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My wife uses birth control. This is something like her fifth month back on the pill after being off of it for years. It is now the fourth and final day of the brown pills and she has not started her period (though last night, she did the “q-tip test” and it showed, according to her, that the period was coming). On top of that (1) She has been exercising more this month, (2) She has been more tense in the past month, (3) Her pill, Loestrin 24, is well known for causing some women to have months where they have little or no period, and…here’s the kicker (4) We have NOT had sex this month. So, there is no way that she is pregnant.
And yet, I have been worried about her period coming a day or two later than it has the past couple of months. Why? Why after all of this, am I still worried about my wife’s body. My OCD-my brain-has actually tried to plant a seed of doubt in my brain that we actually DID have sex this past month, even though that is not true. In fact, It has been two months (two cycles of pills) since we last had intercourse.
I can’t comprehend why I would worry about this. Is it because my brain NEEDS to have something to worry about? That it needs to have the adrenaline pumped up by the worry I am causing myself. It is times like these, when I know I’m being ridiculous, that I feel the worst, because the answer is right there in front of me. I know I am a logical person, and yet, I allow myself to be taken over by these really irrational thoughts.
I am scared. Not just at the subject matter of the fear (Mary’s body/her period), but about a lot of other things too. I have now gotten worried walking the dog because I got poison ivy three weeks back when I walked him, which I then treated as a heat rash for a few days before treating it properly. Yesterday while walking the dog he slipped through a little fence hole in a public park in order to eat a piece of poo, or bark, or a little pine cone or something. And yet, I was more worried about whether there was a plant near him that would cause me to break out in a rash. So after retrieving him, I went back and looked at all the plant life in the area….and while I was doing that, the dog snuck through the hole and ate something else. I should have just ended it there, because I knew that there was nothing that looked like any of the poison plants (ivy, oak or sumac), but I let that same irrational fear take over. That same fear that now makes me question whether I actually did have sex with my wife in the last month when I know I did not. I ended up cutting the walk short to go home and wash my hands. I even took out the water bottle on the way home-the bottle I have brought along for the dog when he got thirsty, and sprayed my have with water “just in case” I had touched any poison plant oils. I am scared now not just because of these subjects I mention (wife’s body, dog’s health, poison plants, etc.), but the fact that I seem to be sinking further off “the deep end” with the level of irrationality of my worries.
I want this week to be over so badly. I feel like running away. Away from the city and to somewhere where it is peaceful and quiet and I don’t have all the pressures of daily life going on. The problem is, I can’t run away from my mind, and that seems to be the biggest problem of them all.
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