this - nope, that's not a misprint) and I remember when you could go out and leave your door open...

Yep, I think that successfully concludes that I am getting old, in one sentence. I marvel at the rudeness of people on the TV - I remember when the Weakest Link was shocking in terms of insults and I remember when I first saw the Jerry Springer Show and was aghast that someone had cheated on their partner with five other people. I remember when the internet didn't exist, when I had never heard of wikipedia and twittering was something done by the birdies in the trees.

Not that I want to go back in time, goodness no, there are so many wonderful things on this planet that make life so much better. Watching my husband and his brother playing Left 4 Dead on the XBox and listen to my husband telling his brother not to keep running off in the game, only for him to do the same and almost fall off a ledge. Getting massive cramp in my wrist attempting to finish 'Sweet Home Alabama' on Guitar Hero on the Nintendo DS. Listening to 'Don't Stop Believing' by Journey on an MP3 player the size of a match box.

I may be old but the excitement from all the new technology we have now gosh darn it just makes me feel so young again.

Obscrussions

I think I may have just invented a new word today that completely sums up a feeling I often get that is kind of halfway between an obsession and a crush. Allow me to elaborate...

When I was about 17 I attended a Maths class (yes, ok, I got a D in my GCSE maths and had to resit it - in my defence, in the resit I got a B!) and the teacher of the class was a wonderful guy. He had a great sense of humour and a quick wit and I was totally smitten. Now, this guy was probably in his late thirties or early forties and his fashion sense was not his primary concern but I thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. The thing is that, and heres the thing, I had no desire to sleep with him/have any sexual contact etc I just thought that he was wonderful. That's the odd thing about having an obscrussion, you think that the object of the thoughts is fascinating and extraordinary, but you have no sexual feelings towards it/them whatsoever.

Thankfully I don't think that I ever mentioned this strange obscrussion to anyone as they would have mercilessly ribbed me and said 'You fancy him!!!'. No one would have understood that I didn't want a relationship with the man, I was just enthralled by him. Also, I just want to point out that I never did anything about it and I presume that he is still blissfully unaware of my feelings, well...unless he has read this I suppose.

Anyway, that was one in a long line of obscrussions I have had over the years with men, women and objects. It seems that the obscrussions are present regardless of my sexual preference - despite being completely heterosexual I had a massive obscrussion on Kylie Minogue, again - never did anything about it, well, except for buying her singles, albums and wanting to look like her when I was a teenager.

You see, that's the thing, you can never truly convince anyone that you don't want to have sexual contact with the person that your obscrussion is currently based. I used to get the whole 'Oh, you fancy him! You do! You blushed!' when I am still as pale as I have always been, I don't know if I have ever blushed and believe me, I've lived through some pretty toe curling moments during the course of my life.

Having OCD, obsessions are pretty much par for the course for me - intrusive thoughts, obsessing over the tiniest detail, one good reason why I have always seemed pretty competant as a software tester and also, when I came up with this word Io gt so obsessed that I had to write this blog entry - and I have had crushes during my life and so it was difficult to define a feeling that wasn't exactly an obsession or a crush. More like something in between.

I've had obscrussions about the most oddest things - my friend's hair for example...

My friend will remain nameless in this instance as he is, as far as I know, unaware of this strange feeling that consumed me so badly several years ago. I became completely fascinated with his hair - the colour, the shape, the texture. I used to sit in an office near him (oh boy, he is probably going to guess at some point) and every week day I would find myself staring at his hair, wanting to touch it mainly but generally just wanting to look at it. Now, let me assure you that while this gentleman was one of the nicest people I know, I had no desire to be anything other than friends with him. It wasn't an obsession as it didn't occupy my every waking moment or get in the way of my day to day duties and it wasn't a crush as there was no sexual nature to it - it was something in between.

The funny thing is that I go through phases where I become incredibly fascinated with something then I will pretty much drop it like a hot potato. For example, I watched The League of Gentlemen several years ago - I bought the series 1 DVD and eagerly went home to watch it. The very next day I went out and bought the series 2 and 3 DVDs, the Christmas Special and the Live DVD. I bought a T-shirt and for a while it was my hot topic. Then it was Frasier - I watched every single episode, many times, before I dropped that too, in the pit of my discarded obscrussions. At first it was mainly TV shows - Scrubs, Top Gear, Spaced, The Mighty Boosh - then it became TV characters - House (played by the very talented Hugh Laurie), Doctor Who (mainly David Tennant - despite complaining that I 'didn't like the new guy' after Christopher Eccleston I soon found myself buying Doctor Who mugs, watches, going to the Doctor Who museum in Blackpool etc What can I say, I warmed to him), Dr Cox from Scrubs (pretty much summing up my obscrussions on grumpy people in general - also see Edmund Blackadder and Inspector Morse ((I know, I know, what can I say really))).

