BLUE TOENAILS

Blue Toenails

TW: Medical imagery

This weekend, I did something I haven’t done in many years - I painted my toenails blue.

This probably seems more like an afterthought than a big moment, but it’s been years since I was able to take a bottle of blue nail polish and apply the bright color to my feet instead of my hands. It’s all thanks to a strange phenomenon that emerged from my compulsions after they started to have far less sway on my life.

It started in college - during my freshman year, I slammed a closet door on my hip in my dorm room that was so small I could reach my desk from my bed and my head nearly hit the ceiling. In the shower, later, I realized that my hip had a large purple bruise that was far bigger than the area I hit. It looked like some kind of horrible injury.

Seeing the bruise - bigger than any other bruise I’ve ever had - spooked me. So, when I returned to my room, I decided I would prove to myself that I was okay by painting my toenails. I even went for my favorite nail art color - blue - which I started liking when I was a little girl and marveled that one of my dad’s coworkers in a high-up position could wear blue nail polish at work and still get taken seriously.

I remember leaning back in my chair until I was half on the bed, bringing in my right leg first to do the nail polish. I chose my favorite shade of blue, one that I still love wearing today - but only on my hands. I painted the nails on my right foot and then tried to bend my left leg, only to feel a strange yet extreme pain coming from the area around the bruise.

I gritted my teeth, told myself to stop being such a baby, and bent my leg enough to be able to reach my toes. It was incredibly painful, but somehow, I thought that if I could bend my leg, that meant everything was okay.

The next morning, the bruise was twice as big and my leg could barely move. It was eggplant-purple and even though I managed to hobble to class, I was quickly ushered to the emergency room afterwards by a professor who I had a meeting with. I learned that day what a blood clot was, and by the time I was put in the hospital room for the longest night of my life, a nurse took my socks and shoes off to try to find a pulse in my left foot.

She couldn’t, with the first machine, and I sat there, leaning over the edge of the bed, staring at a potentially-dead foot with bright blue nail polish, waiting for the second, stronger machine to tell if I would need an amputation.

Thankfully, after what felt like an eternity of silence, the second machine picked up a pulse. I even got a laugh out of one of the nurses from my choice of nail polish color. The polish I’d put on my hands was long gone thanks to the need to put on an oxygen reader, but the blue polish stayed on my toes and also stayed in my mind as a reminder of that horrible night.

The next time I was able to paint my toenails - at least a month post-op - I remembered the blue polish and shuddered. I couldn’t even think of putting blue polish on my toes since it seemed like bad luck. It’s not that I thought, in a typical OCD fashion, that putting blue polish on my toes was going to make me have another blood clot. But it was a strong enough feeling, regardless, that I never tried it again.

This is far from the only time I’ve either done something or refused to do something because the last time I did it was a horrible time. Even though I know for a fact that putting blue nail polish on my toenails had nothing to do with the blood clot that was growing in my leg at that time, it still felt like something I couldn’t do again, just in case.

Unlike typical compulsions, which I had a lot of in my youth, this was not a visible behavior that other people knew about. It only really came up a couple of times over the nearly-9 years since then, and it was easy enough to explain away as a simple preference.

Mom, however, knew better. I’ve been living at home almost the entire pandemic, and even though I have worn my favorite shade of blue on my fingernails many times, I haven’t worn it on my toes at all. Eventually, she asked, and I told her, knowing that I’ve said much more embarrassing things about my mental health to her over the years.

She brought up the obvious - correlation does not equal causation. Wearing blue nail polish on my toes again would not make me have the same physical condition I had at that time. At worst, it would bring back unpleasant memories, which is something I try to avoid, but force myself to face sometimes in an attempt to make myself stronger.

I didn’t make the decision to try blue nail polish on my toes until my family had a discussion about getting the vaccine with a pre-existing condition. I have done my best to ignore the way COVID could affect my life ever since I first heard of the virus, but in that discussion, I could see plainly what I was afraid of:

I could see myself in a hospital bed, alone, fighting my worst demons while already knowing how terrible they are and how much worse I am at fighting them solo. I saw myself in more painful surgeries, whether in the legs or the lungs. And, almost anticlimactically, I saw myself fine one moment and dead the next from a pulmonary embolism, with no warning or control.

It hit me that the reason I was so afraid to put blue nail polish on my toes was that I felt like, if one of the things that happened then didn’t happen now, that somehow gave me more control over a situation I can never have control over. All of my childhood obsessions and compulsions were about trying to control what would happen to me, yet none of the unrelated thoughts or actions could actually make something good happen or prevent something bad.

