Love as a form of OCD

I have been thinking a bit about OCD - since a friend's son suffers very badly with it.   All the "useful advice" I have been giving her to help him cope with this, is the product of my own experience, but not with OCD.

Attentive readers may be aware that since before I started this blog in 2011 I have been trying to get over a dose of unrequited love, which has been quite disruptive.  I think I have got "over" it now, to the extent that I do not feel it much any more.  If the said love turned out to be requited and active, that would be another story - but I am no longer sick with it.

Looking back at how I got over it, I see, that, as is so often the case, it happened through time and circumstance.  Chiefly, time passed and I found other fulfilling and distracting things to do.  It helped that I was no longer working on the novel that related to it, so I was not constantly being "triggered".  It helped more when I was deeply involved in something else, work, dealing with students and domestic issues, Christmas is always a big distraction, going out to work, seeing groups of friends and NOT talking about it helps.  Doing sociable things with my husband which enable me to see him in a more positive light help.

These things are pretty similar to the advice I have been giving my friend - telling her to get her son out of the house, remove distracting stimuli, reminders of the obsessions, get him out seeing other people, doing something, working.  And in his case, keep medicating!   I don't think there was a medication against the LO - the citalopram certainly helped the depression but didn't seem to remove the desire to see him, be with him, talk to him etc.

I realise that in some ways psychiatrists might regard unrequited love as a form of OCD - it has many of the same traits - there are triggers which immediately provoke the thoughts (mention of the city he lived in on the radio for example, or a country he worked in) - as one of the favourite songs says There is always something there to remind me.  Of course, it isn't as stuctured as OCD, it doesn't have its rituals... but it definitely has that sort of sense of being in a loop of stimulus and response, where you cannot escape.  I have "automatic memories" - for example seeing a harvest moon in September over a newly cut field in the dusk ALWAYS makes me think of one of the last walks James and I had before we began to talk about divorce. However, that scene can also fade into the more generalised nostalgia  I suffer, where certain scenes provoke a non-specific sense of longing.  This non-specific longing turns back to become attached to the LO... and then, crazily, things that have nothing to do with him, are attached to him, and I sigh.

Rationally unpicking one's responses is helpful - but like therapy, it is not a quick fix.  As in therapy, you may know why you feel a certain undesirable way, but it does not necessarily stop you feeling it.   The answer is, keep analysing, keep unpicking.  If you find yourself slipping into it, find yourself at it and say "No, you are only doing that because you read about someone with the same name" (or whatever).  Getting rid of these feelings is difficult, not straightforward, especially if you are of a romantic, idealistic disposition.  Those feelings seem to suggest something better, finer, than grim, sweaty reality, one wants to cling to them, they seem to be a tenuous contact with the numinous, or a higher sense of oneself.

Is this higher sense of self a delusion?  Does our reach exceed our grasp - we can never have this thing - this life-improving objective which will make everything so much better.  Is this what OCD people are trying for - the completion of their system that will give them peace.

Anyone who has lived into middle-age and thought about the world knows that there is nothing that comes into your life without a new set of problems attached - even a £13m lottery prize!  Age makes everything a little less efficient, especially our idealism.  I ought to feel glad I have recovered from love, but in a sick way, I miss it, the brief contacts with a higher form of joy... will I ever experience them again?  Is that why people long for grandchildren and like pictures of cats on FB.  Life is duller without unrequited love, but it is certainly less sickening and depressing.   Perhaps it isn't quite the same when people recover from OCD.

Lord McAlpine

In 2012 I wrote some pieces which named a couple of people in the Conservative party who were rumoured to be involved in paedophilia (that's upper class child abuse... or is it just a more distinguished form of child abuse?).  At the time there was a great BBC-scandal because Lord McAlpine had been named as connected with the Welsh childrens' home paedophilia scandal/cover up.... he took offence, sued etc. and threatened to pursue everyone who had ever retweeted disobliging tweets about him.    Although I hadn't written much about him, I had mentioned his love of boxing matches in passing.   He died the other day, which is why I am now writing this, not because I have any thing scandalous to say about him - the love of boxing not being exactly connected with paedophilia - although I think the way it was seen in the Ancient Greek world at the Olympic and other games, leaves one in no doubt about the erotic stimulus in provided for some.

