Cracking up would be an understatement. I was losing my mind as well my life. This was the period two months before I was diagnosed with OCD. At the time I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I surely knew that I was losing my mind. As I have described in one of my obsession examples, I strongly believe that the incident with the stolen vehicle had erupted the OCD volcano in me. I was very obsessive and was constantly preoccupied with my compulsive checking. I didn’t have a clue what was going on with me.

I couldn’t concentrate on anything. At work, I would lock myself up in the toilet, so I could be alone with my obsessive thoughts. I would spend at least a half hour in the toilet doing my compulsive checking in my mind, trying to reassure myself. While I was having these obsessive thoughts, my heart was pounding, and I was sweating. The feeling I get when I have a new obsessive thought is almost impossible to describe to you. First, I feel a panic attack coming; it feels like all my blood is rising to my head, and like I mentioned before I start sweating and my heart is pounding. My arms and legs are paralyzed with fright, and it becomes difficult to breathe. My eyes are wide open and unblinking. I don’t notice what is happening around me. You can talk to me, but I am not listening. My brain is switched off to anything else. I am only concentrating on this intrusive obsession as it plays over and over again in my mind.

At home (at this stage my wife and I were staying with her parents), my family and wife could see that I was not feeling well but didn’t know what was wrong with me. They asked me, but how could I tell them when I didn’t know myself? I started to withdraw from everyone and was feeling depressed all the time. I started to go to bed earlier because in my room I could be alone, and then I could spend time with my obsessions and my compulsive checking to reassure myself that I hadn’t done anything wrong. Obviously this didn’t help much, and I was just getting more obsessive about my thoughts. I didn’t converse with my wife or family anymore; I only talked when somebody asked me a question. I was no longer the happy Mornay that they had once known. My wife couldn’t understand what was going on or why I was giving her the cold shoulder. We started to fight about small things, and I could feel that there had been a break in our relationship.

A month before diagnosis, we went on a December holiday to Franskraal (a beach area on the south coast of South Africa) where my wife’s parents have a vacation home. I thought maybe the holiday at sea would give me an opportunity to sort myself out, but it didn’t. My obsessions actually got worse, and I was feeling more depressed every day. My favorite hobby is fishing, but even this I couldn’t enjoy. I was having obsessive thoughts all the time and thus was also always performing my checking methods to reassure myself that nothing was wrong.  I felt like nobody understood me and nobody cared.

One morning I decided to go to the local pharmacy to look for some medicine that I could use for my so called “depression,” but I couldn’t find anything. I felt hopeless and went to the beach. While I was sitting on the rocks I started crying and praying obsessively. I really felt that my world was collapsing and that life didn’t have any meaning for me anymore. Back at the house, I was trying my best to be the “old Mornay” because I was starting to ruin my family and wife’s holiday with my constant depression. I hadn’t been very pleasant to be with. One day we were busy ‘braaing’ and I made my father-in-law and myself a drink. I was feeling depressed and couldn’t enjoy myself. I would normally drink a single whiskey with soda, but this time I decided to pour myself a triple and drank it neat. I knew that I was trying to drown my sorrows, but I also knew that it was wrong and wouldn’t help because the next day I would feel the same or even worse, so I decided to stop drinking alcohol.

After the holiday and back at home the obsessions about the stolen vehicle were fading and shifting to the back of my mind. But now new obsessive thoughts were coming to mind, and with them new compulsive checking methods. I was more depressed than ever before, and I felt I was cornered with no way out. My wife was worried about me but also angry because I couldn’t get my act together. She obviously didn’t know what was happening to me but was having her own thoughts about why I was acting so strangely. I stopped giving her the attention and the love that I used to and spent my time instead with the obsessive thoughts that were driving me crazy.

At the time, I felt that I was really losing it and was starting to think about walking away. My whole life was falling apart and with all these new obsessive thoughts telling me that I was a bad person I was incredibly depressed. I thought that I would do anything just to get rid of that feeling. I was living like a zombie. I took no notice of anything; I didn’t see the beauty in life anymore. I also started having obsessions about my past and was obsessed with the thought “What if I’ve done something wrong and will be punished for it?” Trying to remember the past, so I could do my compulsive checking was making me so tired and so depressed that I just couldn’t cope anymore. The thought of running away was so strong that I could picture myself living in a cave at Waenhuiskrans (a small holiday town at the southern point of Africa) where nobody would know where I was. The thought of running away from home was very strong, but in the back of my mind I knew that this wouldn’t be the answer.

When I was alone in my bedroom, busy with all my obsessive thoughts, I was also praying and reading my Bible obsessively, trying to get an answer from God. I would read the chapter in the Bible about Job and would try to convince myself that God put Job through all those bad things for a reason. I would pray to God to forgive all my sins and to help me to feel better, but my way wasn’t God’s way. I was unaware at this time that I had OCD and that God had a plan for my life too. I couldn’t understand why God was not helping me.

I started to tell my wife some of my obsessions and asked her for reassurance that nothing was wrong. I only told her the less embarrassing obsessions, because I thought that if I told anybody including my wife about my intrusive thoughts they would think I was a bad person or that I was crazy.

Back at work I couldn’t do my job because I was spending most of my time thinking about my obsessions. I thought if I could really work hard and concentrate on my job it would distract my mind from my obsessive thoughts, but it didn’t help, and the thoughts continued running through my mind, over and over again. When I had an obsessive thought I would immediately start my compulsive checking to reassure myself that nothing was wrong. When I finished the checking, I would think, “What if I missed something,” and I would start the checking all over again. This would happen over and over (for hours) until a new obsessive thought hit me. It didn’t mean that I had overcome the previous obsessive thought and that I would forget about it; it only meant that I would shift the original obsessive thought to the back of my mind so that I could do more compulsive checking later and spend time now with the new obsessive thought. Obviously I was getting behind in my work which put me under more pressure and stress.

