A few days ago, I was sitting in a computer lab having just finished an exam in Penetration Testing (put simply, ethical hacking, I've had to explain to five people thsi week what Pen Testing is so thought I'd lay that out now) and I thought "Wow, how did I get here?".
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I don't mean how did I literally get there or that I just randomly took the exam for the craic, that would be weird even for me, I mean that two years ago I was trapped in my flat and in my own mind with severe OCD and related agoraphobia and depression. I could barely leave my bed at some points, let alone go outside. Yet here I am, two years older but possibly not a great deal wiser, attending university on a cybersecurity Masters course and sitting exams.
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To cut a long story short; My OCD focuses on worries about dirt and poisons, worrying that things have been left on in my home and I have intense anxiety that I might be harming other people or myself which si the thing that causes me the worst of the panics. A lot of therapy, medication and exercise has brought me to this very point - in my forties and going back to the university I attended almost twenty years ago to gain the skills to re-join the real world after the best part of ten years in paralysing anxiety and sweat soaked panic attacks. So, there you have the past roughly ten years of my life in one paragraph, apparently I am capable of being concise!
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To be honest, I actually think that I'd believed it would be easier to re-enter 'real life' than the experience has been. I mean, my OCD was still moderately bad when I started the course but I naively believed that it would get easier. In some ways it has; I can touch a pen and paper these days, admittedly I have to buy my stationery from particular places and I don't like anyone to touch my pencil case or pen for fear of germs or poisons but I muddle through. I've found that I can get through a day with minimal handwashing but I scrub my hands when I go home. I can touch my laptop but I don't like anyone other than me and my husband touching it. The fears of harm have escalated a little, making my day more complicated than it ought to be as I check things repeatedly; I must reiterate that I'm of no threat to anyone, my brain tells me that I have shouted at people or stabbed them because I know that I never would and have no desire to hurt people, it's generally the things that you find the most abhorrent that which OCD brain hones in. So, yeah, as you can imagine, my inner brain life is not the calmest but somehow I keep on struggling through. I'm scrappy that way :-)
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Anyways, so I'm sitting in a computer lab, having just sat an exam that I revised for fervently for weeks and feverishly in the days leading up. My poor long-suffering husband had to soothe me the night before as I cried "No information is going in anymore! I don't feel like I know anything! I haven’t codid in years! I think all of the things I learned about C have been pushed out of my head over the years by other useless things. I know info about that guy who was struck by lightning about six times, even after he died, yet I can’t remember the Linux command for making a directory! My brain isn’t getting the messege!!!". I have no idea as whether or not I have passed the exam but I do know that I haven't typed so quickly for many years and that, even going to that exam was a huge step for me.
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I have been at uni for six weeks now and it somehow seems hugely longer than that but I'm enjoying the work immensely. I have always loved puzzles and with the Masters degree that I am doing, I get to surround myself with deliciously difficult conundrums so I can't imagine there being any better place that I'd rather be. The course material is fascinating but very hard work; as you can imagine cryptography and lawful hacking is not a simplistic study and when you get your head around some of the weightier subjects and mathematics, it gives me a little dopamine fizz in my head that I have only gotten before through exercise and cigarettes. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing to be honest but it certainly is an addictive subject area and healthier for me than nicotine or other drugs!
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The lecturers in each of the three modules I'm studying this trimester are inspiring chaps; I always think that it is easier ot learn complicated and dry material if the person serving it is humorous and interested in the work themselves and I'm very lucky for this to be case with the lecturers so far. I'm quite a visual person so seeing diagrams helps me a great deal. Also, you sea, as I frequently find it easier to digest information by associating it with a specific phrase or joke, it can actually help me hugely to connect to a piece of the course fi a lecturer tells a story or makes a joke. It's like little pointers in my head that I can anchor things in order to retain them. I find that you’r much more likely to get something if it amuses you or entertains you. Thankfully the lectures that I have attended so far have been enthralling.