That night, I turned on one of my favorite comedy shows on TV and painted my toenails blue. It felt very strange, but in a way, it felt liberating. I was not dooming myself to a horrible fate by painting my toenails blue, nor could I prevent COVID by painting them a different color. Instead, all I needed to do was follow the CDC’s guidelines and stay as safe as possible until I am able to get a vaccine.

 It might seem like a small, simple thing to be able to use a nail polish color I’d basically outlawed for myself for nearly a decade. But to me, this shows that with enough hard work and determination, I can push past the things holding me back and try to look forward to a brighter future - while wearing a snazzy coat of toenail polish.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

I'VE LEARNED

I’ve Learned

A few months ago, I participated in a social experiment: I showed up on a Zoom call with no idea of what was going to happen, along with a stranger who was also given no explanation. We talked to each other for fifteen minutes before a jaunty tune played and we were told to leave the call.

Back then, I was offered the opportunity to have the person behind this experiment - who runs many such programs and who introduced me to improv - dissect the 15-minute clip to see how my conversation partner and I act in social situations and offer potential feedback.

I was nervous to say yes to this, but according to my improv “yes and” mentality, I decided to go for it. After all, there are few things I haven’t heard about my conversation skills (or lack thereof) throughout my life.

When I was a kid, I used to talk all the time to the point that I almost never came up for air. I talked over everyone, whether about the things I was worried about or my favorite new hobby. My brain moved so fast that it was hard for me to slow my mouth down, and I remember feeling like everything I had to say was so urgent that it simply couldn’t wait.

I was taught in therapy how to recognize that if people were backing away or offering excuses, that meant they weren’t interested in listening to me anymore. I also had to let other people talk instead of monopolizing every conversation, and listen when other people wanted to share about their hobbies, likes, and worries.

Ever since I started learning these things, I’ve been very conscious of how I interact socially, both online and in person. I’ve tried to get to the point where, unless I’m extremely excited about something, I don’t let myself go off the rails and dominate a conversation. I do my best to provide a listening ear to my friends and family, but I am still aware of the fact that I bring a lot of energy and chattiness to conversations and keep an eye on that in case it goes awry.

That being said, I was nervous to see the footage from the social experiment. The person giving feedback, Holly (name changed for privacy), was doing so over a recording of the conversation, so I would have to listen to myself in a conversation with a stranger. It’s something that I could definitely see being valuable for someone like me as a younger person, but when I went to listen to the recording, I was instantly nervous.

What if all of my efforts that I thought I was so good at were all in vain, and I dominated the conversation? What if I rambled on and on without listening? What if I got too personal or too loud or too hyper (a word often used about me in social situations when I was a child, that I still hate being described with today)?

I decided to just bite the bullet and listen to the conversation. During the video, which I barely remember filming last October, I am speaking to James (name changed for privacy), a fellow improv performer and pet lover.

I was afraid when Holly paused the video for the first time, but she was just saying that she was glad I, as a woman, felt comfortable promoting my improv show, as many women keep quiet about their accomplishments. She said I gave off a friendly vibe and both of us were listening to each other and building a good rapport.

At one point, I started to cringe as my past self enthusiastically described the adorable puppy I would be picking up in two weeks. I noticed that, while I did start to take over the conversation a little bit, that moment was brief and Holly noted that I was giving James a gift: the opportunity to learn more about me from specific details and ask questions.

I’ve never heard my tendency to do this as giving a gift to someone before - usually, I’ve heard it as taking away my conversation partner’s agency and enjoyment. But this time, it was brief and I was asking questions too, and even though Holly noted that my energy was higher than James’, I never overwhelmed the conversation or stopped him from contributing.

In the end, Holly’s only feedback to me was to angle my camera differently. Nothing about what I said or how I said it was wrong in her eyes, and even though I know she’s not the be-all-and-end-all of judging conversations, it still felt good for an objective voice to not find any problems with how I interacted with a new person. As a kid who was always told to be quiet, I never could have imagined getting such a good review on a conversation - and I was especially proud of one thing:

The most consistent thing I noticed in the conversation, even though Holly didn’t note this, was that I was happy to be meeting someone new. There was a smile on my face the whole time. I laughed freely, brought positive energy to the room, and apparently incorporated the conversation skills I learned in therapy well enough that I could behave correctly while still enjoying myself.