Back at home I was trying my best to put on a happy face, but my family and wife could see that I was not myself. One night when I was in my bedroom (my bedroom was like my only refuge where I didn’t have to face the world and didn’t have to lie about my feelings), I was busy with an obsessive thought when my wife walked into the bedroom and closed the door. She told me that she wanted to have a serious talk with me and wanted to know what was going on. I told her that I didn’t know what was wrong with me and that I had all these thoughts that were worrying me. She asked me to tell her what I was worried about. I started to cry, and I was rubbing my hands as I always do when I am anxious. I was playing with my wedding ring, moving it up and down on my finger. Then my wife asked me a question that I couldn’t believe she would ask.

My wife would asked me if she had pushed me to get married to her. She saw me playing with my ring and thought I wanted to give it back to her. She and her mother had a discussion about the way I had been acting and were trying to determine the reason why I was so unhappy and not myself lately. My mother-in-law had asked my wife if she had pushed me into marrying her, thinking that maybe now I wasn’t happy with the marriage but couldn’t tell her. My wife obviously knew that she didn’t push me to get married to her, and that that was not the reason why I was so unhappy, but she also had no idea what was wrong with me. After a while, she started doubting herself, and that is when she asked me the question.

It was more than I could stand. I couldn’t believe that my behavior had led her to think that I did not love her and that she had forced me to get married. I love my wife so much, and my wedding day was the best day of my life. I could not live without her. I reassured her that I loved her, and that I never felt that I was pushed into a marriage with her. I was breaking down and asked her why she would doubt my love for her. She also started to break down and cried endlessly, saying  that she didn’t know what to do or what to think anymore, that I was not the same anymore. She wanted to help me but did not know how. My wife was losing it because of my behavior, and I was losing it and didn’t know why.

In the days that followed, I was having more and more obsessive thoughts, some old ones and also new ones. My world was turned upside down, and I was withdrawing from everything. I didn’t go to church anymore. I didn’t watch rugby anymore. I was afraid to go to work. Worst, I didn’t give any attention to my wife and family anymore. It really felt that my life was slipping away from me, and I was very depressed.

I have a very good relationship with my mother-in-law, and she had many long talks with me trying to figure out what was wrong. I couldn’t tell her how I really felt or about my obsessive thoughts. I was afraid that if I told her she would think that I was crazy or a bad person. She was under the impression that I felt and acted the way I did because I had used all of our savings to buy the bakkie, and that I would feel better when my boss paid the money back. I let her think that because it was easier than telling her about my obsessive thoughts. The truth was that I didn’t even care about the money anymore. If I could choose between one million rand or getting rid of the obsessive thoughts and being myself again, I would without thinking be rid of the thoughts forever.

One night while I was going through all of my obsessive thoughts and all of my compulsive checking, I tried to sleep (at the time I wasn’t sleeping well and only for short periods) just to get my mind off everything. In the past, I would have dreams and wake up doubting that they were only dreams, wondering if they really happened. It would take some time for me to convince and reassure myself that they were only dreams. This night I woke from a dream paralyzed by all the intrusive thoughts I was having about it. Somewhere in my dream I had had sexual intercourse with someone, and I had had a “wet” dream. What was more disturbing for me was that somewhere in my dream I also saw my brother’s face. I was obsessed with the thought, “What if I had sexual intercourse with my brother in my dream?”

I was going out of mind. I replayed the dream over and over in my mind to get some reassurance, but I was only getting more and more obsessed with the thought. I was thinking, “If I dream this, what does it mean? Am I turning gay? Otherwise I wouldn’t have such a dream.” It was 5 o’clock in the morning, and I went to the TV room and broke down. My hard was pounding faster than ever before, and I could feel the blood rushing to my head. I walked up and down in the room, then sat and rubbed my hands and my head. Then I stood up again and walked up and down. At the time it was not only the dream I was obsessed with but everything that had happened in the last three months. It was just too much for me. As I walked up and down the room, the thought of running away where nobody could fine me was coming into my mind again, but where to?

The next moment my wife was with me in the TV room, and I was crying and trying to talk to her, but I couldn’t. I just kept shouting, “There is something wrong with me! There is something wrong with me!” My wife forced me to sit down, because I was still walking up and down the room. She held my hands and tried to calm me down. I told her about the dream I had, but I also told her that it was not only the dream but the way I was feeling the last three months. My wife did not know how to calm me down and woke her mother to ask for help, so my mother-in-law was also sitting with me, rubbing my hands and trying to calm me. At the time I wasn’t worried about my image anymore. I was crying like a little baby. My mother-in-law gave me some sugar water and headache pills. She and my wife were sitting with me on the coach, and I was just staring in front of me.

In the meantime my sister-in-law woke up and phoned a friend of hers that was a nurse. She told her about my situation and asked her what she could do to help me. The nurse gave my sister the contact information for a psychiatrist nearby. My sister-in-law phoned him for an urgent appointment but could only get an appointment for the next day. In the meantime, my wife took me to the local doctor where I got some medicine to keep me calm. My wife then took me to Blaawberg Beach and we walked on the sand.

I told her that I did not want to go to the psychiatrist because only crazy people go there. I was a big, strong young man who was afraid of what other people would say and think when they found out that I had been to a “head doctor.” My wife calmed me down and convinced me that it was for my own good that I would go and see the psychiatrist. I was confused and afraid but also knew in the back of mind that I needed professional help.