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Merry Christmas peepz!

I just spent Boxing Day at home completing a new book, Life In Rewind, a true story about a guy who developed a very severe form of OCD ever since the mother who filled his childhood with memories of love died of cancer and he, looking from a distance as his mother struggled with taking in her last breath, just a boy, never had a closure from that incident. Instead, he was constantly being uprooted, shifting houses, staying with his aunt and uncle, fearing for his father's life, that maybe if he didn't mentally or physically reverse what he did or if he stopped doing something at an odd number of times, his loved ones would die. His rituals of counting and recounting caused him 6 hours just to get from the basement to the phone upstairs. It was so bad that at one point in his life, he couldn't bear the trouble it took to shower or go to the bathroom - so he lived with the stench and grime in the basement of the house, not showering in over a year.

He lived with the mantra "Time equals progression, and progression equals death" - so if he did something once, he had to repeat it twice, or a hundred times, or up to 5-digits, as long as it was an even number and it 'felt right'- all that just to 'erase the event', as if it didn't happened, and time would stand still, and he would keep everyone he loved alive.

This story was about how it all happened, and the doctor, occupied with memories of deaths in the Army during the war, who helped Ed Zine learn to manage his OCD through building trust and then friendship.

I know, I know, what a way to spend the season. To be honest though, it was one of the most sincere and real book I've ever read and I could somewhat grasp how his illogical mind made him the way he was. The best part was, he trained his mind so well he had photographic memory. I think that really exacerbated his condition, not being able to forget. AND the illness feeds its own vicious cycle, because he knew it himself that it was not logical to do things like those and he felt ashamed that other people had to be pulled into his obsession. Feeling the despair and anxiety, that sparked more rituals to adhere to and more hoarding of things and recounting until he felt just right.

Goodness gracious.