Anyway, after ruining that sentence I should probably calm down a little but that's the thing, I get ridiculously passionate about something for a very short period of time then before you know it I have moved onto another obscrussion. I've had these feelings about Gordon Ramsay, Charlie Brooker, Richard Hammond when I have absolutely no desire to even meet them in real life - I just want to see everything they have been in on the TV. I don't want to stalk them, I've got far better things to do with my time, I just have a mild obscrussion.

Now, I don't think that I am entirely alone in this as my Dad is very similar. After my parents divorced I lived with my Dad for about 5 years before I came up to Edinburgh to go to university and during those 5 years I watched him go through a number of obscrussions.

At one point, all he wanted to buy was Bonsai Trees - not the real ones I might add but the cute little plastic/glass ornaments. The small house was filled with them, like a mini fake bonsai forest. Then he was all about the bronze, every ornament he bought had to be bronze. Then it was novelty tea pots, then onyx - he must have been a car boot sales traders dream. Oddly enough after that it became hoovers, then TV's, then computers, until his house started to look not disimilar to something from Steptoe and Son. It was always clean but the amount of junk in that house was breathtaking. This led me to think that perhaps it wasn't just me.

For me, my OCD and obscrussions appear to be totally separate. I get obsessed about numbers and the way songs sound and whether the door is locked or the hob is off (seriously, it takes me about 30 mins to leave the house with all of the checks I have to do - and that's on a good day) whereas my obscrussions appear to be totally different.

One of my biggest fears at one stage was that, when I took my OCD meds I was afraid that I would find out that my feelings for my husband were just an obscrussion or obsession as the meds allude to take away or at least ease the obsessions. The obsessions were eased and thankfully my strong feelings for my husband still remain and are definitely not an obscrussion. I love him more every day.

Even with the meds I still have obscrussions though so if you ever see me in HMV, clutching a handful of DVD's at the till - all starring David Tennant or Simon Pegg, be warned that my obscrussions rage on.

And if you see me staring at your hair, heck just take it as a compliment! :)

The Gas man, the broken washing machine and the obese Wii Mee

Last week was, quite frankly, miserable. Don't worry dear reader, I'm not going to get all depressed on you now - there were some funny aspects admittedly but it was mostly miserable.

It started with the letter from the gas company a few weeks ago...

According to the gas company, who will remain nameless, they had visited our property on many occasions and left cards etc but they had not been able to gain access to our flat to examine the meter for it's yearly check thingie. Now, here's the deal - I have been off sick from work for approximately 4 months and I have been in most of the time (when I haven't been at the hospital having parts of me probed or at the doctors). So either they were going to a totally different property or just very confused. Anyway, they said that they would come round 2 weeks ago. I waited in all day and they failed to show up. I was quite rightly livid and my husband phoned them back and rearranged the appointment. Anyway, to cut a long story hopefully reasonably short, they finally were scheduled to arrive last wednesday.

They claimed that they would phone ten minutes prior to arrival and that it would be between 8am and 12 noon. So at 9am I was still in bed - I still have a lot of abdomen pain, don't you judge me now :) - when the buzzer to the main door of the flat parped loudly. I jumped up to answer it and no one spoke on the intercom, despite my plaintive cries of 'Hello?'. Then there was a hard rap on the door and as I had only just clambered out of bed I was wearing fleecy pyjamas and a huge bright pink fuscia dressing gown and pink furry slippers (attractive huh?) with the most ridiclous bed hair. I opened the door breathlessly, I had gotten a shock when the buzzer went ok and I'm not as healthy as I used to be!, and said the following: 'Oh, oh, thank goodness you've come, I've been expecting you!'

Now, I don't usually get so excited when men come to read the meter but I had spent an entire day the week before waiting for them and I was so relieved! I wouldn't have to spend an entire day wondering if I could go to the loo uninterrupted or start eating without having to discard the food untouched because the doorbell rang etc

Anyway, back to my wholly inappropriate comment at the door...