I was honestly very proud when the 27-minute video finished and Holly didn’t say I was being a bad conversation partner, rambling, or dominating. It was great to see that after so many years of work to keep both the positive and negative aspects of what’s going on in my head to myself, I can do it without having to concentrate so hard that I lose the flow of conversation.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I’m not sharing a steady flow of nerdy memes, silly moments from improv practice, and cute dog pictures to my close friends. But I have gotten to the point where I know what my friends like and want, and I’ve controlled the spiraling thoughts in my head enough to make those friends in the first place.

The recorded proof of my self-control - and the fact that I have friends who I can lose that control with - is a refreshing reminder of how far I’ve come on my OCD journey, and has inspired me to look at my life now for more of these moments I never thought I could have.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

I HUGGED MY NANA TODAY

I Hugged My Nana Today

I’ve been waiting almost 15 months to run into my Nana’s apartment and wrap my arms around her without thinking about germs - and it finally happened. It’s been two weeks since her second dose of the Moderna vaccine, which my mom got for her out of pure dumb luck thanks to our state’s first-come-first-serve system.

I was so concerned with her being immune that, on the way out the door, Mom reminded me that I would need to wear a mask during our much-anticipated hug. I asked why, only to be reminded that I am unvaccinated. It struck me that I hadn’t thought about my own medical needs this whole time.

Sure, there are times when I worry about getting COVID, especially due to my history of blood clots and horrible fear of having a recurrence. But I hadn’t even considered my own safety - only my fear that my very occasional grocery store trips or dog walks would mean that I would breathe a germ onto Nana - who is 92 years old and my “blood thinners buddy” thanks to a heart condition - that would kill her.

It struck me, as I hugged Nana close, that this is one of my very rare obsessions where I worried about someone else’s medical safety above my own.

When I was little, I thought I’d broken my mom’s back by stepping on a sidewalk crack, not realizing that she had hurt her back long before I could walk. But even when, when I assiduously avoided stepping on more cracks, part of me knew that was just an obsession and I couldn’t really hurt my mom. My therapist said it, and even Mom said it - but in the case of COVID, there was an actual, legitimate way that I could do something careless, carry the virus back to Nana in a state where resources are spread thin especially in the case of the elderly, and actually kill her.

And so, I was meticulous. Even though I wanted to “cheat” since day one, when I phoned her from her lawn instead of going into her apartment, I didn’t hug Nana. I came close a few times, but never gave in to the temptation of a big hug that I’ve wanted (and sometimes needed) since the pandemic started.

When I came home last March, terrified of both the virus and germaphobic thought patterns I hadn’t had in a long time, I didn’t hug her even though it was something I always did when I was in trouble. When I gave back my puppy and sobbed my heart out to Nana over the phone, and then from across her apartment after I came home and quarantined, I wanted to hug her more than anything, but I was too afraid of hurting her.

It’s strange because, looking back, my germaphobic obsessions were always extremely self-centered. I didn’t care if kids in my class threw up as long as they did it far away from me. When I heard anyone was sick, whether it was something little or catastrophic, the first thing I thought about was when I’d last seen them, whether they had something contagious, and what the signs of their illness were so I could monitor myself for symptoms.

It all seems incredibly selfish when I think about it now, but I’ve always experienced OCD like a vortex - it’s not just that my thoughts cycle, but they can also pull me into an increasingly narrow focus until I’m only thinking about myself and my own medical needs - even if I am feeling completely fine.

This pandemic has been the first time I can remember someone having to remind me to look after my own safety in a medical situation. It’s the first time my obsession haven’t led me down into a whirlpool, but instead, compelled me to look after someone else. I bought masks with extra layers, was extra conscious of social distancing, and spent 8 months living 15 minutes away from Nana without hugging her because of her safety, not mine.

When Nana got her vaccine doses, I couldn’t wait to be able to give her one of our great big bear hugs that I’ve loved my whole life. After all, she was the first person to hold me when I was born - and we basically haven’t stopped hugging ever since. When I feel down, it helps me to think of some of our most memorable hugs, like the bear hug I got after every graduation ceremony, the ones when I flopped onto her like I had no bones when things weren’t going well, or the marathon hug I timed after I got out of the hospital (15 minutes, if you’re curious).

Today’s hug was another memorable one - I felt like I was learning how to hug her all over again, remembering our height difference, the smell of her shampoo, the way we cling onto each other and it somehow makes everything better on both ends of the hug. Even with a mask, it felt natural and special, and I couldn’t imagine worrying about catching COVID from this encounter. In that moment, no thoughts or fears could stop me from technically taking a risk for my health that was so overshadowed by joy that I barely even noticed it.