Anyway, what I guessed at the time was that Lord M (bottom) could have been mistaken for Peter M (below) - the now dead Welsh office MP, worshipper of Mrs Thatcher and apparent paedophile.

They are not that similar - but to a frightened child, one stout, rubicund, jowelly Tory probably is as bad as another.  So maybe this solves the Lord M thing, that he was wrongly identified when it was Morrison all along.  Unless of course it's true.  Apparently a lot of BBC journos believe it is true - but that may just be the strength of the conspiracy theorising.  I know nothing, only that he liked watching boxing, and this fact has not been thought worthy of mention in the obituaries.  After all, plenty of people like boxing apparently.

Despite the death of Lord M I don't think I shall bring back the very popular pieces on Tory paedophilia... who knows, someone else's lawyer may be on the qui vive for this sort of material, and I don't really want to be bankrupted.  At the time I wrote them a great deal was being made of some investigations into a place called Elm House in Barnes...here apparently more cavorting with the denizens of care homes took place.  Oh why do I say cavorting?  I am trying to be euphemistic, but why don't I just say rape?  Since then, nothing more has been said.  

As I wondered in the previous post, why do the Tories seem to be so heavily implicated in child abuse?.  Is it just a coincidence that nearly all the well-known men charged with it have been Tories?  I imagine Stuart Hall was a Tory (the commentator, not the sociologist!).  I'm not saying there aren't Labour voters who abuse children (probably their own, rather than purchasing other people's), but somehow child-rape seems to be an unpleasant metaphor for just how much these people care for the weak, vulnerable and marginalised and how insouciantly they screw us all.

Sex pests on trial...a hierarchy of "horror"

I went out last night to the Society of Authors' meeting and we were indulging in social chat before our proper "discussion" - we being 1 F military historian, 1 F journalist/biographer/playwright, 1 F novelist, 1 F children's writer and 1 M technical writer and me.... and some one began to talk about the news, because by coincidence, 3 well-known men - Dave Lee Travis, Rolf Harris and Bill Roache were all on trial for coming on too strong with young women.

The conversation was interesting - it revealed what we thought was or wasn't "unreasonable".   And we didn't entirely agree.   I thought people who were adults when men came on to them (we are talking harassment, not rape here), shouldn't be charging them 20 years later, but perhaps I'm wrong.  I think the problem is that all these cases are bundled together, so that underage sex is on trial, as well as a bit of slap and tickle with an adult, albeit junior colleague.  It's quite hard to sort things out, especially since people have subjective responses to the people involved.   There is a sort of hierarchy about what is felt to be awful.

!.  At the top is Jimmy Savile - now widely agreed to be a monster!  Psychopath etc. etc.  Nothing, not all the charity work (penitential in nature?) can get him off the hook of being, widely considered to be the Mengele of celebrity sexual abusers.

2.  Any acts on pre-teenage children - no matter by whom, largely considered beyond the pale...

3.  Acts on boys, teenager or otherwise, by adult men still considered to be "worse" than girl teenagers - since (implicitly) sex is what teenage girls are "for".

4.  Dave Lee Travis - not exactly a monster,but very much a partaker in the 70s sex pest culture. Due to the coy nature of court reporting on the BBC news we hear a great deal about "sexual acts" - why can't they spell it out... what are we actually being called upon to be revolted by here?

5.  William Roache: despite being father of the lovely Linus, and having all his family in court with him, there doesn't seem to be that much sympathy for him.  His victims were early teens, under 16 - and in one case returned to his house after being raped there previously (she said she felt guilty about doing this - which opens up a whole load of issues about guilt/pleasure etc. that are the flip side of child abuse (no, I'm not saying "they like it really" but simply that it's more complex than one might imagine from the media account)).  Bill Roache is a well known nutter of course, a Druid, into astrology, and a proselytising Tory... arrrrgh.  He is widely confused with the more sympathetic character he plays - Ken Barlow - so there is sympathy for him.

6. Rolf Harris: apparently lots of people are shocked by this, because they "liked" him - i.e. felt they could be chums, including our hostess, who had enjoyed his tv work for many years.  So there is a bit of a sympathy vote for Rolf and all jokes about "extra legs" etc (a song I found rather sinister when young - due to a not entirely unconscious association with the phallus!) are thought to be distasteful - the trial is not over, his wife is in a wheelchair, the jury has not even gone out yet - and many people are hoping he will be acquitted.