I don't know who was more shocked - me because I had said something that could be misconstrued or him because he thought he was going to get molested by some desperate housewife with a pink fixation (I'm neither desperate or fixated on pink, I'd just like to add). To make matters worse, as I had just climbed out of bed and as the door was open, the guy could see right through to the bedroom with the covers pulled back as if I was ready to drag him in! By this point my face was probably the colour of my gown and fluffy slippers. So what did I do in this embarrassing situation my dear reader - did I shut up and motion wordlessly to the meter? did I pretend it had not been said? Oh no, that would have been too easy, I spluttered and said 'Oh no, that must have sounded so dodgy, I'm not expecting you in that way! It's nothing dodgy like that or anything I just mean that...'. Then I did what I should have done in the first place, motioned towards the meter and shut my trap. The rather bewildered man rushed in, looked at the meter, pressed a couple of buttons on his handheld machine and said 'That's fine, goodbye'. Never has a gas man checked a meter so quickly! Now, to be fair, they did say that they would give me 10 minutes notice and that never materialised so you could say that it was their fault I was in that situation - let's just say that if someone needs to do something to the flat, I will be ready at least ten minutes before the start of the period in which they will arrive...or at least pretend I have laryngitis and can't talk!

Which leads me to the second problem last week - the Sickness of the Washing Machine! About two weeks ago, our washing machine was a fairly happy kitchen appliance, washing it's way through load after load of yummy clothing but then it developed some sort of major blockage and conked out. I'm no washing machine expert, everything I know about washing machines could be written on the head of a match, then ignited as I don't actually know anything about them at all. After continually harrassing my husband to phone my dad, who quite frankly eats washing machines for breakfast (well, not so much as eats as fixes but you get the general idea), he finally phoned my dad.

Just as a brief aside, my Dad has been into all things mechanical for decades - when I was 15 I came home from school to find him sat on the dining room carpet with some sort of long metal pipe, scrubbing the inside of what appeared to be the engine of a car. I said 'Dad, what's that?', eyeing the oil which had somehow crept over the poorly laid newspaper onto the axminster carpet (that sounds quite grand carpet but it had been on the floor for approximately 25 years before being desecrated by various machinery so it was, by now, a bit worse for wear). My Dad replied 'it's the engine from the car'. What can you say to that really? I think that when my parents divorced that my Dad thought 'Right, see this carpet? I'm gonna get me some machinery on this carpet and no woman is going to stop me!' and to be fair, as I was the only girl/women in the house, I didn't really. He hauled washing machines out of skips to restore them to their former glory, vacuum cleaners from scrap yards to vacuum another day! Basically as long as my Dad can get something open he can generally fix it - with the exception of my Jem doll with the LED earrings. He cut the top of the dolls head open to fix a broken LED then realised that even if he affixed the top of the head she would still look like Frankenstein's monster and that's just scary for kids.

Anyway so my poor put upon husband eventually phoned my Dad. My husband is very skilled at fixing things but my Dad has eons of experience so I thought that between the two of them they could probably fix it. After much to-ing and fro-ing it was found that the filter and pump were hidden and the problem seemed to be with one of these items. Whilst I am aware of the purpose of a filter and pump in several objects, I'm not particularly familiar with any of the gobbledegook that was coming out of the phone from my Dad or from my husband with regards to how they function in the washing machine. As the problem didn't seem to be easily fixable and the machine is less than a year old, it was decided that an engineer would be called.

This was prior to the gas man incident but I was still annoyed that I would have to spend two days waiting for various workpeople.

Now, as you may have realised, I have OCD and while I'm not wholly fixated on cleaning, I am terrifed of germs and contamination - yep, it seems daft I know and the rational part of my brain agrees with everyone else but the OCD part is a lot harder than the rest of my brain and can generally bully me into submission. The washing machine engineer was prompt and, as he arrived the day after the gas man, I was ready and dressed and watching The Jeremy Kyle Show as he arrived - at least he was on time. The guy came into the flat and plonked his laptop on our clean worktop protector - I visibly flinched, considering the germs/dirt that would now be lurking (I'm sure he is a very clean man but that just does not mean diddly squat to someone with OCD). I had just boiled the kettle to make him a cup of coffee which he declined and he put his coat over the kettle. All I could think about was that something might fall out of his pocket into the kettle and make us all ill or that the kettle would be hot and burn a hole in his jacket, causing a fire and he would have to dangle me out of the window to escape - the kettle is near the window and I would have to run the other way but that's not the point.