I hugged my Nana today just like I’ve wanted to since the moment I said goodbye to her at the end of a family vacation in December 2019, the last time we saw each other before the pandemic. As I drove back to my parents’ house, I thought of the days when I could never imagine putting someone else’s medical needs above my own or taking a risk for any reason. It reminded me of how far I’ve come and how far I’ll be able to go - thanks in no small part to Nana.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

A THOUGHT-PROVOKING "SUPERPOWER"

A Thought-Provoking “Superpower”

TW: Food, disordered eating

Earlier this week, for once in my life, I wanted to taste something bitter.

I had just received my supertaster test kit designed to tell me if I am one of a small percentage of people with a higher number and sensitivity of taste buds. I’d wondered for a while if I fell into this group because I seem to be a lot more sensitive to certain tastes and textures than other people in my life, even to the point of liking certain colors of the same foods better than others when my friends and family can’t tell the difference.

I also wanted to take the test because, after years of working on my emetophobia - the main source of my picky eating when I was a kid - I’m now willing to try more new foods than before, although I’m still a picky eater. I’m a vegetarian who doesn’t eat a good number of vegetables because I find them distasteful (looking at you, broccoli’s texture and brussels sprouts’ taste) and I still have many picky preferences.

In other words, I’m a picky eater whether or not I’m concerned that a certain food will make me throw up, and that really only gets me about a few foods (specifically, hummus, cuisines from regions of the world that I haven’t tried before, and any accidental exposure to meat because I think my stomach isn’t used to it).

I wanted to see if there was a biological reason for my picky eating for one major reason: Even though I’ve gotten to the point where my main source of obsessions and compulsions as a child is not a big part of my life, I am still very ashamed when I’m out with my friends (in non-COVID times) and still eat like a stereotypical child. I felt like it was part mental illness, part habit, and part something else I couldn’t quite identify. But for many foods, like tofu, it’s not that I’m afraid of the food - it’s that the texture and taste bother me to a degree that my friends and family don’t notice.

So I ordered the test strip, and since it’s genetic, I offered my mom the spare strip that came with the kit. We tried them in the kitchen one night before dinner because, if you are a supertaster, the paper tastes very bitter, and it would be nice to wash it down with something different. Mom put hers on her tongue first, and said she noticed no taste at all, no aftertaste, nothing.

As I looked down at the paper in my hand, I wondered what I really wanted. I wanted to be a supertaster because it would help explain some of my food quirks that aren’t OCD-related and might give me a fun fact to share at the dinner table instead of feeling ashamed or embarrassed about my food preferences. On the other hand, if I wasn’t a supertaster, that would take away an excuse and might spur me to try even more foods.

It didn’t take me long to identify the taste of the paper - which tasted, to me, like the most bitter mixed greens I’d ever had - and promptly spit it out. After chugging some water to get rid of the taste, I was happy. I even took a smiling selfie with the soggy test strip and the sheet of facts about supertasters because it made me feel like I was a picky eater for something other than my fault - something I’d never felt before.

Even with all the work I’ve done here over the last couple of years and the therapy I’ve gone through my whole life, I still saw a physical reason for disliking certain foods as being more valid than a mental one. It’s part of the stigma that’s become internalized inside me even though I try so hard to be positive about mental health. Even so, I still saw the last time I accidentally ate meat and panicked for hours as less legitimate, as if some part of me still saw that as a choice.

I thought I could be stronger than that, but with something like taste buds or a food allergy, I have no control, so I don’t feel weak.

I don’t see it as a character flaw to find the taste of mixed greens too strong to eat, especially if it means I can get some of my favorite Caesar salad with plain lettuce. It feels like a harmless preference to choose milk chocolate over dark or pick broccoli out of my lo mein. It’s like my nut allergy - I didn’t choose it. But whenever I see myself as giving in to an obsessive thought, I see it as a choice, even if it’s not - and then I see a negative reflection on both myself and my strength.

Taking the supertaster test - and finding my gustatory “superpower” - has been an interesting thought experiment in addition to the actual scientific test.

It made me realize how much I’ve held onto the idea of a “physical” condition like being a supertaster having more legitimacy even though OCD is technically a physical condition of a chemical imbalance in the brain.

It made me rethink how I try new foods - if I try something and hate the taste instead of fear it, I don’t have to do exposure therapy on myself to try to make myself like it.

And I’m allowed to be picky without being ashamed of myself, because if I look at how far I’ve come from the days of only eating plain cereal for breakfast, plain bagels for lunch and plain pasta for dinner, I’ve made tremendous changes to my eating habits that have really helped my quality of life.

