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Warning: if you suffer from depression, don't read this. It might mess with your head. Not kidding.

This is probably the first time I've written to you, universe. I may have prayed to God or others, but I doubt I've spoken to you before.

I need to drop on my knees, and sob out my thanks to god for Prozac 60mg. I've suffered more than I imagine near anyone else can comprehend. It's such a sick, bent agony laced with petrifying fear, covered in 'my-universe-is-broken' sauce. The OCD I was dealt in 2011 is the most indescribable hell I can imagine. I can laugh at the atrocities I see on the news because I would have traded places for something as simple and benign as physical pain, the pain of four broken limbs or having my skin peeled off with a steak knife. Instead I was given 24-hour terror equivalent to being eaten alive by a monster. I wanted to die so bad during this. I wanted to die so badly.
I was alive for my family but even their need was getting to not be enough to justify my living in this carnival from hell.

So as you know I ended up in a crisis center in September, right in time for 9/11, and was put on several medications, none of which worked, and one (Invega, the only antipsychotic they tried), actually made it far worse. Then they gave me the Prozac. I knew that SSRIs needed to be a high dose to help OCD, so I bothered them until they raised it to 60mg.
It took the month and a half to start working they said it would. A little longer.

We both know I was not given the hand-washing or germ phobias with my OCD, I was given the horrible obsessive existential stuff, the really horrible painful questions that I'd obsess over until every fiber of my being believed them to be true. The kind of stuff that can blacken your sky and make you feel like you're falling into an infinite pit of pitch black tar. The stuff that makes you want to die, but be too afraid of what nightmare would await you if you did. The one the sufferers called Pure-O. I suppose I deserve some positive reward for living through this at all, or perhaps just an absence of punishment for a while, since if I wasn't wanted by family and friends, I'd be two years dead by now.

I'm writing this because I want to tell you what I need now. I hope you'll give it to me. As you know, the last few months, during my recovery, I've stopped all work, all projects, all programming and just played Warzone 2100 all day. I've gotten as good as I was before. I'm happy for the first time in years. I plan to start my work again soon, but I need some guarantees from you before I do so.

The first thing is, as an example, my famous gerbil jokes, such as 'fear the gerbils', no longer appeal to me, because I've had enough fear. Horror movies are no longer something I watch, I don't enjoy Halloween anymore, and although you know that historically I've preferred sad music when sad, now, I find myself playing uplifting songs in an attempt to drown out the memories. Christmas is probably forever ruined for me because of the onset of the OCD that time in 2011. Kinda a PTSD thing going on there.
Whenever I hear a christmas song, instant trip down memory lane from hell.
Fourth of July is ruined too thanks to my relapse in July this year.

I want to be surrounded by joy, by kindness, by peace, by good things. I have seen enough of the other side of the spectrum for this lifetime.

I want to be loved, and to love others, I want to have a fulfilling and useful purpose and still have time for myself.
I want to be followed by a hundred billion times more light than I ever was darkness.

The tagline at the bottom of the site today says "Today is the first day of the rest of the mess.", but I vehemently disagree. Today is the first day of the rest of my life, and it's going to be good now, because I deserve it. I've paid my dues. I'd just like your blessing for the good plan I've laid out, and your help in making it come to pass.

Sincerely, SubsentientneitnesbuS.