Fuzz and Static

It's depressing to think how few people know what I am talking about when I say "snow on the TV".  Obviously I'm not talking about the recent Winter Olympics or a rebroadcast of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (well, obvious to me, anyway).

I'm talking about the days when for whatever reason the reception on your TV would go kaput and you'd be left with a screen full of black and white static flashes, i.e. 'fuzz and static', AKA "snow".

The frustrating thing was you knew there was programming going on, going out, but you were unable to receive and perceive it.  Maybe it was good stuff, maybe not, but you'd never know as long as that darned snow was filling up the screen.

I think my OCD is like snow on TV.  There's so much stuff i WANT to think about and concentrate on, but it can't get through a lot of times because the darned reception in my brain is so bad, all I can see in my mind's eye is the 'snow' of obsessions and worries and fears, repeated over and over.  Sometimes I can 'tune' things just right so that programming shines through clearly, but a lot of the time, particularly in the last year or so, I just can't seem to banish that snow and find my programming.  It's really frustrating.

I've got a mental lineup that rivals the ABC Friday Night schedule of the early 70's.  For every Brady Bunch, I've got a story idea; for every Partridge Family, there's a new creative avenue I have not explored, for every Odd Couple, there's a new facet of life that I'd like to explore, and for every Love, American Style, there's an old passion that I'd love to revisit.

All of that depends on actually being able to 'see' well enough to carry through on my ideas, though.  And with OCD, the din of negativity can be deafening.  This last year has been well beyond any level of stress that I had thought possible;  It's rivaling the year that my mom died, and that's saying something.  In some ways, it's been even more stressful because of the multiple sources of stress all hitting me at once; physical, emotional, financial, personal and other.  It just doesn't seem to stop.

But the only way to get past the din is to focus and live within the worry and fear.  I know this; it does not make it so, but I do know this and I suppose that  is some portion, at least, of the battle won.