Ever since I was little, I’ve known I’d never be an adventurous eater. But as an adult, and with these new results in hand, I feel more confident eating the foods I’ve learned to love and not doubting my validity as a person for having preferences in addition to obsessions.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.

THEY DRIVE ME

They Drive Me

Earlier this week, a friend asked me an interesting question: why do I heartily prefer one video game character over another in a situation where both are facing extremely similar traumatic pasts and current problems?

My friend asked because she knows about my struggles with mental illness and thought that I’d have equal sympathy for both sides of the story. And I do - but for me, sympathy isn’t what determines a favorite character. It’s that one character lives a life I’d dream of, and another lives a life of my greatest fears.

Both characters, D and E, experienced a traumatic event at about the same age. Both characters lost their families and navigated the world basically alone. But while D lived in the past, E was aggressively forging a path to her future.

It helped me associate with E even more that her trauma was more medical than violent. It also helped that there was a madness in D’s eyes that frightened me - not because it was alien to me, but because I’d seen that look in my own eyes. Thankfully not for many years, but it was there at one point, and for years after, I was afraid of seeing it in the mirror instead of myself. And even more frighteningly, he had no desire to get rid of that madness.

When I read a comic about these two characters comparing their experiences, that solidified for me the major difference between them and why I so heavily favor E over D. They discuss their differences over a battlefield, and D says that the voices of his past are disgusted with her and urge him to kill her. E then tells D that she had a very similar experience to him, which he never knew, and illuminates the difference between them succinctly and beautifully:

“I hear their voices too. But they don’t control me. They drive me.”

The image accompanying the words is even more powerful - D being dragged backwards by the hands of the ghosts he can’t or chooses not to fight, whether literal or figurative. And E charges forward, using the memories of things that hurt her to help her make a better future.

It instantly got me thinking. When I was little, I felt controlled by the voice inside me that told me I was going to throw up or break Mom’s back because I didn’t touch the wall a certain number of times or got germs in my mouth or sat next to a kid on Monday when he’d thrown up on Saturday (yes, of all the things that happened in my childhood, I still remember that one).

I remember hoping and praying that one day, I’d be able to wake up and the thoughts would all be gone. I never prayed for a day when I could live like today, where I still have obsessive thoughts, Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs), and other hallmarks of OCD. I never thought I’d be able to manage them - it had to be all or nothing.

I still have all or nothing thoughts today - they’re one of my most common type of ANTs. But I also know enough about thoughts to categorize them and work towards countering them. I still get overwhelmed sometimes, but the vast majority of the time, I am able to live my life the way I want it and use my OCD in ways that are helpful for me.

I use it to organize complicated projects at work and to inspire the “what ifs” of my story ideas. I use it to hit goals in games, win cutthroat Lord of the Rings trivia, and get joy from things like fandoms, conventions, and video games that I would likely not enjoy to the same obsessive degree otherwise. 

I hold the reins of my life tightly in my control. And although I have immense sympathy for people whose disease controls them, I am so afraid of falling into that pattern that I can barely stand to see it in the media. It reminds me of my childhood, my worst fears, and everything I learned about my paternal grandfather all wrapped up in a too-neat package.

To give both sides a fair chance, I played through D’s story as well as E’s. Even though I tried my best to give him a good chance, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated at making myself play a story that frightened me as he allowed the thoughts to rule his life and his world until everything fell apart. I’d only ever done something like that in a video game once before - a game that involved characters self-harm - but I still played it for the sake of fairness.

In the end, I knew for sure that I preferred the character who fought bitterly against her struggles was someone I identified with far more than someone who never tried.

Nowadays, I don’t pretend that I don’t take sides in the great debate of D and E. Among other fans of this game, I make my preference clear, and now, instead of not knowing how to express why, I bring back this comic.

There are so many times in my life when I could have chosen to get swept away on a tide of obsessions or trauma, could have surrendered any shreds of control I still possessed. But instead, I fought to reach a place where I could have the control over my life that I yearned for and deserved.

Inspired by the comic and the game that it is based on, I feel that I, too, am someone who does my best to let the past and the mechanisms of my brain drive me. They drive me to fight for my dreams, never give up, and encourage others who are undergoing similar fights to not fall into despair. Even if I didn’t know it when I was little, there is a world where negative thoughts can be kept under control and used in a positive way - and when I think of characters like E while I am on that journey, I feel encouraged, empowered, and ready to renew the fight for a good life.

Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.