Evolutionary biology? Or Tory policy?
I think that sums up the conversation - but I am still struggling with the idea that adult women who have received sexual harassment in the work place - which is unpleasant admittedly (I know a bit about it) should somehow be lumped in with underage girls.  I can't quite understand why they are complaining about it now - because however wrong it is, however annoying or upsetting or humiliating it was, a one-off bit of sexual harassment, is something you ought to be able to get over.  

I bet some evolutionary biologists (more Tories!) would say men are "programmed" to be attracted to teenage girls who were at their most fertile and at an age when they will most successfully bear children.   I would say that clearly the men are not interested in any future progeny - and if they have successfully socialised themselves out of that urge, they can bloody well work on socialising themselves out of the rest of it.....    I cannot help noticing in passing that most of the above men have worked for, promoted or been members of the Conservative party.  Given the whole other strand of political paedophilia which seems to involve Conservative MPs past one does wonder what the connection is (perhaps it's something to do with men who are insufficiently evolved???).  Jim Davidson was another (Tory/suspect)...

Joke:  Q. Why DO dogs lick their balls? (er, that's testicles, not playthings)
 I'm beginning to lose track of all the people who have been charged, rumoured to be involved, or just found
generally creepy.  Perhaps it would be safer to assume that all men in positions of power will do this if they can get away with it.   Unless they are in the Labour Party of course?  I am mystified about this actually, I was in the Labour party in my late 20s - early 30s and not a bad looking woman though I say it myself - but but but... there was a lot of joshy, jocular sexism from older Trades Unionists and MPs - who had not yet had their consciousnesses raised. When they said anything we all just screamed at them and told them they were sexist pigs!  I can't think of any Labour chaps doing this sort of thing (unless I have a selective memory).

They do say with the Tories it's sex, and with Socialists it's money (doesn't leave much scope for the Labour party then)...but perhaps that's true.  Money is tempting if you haven't had much,  maybe Labour men get laid more so don't feel the need to prey on kids so much... maybe all that jocular sexism is part of their mating ritual, counter-intuitively it is actually what gets them laid:
   "This is how it works love - we get all patriarchal, you get outraged, and feel the need to correct us, we slowly feign understanding, giving you the pleasure of thinking you've successfully changed our thinking - and then, having focussed on us for a while, you find us attractive, sensitive, perceptive - because we've accepted your viewpoint.  And then we've got you!"  
 Great strategy. There is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents....
 "Get your coat love, you've pulled!".

A.  Because they can!   

Gleaning

I've always liked the idea of gleaning - going over the harvested field and taking up any grain you can find... snappers up of unconsidered trifles are gleaners of a sort.  I suppose I first came across the idea in the story of Ruth in the Bible - when she and Naomi are allowed to glean Boaz's fields.  I think I am in gleaning mode just now - I still have a burden of fiscal tasks (re-negotiate the mortgage payments again, tax returns, small approaches to people about money, debt advice) but I am squeezing in the odd bit of cash. Today I gleaned £20 for some gardening.  If I could glean £20 a week it would be something - last week I did rather better than that.  There is a vague prospect of a single night BnB person... so it continues.

I am also gleaning scraps of information, which might ultimately result in getting an agent - and who knows, perhaps one day a publisher and an advance - of, oh, maybe £2,000.... is it worth it?  I don't know.  I'm not bothered about being "a published writer" - because I am - I am more interested in making enough money to get by to enable me to live free of the regular job halter... but things have been so wobbly that I have thought about a regular job, probably in a supermarket.  But then again, I think all the experiences I have gleaned in the last year or so will feed one of my novel ideas... I want to write a Harold Fry...  for the money!

Book of the Month: The Skull & The Nightingale

The Skull & The Nightingale by Michael Irwin
I was lent this book by my friend Anna T, and I ignored it for a couple of months, as one often does with books one has been forcibly lent.  However, knowing I would be seeing her next week I thought I should have a look at it.