He then asked me if I had a bucket, I gave him a bucket but it turned out that it was too deep so, as there was no other alternative, he had to use the washing up bowl. Anyone else would have allowed him to use the washing up bowl and then washed it afterwards but not me, I had to go out and buy a new washing up bowl that very day - I jest ye not - and that was just a riot trying to cart it around on the bus.

He then asked if we had a towel. I thought that he was just going to wipe his hands on it but it turned out he was going to wipe the floor, the inner rim of the washing machine etc which again led me to dispose of the towel later on.

He kept pouring the dirty water from the washing machine into the sink caring little of the splashage onto the freshly washed plates and cutlery that resided in the drainer. The clean washing up sponge was hurled into the mini sink (that I never touch because it is too disgusting for some reason) in a cavalier fashion meaning that it too, like the towel, had to go. Essentially I was in the middle of an OCD nightmare that only lasted for 30 minutes but believe me, felt a lot longer.

Needless to say, I had to scrub the entire kitchen once it was over and go out and buy a new washing up bowl, drainer and new sponges. The 'contaminated' items are now languishing in our kitchen, hoping to be revived and used for other household purposes, preferably not by me.

Anyway, last week was also the week that I decided that enough is enough with my weight. I used to be so slim but now, well I wont tell you my weight but my BMI is now almost 37 which is pretty bad as things go. It's quite odd as about four or five years ago I had anorexia nervosa. I struggled with the cruel eating disorder for several years and at my lightest I was about 7 stone 6. I've always had a strange relationship with food and just over a year ago I gave up smoking which in many ways was a good thing but for my weight it was a huge mistake. I'm sure that not all people who give up smoking put on weight but I ate for Scotland - chocolate, crisps, mainly chocolate - I became orally fixated (yes, go on, have a chuckle).

So, combined with the terrible abdomen pain I have, I have managed to acquire 4 stone within a year. That would be impressive if the weight was diamonds or gold but as it is fat it is not nearly as welcome.

I decided that, even though I can't do much exercise because of the pain, that I would use Wii Fit for the Yoga to at least tone up. As someone who used to do boxercise and could easily get into the crab position all those years ago I kind of thought that it would be a breeze. I was so wrong.

Aside from the fact that when the Wii Balance Board weighed me and told me I was obese, it also made my Wii Me obese so not only is my podgy body right under my nose, it is now staring at me from the TV screen as I exercise - Nice. I know that this is to motivate me and I have indeed lost a pound in the past week, it's still very depressing to be told that I have a Wii Fit age of 44 (I'm 31). Thankfully I don't cry easily! Actually...actually that's a lie, as I'm off my OCD meds I cry like a baby at the merest hint of a polar bear on the TV but anyway, at least I didn't hit the ice cream feeling like a failure.

I've been doing the yoga and some of the muscle exercises and I do feel better for it but I have to admit to cravings for chocolate, cakes, mainly chocolate and often a cigarette!

All in all, last week was fairly depressing and I was hoping this week would be better but after forgetting my PIN number at the ATM this morning I'm not sure that's going to be the case.

Also, the boiler needs fixing...

Loneliness - Deal or No Deal?

My dad has been single for ages and he said he isn't lonely, he claims he potters along quite merrily on his own thank you very much. Still, it doesn't stop me worrying about him or wondering if his protestations of non-loneliness are entirely true. I just got married last year and so am still in the sickeningly in love stage but I still have quite a few friends who live a solitary life.

One of my friends is single at the moment and he claims that life is terrible without human contact and he is desperately looking for someone to share his life. He's tried some dating sites and so forth but with little luck. He said that it's just difficult to know where to go to meet people.

This got me thinking. Place to meet people, human contact...Perhaps the answer is to apply to go on Deal or No Deal!

Now bear with me, that may seem like a mad statement but lets face it - you get to meet at least 21 other people on the first day alone and you may have already seen them on the tv (I'm not sure if you get to watch the programme just before going on it?).

It sounds as if they all get to spend time in the hotel so you would be with all the other people and you could go out for a drink - you all have the same reason for being there so you have at least one thing in common and each time you open your box in the game you may get a hug or a kiss from the player - so there's the human contact right there!

