October 18, 2021
We can do this. We’re doing it. These are the words that I try to find in those tough moments. And Saturday night was one of those tough moments. The kind that weighs on my chest so heavily. Makes the world stop. The kind that feel so unfair on the heels of a great day…or a great week of fighting the OCD Flea.
Wes and I had the best possible day on Saturday. At the beginning of the day we went to Costco. Before we went in I paused, kneeled down next to him and shared that, “Ok, we know the OCD flea doesn’t like shopping. Are you ready to go in the store and fight him?” He was ready. It was go-time. And, I asked that he tell me anytime the OCD Flea was trying to bother him.
It was the best shopping experience I have EVER had with Wes. It was as if acknowledging how he shows up when we’re in stores immediately gave him more confidence to overcome the discomfort. He cracked jokes. He was patient. He was helpful. Out of the corner of his eye at one point he saw a bottle of my probiotics and called my attention to it, sharing that I was out of it so needed to pick up a bottle. He unloaded the cart. He was AWESOME. He was himself.
Shopping trip #2 of the day was the same. A few hours after getting home from Costco, he shared that he’d like to take me up on my offer to go to Target to get some Halloween decorations and supplies for Halloween goodie bags for the little kiddos on our street. Score! I LOVE TARGET. He picked out probably 20 little holiday knick-nacks like fake spiders and Halloween pencils. Then, he came across some candy eye-balls. He insisted we had to get them. I questioned it. When he was around four years old he’d gone to a children’s museum and seen a skeleton whose image was stuck in his head for at least a year. After seeing it, he had told horrific stories of skeletons incessantly and could barely sleep.
We are so far past that. Or so I want to believe. When we got home his urgency to unpack everything to see everything completely and line things up was difficult to navigate. At last we came to the eyeballs and we noticed he HAD to hold them. He needed to put them in his room. They were clearly an OCD trigger and to feel just right he HAD to have them, hold them. He went into that zoned out state I saw at the store and when we tried to take them away he started screaming as if we were trying to hurt him. We talked to him calmly and sweetly saying things like, “OCD really needs these to feel better” and, “We won’t let him bully you.” I grabbed the jar and hid them in the garage.
I watched my awesome sweet 6 year old writhing and screaming about those candy eyeballs for what felt like an hour. My husband held him in his arms in his rocking chair in his room until finally he was able to calm down. Once he was calm he shared that in some Nintendo game there is a cartoon whose eyes pop far out of their head in surprise. Something about them isn’t just right for him. It’s a trigger. And he has to look at them a certain way fully. Like bodies, like sharp objects, like everything in the world.
Thinking of that moment I remember the feeling of sadness, helplessness. There was a new feeling though. A sense of calmness and control that came from knowing that my only job was to love him through it. It wasn’t to fix it. It wasn’t full of doubt about being a bad parent. It wasn’t guilt. It was empathy and understanding. I can see these moments now for what they are, who they are: The OCD Flea.
Note to self: Never buy candy eyeballs again.
Peace & Victory
JM
Defeating the OCD Flea 