The first two or three pages took some getting used to - they were written in a style of English no longer common, and required study - but after that I became completely immersed in it.  The novel is set in the C18th and the author is a Professor of English Lit who specialises in that period, so the language and the literary references were, as far as I could see, spot on.  It is that miraculous item, an intelligent book that is also a page turner.  It was all going very nicely, I loved it - the discussion about how we use art to disguise the passions - with particular reference to Richardson's Clarissa was very interesting - and seeing it played out in the book was clever.  The skull represents, I suppose human mortality - and our intellect, the vanity of our intellect - the brain goes, only the skull remains, the nightingale is the symbol of love, pastoral romance etc. which acts as cover for our lust.  All very clever.  However, it can be enjoyed without the enquiry into symbolism, since the plot and the main character's story are so good.

As is often the case with books I read the last 50 or so pages in a phrenzy to know what would happen - and then sadly, I was disappointed.  Clearly my reading of the character of Fenwick was "wrong" - the action he took was not what I expected.  He has already shown the reader that his reports to his godfather are often not completely true - are we also to assume that his presentation of his self to us is also not true... that he is much more like his godfather than we realise?  Is he an unreliable narrator in wig and breeches?   I think that must be the conclusion... I did not think such a skilled novel could have such a bumpy ending otherwise.   I wonder if it was done to allow the possibility of a sequel?  I found it very difficult that the Fenwick character had made the choice he made - to have made the other choice open to him might have smacked too much of "happy ending" which is of course not fashionable in literary novels - but nevertheless I was disappointed by it - he could have had the "happy ending" together with some thoughtful disquisition which might have tied matters up.  Anyway, anyway.... a great book really.  I will be surprised if I read any contemporary novels I like better this year.

Hell is (certain) other people

Phoned my beloved father for a nice New Year(ish) chat and ended up being told that if I didn't adhere to his particular beliefs I would be going to hell.  I told him I thought it was a bit much for a human to take on God's perspective, and that we shouldn't make judgments about the afterlife (if any)... he countered by explaining to me why St. Paul was wrong.  I ended up feeling that hell was probably being harangued by anyone about their beliefs in an unsophisticated way while one listened patiently, not wishing to interrupt, in the hope it would come to an end eventually.

To me it seems self-evident that if there is a God God is something beyond our imagination... and that if God is love (and apparently Christianity is the only religion which asserts this) then this unimaginable love must encompass equally unimaginable grace and mercy and compassion and all the other good qualities that humans have in such relatively small measures...but because it is all unimaginable we petty humans cannot begin to understand how God judges - we are more or less agreed that ultimate judgement is God's remit - so we are not really in a position to start judging, especially on eschatological matters.  In fact the bible is rather keen to tell us not to judge... and to attribute Justice as a divine quality which God comes top in.

However, by the end of my father's "concerned" lecture, I came to believe that I was probably going to hell - and that it was extremely wrong of me to doubt hell's existence since it is mentioned once or twice in the Bible.  Pa was keen to explain how well he knew the Bible having read it every day for 30 years - "have you?" No, of course I haven't, I read scraps of it irregularly - and sometimes I read it for a few days running.  I've read the whole thing once or twice, but while it's good to be reminded of certain passages, I'm not entirely sure how he has read it so often without noticing all those "judge not lest ye be judged" bits... but of course this is just the old "everyone has their own version of the Bible" observation.   His is more judgemental than mine.

At the bottom of this is the fact that I'm a clearer thinker than him, he is slow to see inconsistencies and contradictions which I spot swiftly, so I cannot argue with him - it would be like setting dogs on a chained bear.

I do have a fairly clear commitment to God - the Christian version, and being told my faith isn't "right" because it's too liberal is just as offensive as being told it isn't right because he's not Catholic (this still rankles him apparently).  Anyway, the upshot was that I sat patiently listening to him have a go at me, until he finally ran out of steam.   To think that a few weeks ago I was thinking of trying to become his carer if necessary.  I was thinking of that as he chugged on, wondering how often I could bear to hear him repeat the same messages.   Yes I know we have to pray and thank God for healing, I know we have to cut off all ties with Masonic forebears and so on and so forth...yes, I have read the book about Visions, yes, I do know about near-death experiences.  Oh Lord.  So many problems in my life seem to be a result of boredom, which is partially connected with having a good memory.  I have been hearing these particular ideas for at least 20 years... and despite all the evidence to the contrary - he still insists that everyone should have a long healthy life - unless they are terribly sinful (oh, so that was my mother's problem?) and full of unrepentence... honestly, sometimes I think he missed a trick in not becoming a tv evangelist.   He is delighted to have found a passage in Genesis about people living to 120 (his new target)...this tied up with the dodgy passage about the "sons of God" getting jiggy with mortal women...so I'm not sure if that's one of the most reliable bits of the Bible - but to Bibliolators all bits of the bible are valid - even when they contradict each other.