Plus, as one player leaves another enters so there will always be a supply of at least one new person per game. Out of all the contestants there, surely not all of them are married and even if they are they may have friends who are single and lonely and want to meet someone.

Also, to add to all this good stuff you may win a nice amount of money to go for meals etc with your new friend - if they are a contestant too they may have won a large amount of money too and so you may be able to rule out the whole golddigging worries. Even if you can't find anyone on the show, your face is being beamed out to millions of people in the UK, surely the TV time alone is enough to give you enough publicity to get your message out there.

All this and you get to meet the lovely Noel Edmonds! Really, what more could anyone ask?

To sleep, perchance to stop obsessing...

Current biggest obsession: Scrubs (TV show)


I have had raging insomnia since I was about 14, possibly longer and I suspect that unless something drastically changes in my mind - I'm never going to be rid of it. It's like a stalker, constantly mocking me and shaking it's head as if to say 'If you didn't like me, you could get rid of me any time you want' - sort of like a crazy ex-boyfriend (don't worry, that never happened...or perhaps it did and I'm just too tired to remember).

I did briefly find a cure, my OCD medication makes me flake out - I don't so much as fall asleep as pass out - but due to the other meds I have had to take for my pain recently, I have had to come off my OCD medication. As a brief aside, I had completely forgotten how bad my OCD is until I came off the meds. How I had laughed at what I considered my silliness when I went onto the meds - now the checking, the constant worrying and the downright scary handwashing is back with a vengence.

Anyway, a few nights ago I spent most of the night staring at the TV, begging my mind to let my body sleep - sort of like a hostage situation. Parts of my body were saying:

Body: 'Please, we beg you, we'll do anything you want...'
Brain: 'Reeheally?' (Sort of a cross between Jim Carrey and Dr Cox from Scrubs)
Body 'Anything! Just let us rest!'
Brain: 'Even though you are sore, you'll still wash hands everytime I have a random worry??'
Body 'Erm...I guess so, the hands are pretty sore though...'
Brain: 'Silence!! I will have no quarrel! Do you accept the terms?'

Even though that isn't an entirely real scenario it wouldn't have helped even if my body agreed as my brain was in full party mode. I tried everything get some rest - trying to remember all of the cast of The Bill in the early days (I just want to point out that this was a dangerous move as the last time I did this I spent the night not being able to sleep and two days trying to remember the name of the geordie lady - it was Liz Wroughton), trying to count sheep - nothing helped. All that happened was that my brain alternated between singing 'Take me ridin' in my car car, take me ridin' in my car car' from the recent Audi car advert and a snippet of Scrubs that showed J.D and Turk singing 'A surgeon and a doc above it all' on a fire escape. All. Night.

I've done everything over the years to encourage sleep - lavender on my pillow, no caffiene ever, relaxation tapes. Incidentally, the last time I did a relaxation tape I was in a flat where my bed was right near the window with no headboard and right at the moment where the lady said 'Relax your head' I brought my head back to the pillow and rubbed the curtain resulting in the curtain rail falling and hitting me square in the face. That's perhaps a poor reason to abandon the tapes but I just got to thinking that perhaps relaxation tapes are just not for me.

I can't relax, it's just something I don't know how to do - I'm constantly fraught with one worry or another. When I smoked I spent most of my time worrying that if I stubbed out a cigarette and put it in the bin like a good citizen that the cigarette would spark back into life and would ignite an aerosol in the bin causing the bin to blow up as a pregnant lady with a pushchair with quadruplets walked by and I'd be responsible for their demise. Believe me, there's no surefire way to quit smoking than to have OCD. The above scenario never happened but it was certainly enough to make me worry incessantly.

People have asked me to try acupuncture for my insomnia. Now, I try not to be cynical about things, too much, but I just can't see how needles in my face etc can make me sleep. Unless I have a sort of reset button like you see at the back of some MP3 players to switch me into 'safe mode' or to reboot me entirely. Surely that wouldn't be good, like a phone when you restore factory settings, would I forget peoples contact info or memories that I have enjoyed?? Even if the acupuncture did work I would just worry that there would be a needle hole that would remain open and that some sort of infection would finish me off and that worry would probably keep me awake anyway.

I wouldn't care but when I do sleep, my dreams are totally kickass at times. Except for the zombie dreams - I am a huge zombie fan and this has led to some pretty interesting but terrifying dreams over the years. Freud apparently claimed that dreams are wish fulfilment - if that's true I am one sick little puppy. I'm fairly sure that I don't want to be devoured by a zombie, or anything else for that matter.