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The funny thing is, when you have OCD, you analyse everything over and over and over, whether you really want to or not and this has led me to some excruciating moments over the past months. When I’m in a lecture, I have to write notes, voraciously scribbling away as my classmates probably look on thinking ‘Why is she writing down what is on the board? It’s in the lecture slides’. The reason for this is, if I don’t write notes, my brain will wander about unbidden and I’ll lose my focus and start wondering things such as:
- Why do horses have huge teeth when they only eat grass? Or
- Why hasn’t someone invented a lollipop for spies that, when sucked upon, can somehow transmit sound through bone conduction or something so that they don’t need to wear a wire or earpiece? Or
- I wonder what birds would look like with human ears? Or
- If I had a taser, would I taser myself? Or
- The Martians in War of the Worlds came down to Earth and were defeated by bacteria. I wonder who was on their design team working on their spaceships who said ‘Air filters? Nah, we probably don’t need those, what’s the worst that could happen?
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This is just a tiny fraction of the ridiculous things that pop into my head if I don’t keep some sort of control over it by writing notes and I’m always worried that I’ll stop peying attention and have a funny thought and burst out laughing, as if I’m not strange enough without hysterically laughing for no apparent reason!
Then there’s my unnerving stare. What is the right proportion of eye contact that I should make with a lecturer so they at least know that I’m listening and comprehending but not so that I come across as a creepy weirdo? I don’t know the answer to this as I’m constantly walking the tightrope of appropriate interest in the subject and freaking out the person delivering the lecturer. The worst thing is that, I’m probably the only one worrying about this and I’m so consumed with not embarrassing myself that I don’t quite know what I’m doing with my face while I’m going through this traumatic set of concerns and probably look like the aforementioned creepy weirdo. Seriously, my life is exhausting.
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The university has been very welcoming and understanding of my particular mental health issues but some things are trickier for me than others. The hardest thing for me personally is getting to know people; I used to be incredibly chatty and sociable in my twenties (Although frankly I think that people will probably say that I've been very talkative my whole life, I believe one of my primary school reports said that I was bright but that I talked too much!) and, sadly, my OCD intensifying in my thirties led to almost a decade of isolation that I really could have done without. Within the walls of my agoraphobic prison, I was too anxious to go out alone without my husband and so socialising became a thing of the past, I turned to social media to get my human being fix and I communicated with people that I knew or had known in the past through that medium which provided me with a semblance of real life. The problem with social media though is that people generally tend to try and represent themselves in the best light so I was never really getting an accurate window into the world. My other problem was that, with the lack of any company, I had the TV on almost constantly and watching soaps, for example, is not going to give you a reasonable view of what life is like.
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So, starting university was a huge step for me but trying to get to know people has been a tough hurdle, I think mainly because of the way I am rather than a flaw in anyone else. As I'm so chatty, anyone who interacts with me is more or less going to be overwhelmed by my enthusiasm and desire to talk. When someone takes the time to talk to me, I am usually so grateful for the time and attontion that I can seem a little much. This can be quite off-putting to people and something I've been trying to work on but it's pretty difficult for me to reel myself in when I've been like this the majority of my life.
When I was home alone all day, my poor husband would barely get in the door before I was bombarding him with questions such as 'Have you had a good day?', 'Did you see any cute dogs when you were out and about?', 'Did you read the news today? What did you think about blah?' etc. I can be too much for people and I'm aware of it which makes it even harder. I tend to speak my mind and, if I think that someone deserves a compliment, I will say it but this can make people feel uncomfortable too, even though I'm just being nice. Throughout my life, I've actually seen people hide from me or see me and then walk the other way and, as you can imagine, that always does wonders for my confidence (!) but I see why. I also think that, if people know that I have OCD, they may think that I'll get obsessed with them, when I am much more likely to get obsessed with watching a particular TV show or eating something that I enjoy. I'm not a stalker. My obsessions generally do not include people in real life but I've had people swerve me completely once they know I have a condition with the word 'obsessive' in it. And, even though I understand to a certain extent, it still hurts to see someone avoid me.
I have made some friends and, as my husband keeps on reminding me, I've only been at uni six weeks, there's still plenty of time to get to know more folk and, as I started in January, a lot of the other students have been here since September so have had time to get settled in and find their friends.
So, back to where I am, mercifully far away from where I was over two years ago and I've got a great many things to look forward to and I'm working as hard as I can to get through my course and hopefully land myself an interesting job in the future. There's a long road ahead of me but, from where I came from, every day is an adventure and yet another step on the way to where I want to be.
Hope you'll all join me on this journey and I promise not to overwhelm you all with my enthusiasm. Well, OK, maybe not promise, but I'll do my best :-)
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