That sodding rollercoaster

I was if not UP exactly, at least quietly contented.  This morning M was grim, had had a migraine and looked wretched - than at 10.00 came a call from a creditor - we haven't had any of those for a while and it immediately dragged me back into the pre-Christmas world of misery.  Suddenly the future did not look vaguely improving, it looked bleak, tight and constrained.    I resorted to escapist activities: playing Spider Solitaire, looking at Twitter and FB and listening to R4.   At about 3.30 M came back from the shops... he had been unable to buy Finn boots, because we only have £9 in the account.  I'm not entirely sure where the£600 we had in there went, but it's gone.  The only major expenditure I can think of is two finely judged shopping trips and a tank full of petrol and a plate of food and some wine.   But it was enough, combined with the end of the month standing orders, to swoosh money out of our account.  Oh hell.  He dashed to the bank with a cheque he hadn't paid in, put in the Christmas cash and then transferred all the paypal money to it.  It's enough to keep us going another week or so, but obviously the thought of that nice little wodge of cash in there that was comforting me, that I knew was "safe" was not going to help.  Then Finn came along in distress, it's the post-dope low coupled with the feeling that nobody loves him that his "best friend" Oscar is not really a good friend, but rather a bully.  So I spent a long time comforting him, then realised we were so bad we couldn't really give him pocket money.  I suggested he look for a Saturday job - he was outraged, and horrified... really angry with me.  I pointed out that plenty of people did it.  He told me there were no jobs (this is largely, but not entirely, true) - he stormed off.  I was then extremely upset.  I found his attitude, the idea that he had no responsibility to himself or us, was dire.

And I was crying, because it was all so bloody, and I had seen played out the pattern that I dread.  I get upset by something, I try to be brave and "cope" by avoiding it - then I become depressed and unable to do anything.   Both M and I are doing this, it is too ghastly for words.  I know what I have to do this year, but if I am going to freeze every time a creditor calls or the money situation is strangulated, then how will I achieve it?   I know writing can even be a sort of displacement activity - so what can happen is that I write like the blazes, but leave all the other chores undone - the house falls to rack and ruin and the creditors go unpaid or untended.  Would it work better if, when upset, I immediately burst into tears, howled, prayed and got over it - and then carried on?  Should I completely relax my very tense upper lip and just let go - in the hope that this would give me sufficient catharsis to recover quickly and move on?   I think I should try it.   I don't want to spend another 3 months sitting in a semi-catatonic state in front of the laptop, frozen with indecision as to who to submit to and what to submit, who to call, and who not to call. 

Happiness

There - that's not a word you often see in this blog - but there has been a definite sense of it seeping over me in the last few weeks.  The depression has lifted and I'm wondering what the "trick" has been... it could be the loan from my father - and it could be Christmas - distractions that take me away from the life as slave of the lap-top.  It could be social life peppered with feelings of general bonhomie, it could be a short-term reduction of money worries...it could be the disturbing knowledge that our house is FULL of wine...which of course means I don't want to drink at all!

I've been reading various scraps of stuff about happiness - from FB posts mostly.  There seem to be some actual "tricks" - it seems that I have most of the qualities that make up a fairly happy person, but somehow over the last few years these haven't been dominant qualities.  Now I need to re-assert them - I feel very positive about things, about the future of The Ash Grove, it's only been turned down by two people so far!  I want to make vol 2 different - more episodic, less of a straightforward narrative... and have more characters... develop people like Arthur, and so on.  Anyway, at the moment I am happy because I have had a nice evening - the Atkins diet coupled with Christmas cake and not too much booze is very pleasant - and I have a nice light novel to read for the reading group, and because my old friend M finally emerged from her life as a carer and re-joined us - and we had a good chat.  And now I am listening to old episodes of The Old Grey Whistle Test and indie hits from my adolescence - which I am now more or less able to listen to without pain and nostalgia.  Result!   Gosh - could the curse of 2009 be finally lifting from my life?  Well, probably, unless I see the LO soon..and sod's law suggests I will.