Perhaps one day my insomnia will go away or I will become more relaxed. In the meantime I'm going to avoid any catchy tv tunes and Scrubs...nah, cancel that last thought... :)

My MRI and why can't hospitals be more like Scrubs...

I had to have an MRI this week and let me just say this, it wasn't at all what I had expected...

Firstly I had to sit in the waiting room and drink a bizarre cocktail of what tasted like blackcurrant gone wrong and aniseed - 1.5 litres of the stuff! Now don't worry, it is not the same for all conditions, apparently different MRI investigations require different potions as I found out. What I had was a contrast agent.

Anyway, as I sat in the waiting room drinking my mutant gunk, I was joined by two elderly gentlemen, one of whom was with his wife. Both men were drinking what appeared to be water but, judging by his reaction while gulping it down, it was obviously some kind of concoction too. Someone asked if they could have some of my drink but I had to decline with the comment 'I don't think that's allowed'.

The wierdest thing was that while we slugged our liquid down, we got chatting in some sort of amiable way, held together by our need to find answers - It was like being at a really strange cocktail party. It started as one guy was complaining about having to drink what we thought was water and I said 'Hey, it could be worse, you could be drinking this blackcurrant nonsense'.

The man to my left with his wife proceeded to explain that he had a cyst on his kidney that no one could find for eight years. He explained that now he can't eat eggs but that he still has them 'every day of my life'. At which point his wife interjected with 'No you don't, ooh you liar, you don't!' to which he replied 'Of course I do woman, I had some this morning for my breakfast!'. It became quite comical as everything that he said he was not allowed to have but he did have became a bickering match with his kindly wife who said 'You don't have that!!'.

Just as everything was starting to get more unreal I realised that I had finished the 1 litre of contrast agent and everyone hoorahed and said 'there you go, you've finished, stop moaning'. This relief was dissipated quickly as the nurse came back into the waiting room to give me the other 500ml. Now, I try not to moan, I really do try, but I just couldn't finish the whole lot - sat there in the strange pub like area with a mangled polite smile on my face due to the taste of the liquid - try as I might I could only manage 1.3l of the stuff and that was an almighty struggle.

By this point I felt sick and immensely sorry for myself when several things started to make me feel a bit less pity for myself and a bit more pity for the two gents beside me.

The guy on the left had just finished telling me the kidney cyst story and the pills he had had to take when the gent beside me piped up with 'When I had cancer, during chemo I had to take medication that was so toxic that I wasn't allowed to touch it as I swallowed it!'. I'm not sure how that works exactly but it sounded pretty horrific. At this point the guy on my left said 'That's pretty bad but I have a heart murmur too'. Sympathy seemed to shift in the room and I noticed some of the other waiting patients drawing forward, poised for the disease-off that was sure to follow...

The gent to my life swigged back his gunk disguised as water and said 'Well I have diabetes and when I had this stuff last time I had a blood sugar level of 2.2!'

They both looked at me as if I were either a referee or that I was going to come up with a disease so horrific that it would trump all theirs and leave them reeling.

I cleared my throat then said, possibly rather pathetically, 'erm...I've had a pain in my pelvis for 4 months and the MRI is hopefully going to find the cause'. Bang! like a game of poker it didn't seem as bad as their diseases and they went back to challenging each other.

Sadly I was removed from the room to have my scan before they got to the real climax of their apparent disease off. I was taken into a room and told to remove my clothes except for my pants and socks - mmm, attractive huh? Then to put on a gown that fastened at the back - is this for a purpose or just to make it a bit more embarrassing if it suddenly flies open?

I sort of imagined it would be like Scrubs, perhaps I just watch way too much tv or perhaps it's just that in real life things are never as funny as they are on the tv, but it was all very clinical and not jokey in the least - which is a shame as the only thing I wanted to take away the fear was a bit of a laugh.

They took me into the MRI room wehich actually seemed quite cheery and I gave them my CD. They can play you a CD while you have the scan and they put kicking headphones on you which makes you feel like a DJ (Well, it made me feel like I a DJ but I'm quite sad and have an overactive imagination).

My glasses and hair band was removed but I got to keep my engagement and wedding ring on as they were made of platinum and I was placed on a bed, poised to enter the enormous machine.

All I can say is that I am really glad I am not claustraphobic as there felt like there was only about 4 inches between my nose and the top of the scanner. I was basically in a tube. Now, I have many fears in life and I spend a great deal of my waking life worrying about a variety of horrible scenarios and just before the lady wheeled me into the MRI machine she said 'it may be a little warm in there after a while but it's fine as there is a fan at the top of the machine to keep you nice and cool'. To anyone else this would have been immensely comforting, but to me with my diseased mind I thought 'How close to me is the fan??? But my hair is now loose, what if it gets stuck in the fan!!!'. I then thought 'oh no, what if the fan is at the top of the tube and the bed gets pushed too far and my head gets sliced into pieces by the fan like a meat slicing machine!!!'. Let me tell you, Not Going To Happen!!!. After a mild 30 second panic attack in my head I managed to lie still in the machine with panels placed on my abdomen, presumably to aid the scan.

All I can say is that, it didn't seem like it always does on shows like House. I sort of expected a bang bang bang noise but to my panic soaked brain it sounded like the sound of a dot matrix printer or a photocopier of sorts. I spent probably 30 mins in the machine - most of which was divided between the fan worries, fears that I actually might be claustraphobic and then realising that I'm just not, listening to Nina Simone quietly singing 'I put a spell on you' and wondering if the printer noise was actually the photocopying of my body (As if they might scan me, take out the bad bits and then send the copy out as me and leave me in the tube forever...until the fan got me.

As it was, they pulled me out of the machine after about 30 mins and told me to get dressed and go home - not so much as a 'Mind how you go' or anything but with a 'Your doctor will get your results in about 2 weeks'.

So now I wait...

Lets Face(book) it :)

Please allow me to introduce myself, my name is H and I have OCD. I have had OCD as long as I can remember but I was only formally diagnosed with it about 2 years ago. Phew! Glad that's out of the way!

I have been ill for a few months with abdomen pain and because of this I have spent those months sitting in my flat awaiting various parts of the NHS to examine parts of me that even I don't really want access to. Last week, for example, I had a colonoscopy which is by far and away the most horrendous test I have ever had to go through. Anyway, I will get to that in time, once I have stopped emotionally rocking back and forth in my head hugging my knees. I digress...

Lately, due to my lack of socialising in the real world I have been using Facebook as a way of pretending to myself that I have had the odd bit of human contact other than my husband and various medical staff. The one thing that occurred to me is that Facebook has started to make me sad, actually that's a tad unfair as it is not the fault of Facebook but the fault of all the wonderful people I know that are having great lives.

It seems that most of the women I know are either pregnant, travelling to exotic places, modelling or generally enjoying themselves. Now, while I think this is wonderful...for them...I can't help but feel that the world out there is rock and rolling as I am sat in my flat day after day. I haven't had a diagnosis for the pain that I have and so while I am waiting for the that I am living vicariously.

Whilst I was feeling envious, I wondered also if it is just me or is everyone envious of the photos of drinking games, spectacular locations and general tomfoolery posted by other people - the witty banter!

Now, I have a husband, a wonderful man whom I love with all my heart and we enjoy our lives but I can't help but feel like perhaps people are enjoying themselves more than me - I've become ridiculously competitive which is exactly what I don't want.

Then, aaah a panacea for the pain, I have become faintly obssessed with talk shows. One in particular - that's the terrible thing about OCD, sometimes you can become obssessed with things that you really don't want to be obsessed with and you can't get them out of your mind no matter what you try.

There is a particular talk show that I am very fond of, wholly due to the almost agressive and forthright attitude of the host (I'm not obsessed with the host, don't worry) and while I understand that certain problems probably need an audience of maybe your family, friends etc they perhaps don't need to be on national television. However, I can sort of see the point of this sometimes, although today I was watching the humiliation of a poor women who had been lied to repeatedly by her partner who was not exactly Brad Pitt. Now, whether you view it as entertainment or genuinely helping people - there are some pretty messed up family units out there and up until a few years ago I kind of understood what it was like to get into some tricky situations without really intending. When my husband said 'Does this stuff really happen to people?!?' I had to concede that, yes, it does - thankfully my talk show behaviour is well and truly finito but the people on these shows appear to suffer so many indignities.

Let's all get connected on Facebook and attempt to out-enjoy all the other happy people - it's not a complete solution but it's a start :)