Strange Life: Struggling with the Mysteries of OCD

By Larry Morgan and Tommy Burleson

This is the true story of a life of mental pain from an undiagnosed malady--obsessive compulsive disorder--with the associated suffering of panic attacks and clinical depression. Several of the most debilitating episodes are detailed to try to insure the reader understands the effects of these disorders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Larry Morgan
• Release date: Jun 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781952648410

Larry Morgan

Morgan was born in 1944 in a three-room shack in the Nantahala Mountains of North Carolina. He is the seventh of ten children. In 1956, his family moved to Guilford County near Greensboro, NC. He graduated in 1962 from Colfax Union School. Despite receiving several basketball scholarships, he chose to stay close to home by attending High Point University, graduating in 1966. Morgan holds a Master of Education and Education Specialist degrees and principal's certificate from the University of NC-Greensboro. His teaching career began in the fall of 1966 at Ferndale Junior High in High Point, NC. Later he taught in Davidson County before becoming the principal of Nantahala School, his alma mater. He went on to an administrative position in Randolph County, NC, from which he retired in 1996.

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Strange Life: Struggling with the Mysteries of OCD

Copyright 2021 by Larry Morgan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this book is illegal and publishable by law.

ISBN-EPub: 978-1-952648-41-0

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Strange Life:

Struggling with the Mysteries of OCD

Larry G. Morgan

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

At Home

Food at Home

Special Special Repasts

How We Kept from Freezing to Death

Emotional Cripples

Life Styles

To School

Introduction to the Game

Drastic Measures

Basketball at School: Beginning Influence

My Teachers

Holidays and Others

The Move

Depression

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Painful Self-Image

Basketball at the New School

Three Physical Conditions

Homemade Again

Three Best Years of my Life

My First Official Games

Pre-game Rituals

Thanks to Basketball

Dedication and Love of the Game

Tenth Grade and Hopes

First-time Hero

Track Meet and Self-esteem

Special Group

I Made It

Death of an Enemy

We Roll

Sore Finger, Mad Principal

The State Tournament –Eleventh Grade, 1961

Best Year of my Life so Far

Other Recognition

Hurry Next Season!

Liar

Bad Memories

A Second Chance-State Tournament 1962 Senior

Honors and More Honors

Victory Motorcade

Would You Believe Sports Illustrated?

The Devil Again

On My Own for College

More Hell

It is Not So Difficult

Back to the Grind

One More Time

True Love

I Could Have Played

Fateful Decision

To the Classroom

Administrator

Retirement and Writing

Hell on Earth

Personal Experience

I’ve Spent My Time in Hell

Help at Last

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Panic Attacks

Self-esteem

Since Diagnosis

More Frightened Than a Little Child

Pleasure and Information

The Morgan Golf Society

Firearms, Hunting, and Fishing

To Better My Mind

Four Minnie Obsessions

Had Enough?

No More Basketball

Credits

This book is dedicated to my wife, Peggy,

who saw me through the bad times.

Foreword

It is said that today millions are suffering from depression and many are unaware of it. Like me, for almost all their days, they do not recognize it and it robs them of a great part of their lives. Depression is bad enough, but with obsessive-compulsive disorder and occasional panic attacks, their lives are devastated and even destroyed as they almo st did me.

I have written this account to alert people who have all the symptoms I have described in this book so they can take the proper measures to get the lives under control and not have to undergo anything like what I did.

People often give more credence to the written word than the spoken word. I may have thought at times that I was insane, but I was deeply hurt when other people did also. Perhaps this book will convince them of the veracity of what I have tried to tell them

I had a little success in education and had the offer of slightly greater success, but I did not take advantage of it because I was afraid of failure due to my obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic attacks, and depression. I have written this book so that others can see how difficult it is for people who suffer from these conditions to perform in any responsible capacity and to be able to understand individuals with these maladies.

The only thing that I found to give me any surcease from the effects of these maladies except for professional care is organized basketball. Its appeal to my mental state was strong enough to suppress the deleterious effects of the symptoms into the subconscious most of time. Also, it was to organized basketball alone that a negative self-esteem, negative self-image, and an absence of self-confidence changed to positive self-esteem, intense self-confidence, and a positive self-image. With these character shortcomings, coupled with obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic attacks, and depression, it is obvious the terrible state that I was in for most of my life. This is the reason why basketball has played such a prominent role in helping me cope with this terrible state.

Larry G. Morgan

My Time in Hell

When my time here on earth is done

And death blows like a gale

Heaven’s gates will open for me

I have spent my time in hell.

Introduction

My early home life is extremely important to understanding how obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, panic attacks, and low self-esteem practically destroyed my later life. Following is a general description and some facts about these format ive years.

At Home

Being one of nine children is enough for a child to believe that he is not worth very much considering the lack of attention, parental and sibling love, and affection. I was the sixth child with three more behind. With so many of them, and at the rate they were coming, I am sure I was not anything special to my parents, just another person to feed and clothe, and someone to discipline. Generally, I got ignored which instilled in me a sense of not being anything special. On top of this was the fear of my dad and his whippings with anything to hand, but usually was with his wide, leather belt with the double-clas p buckle.

Other than gitting’ wood in the winter as well as the other three seasons (I thought that my name was git wood until I was fifteen years old because that’s all my dad ever said to me!) my brother and I had to pull nubbins all during winter without gloves because we did not have the money to by any. And I was only about six or seven years old! Nubbins were small-undeveloped ears of corn that were left on the stalks when the corn had been pulled, or harvested. We had to pull a burlap bag full of these undeveloped ears every evening before supper for the cow to eat during the evening milking. It did not matter what the weather was be it snow, sleet, freezing rain or just rain, the nubbins had to be gathered.

Other than getting wood and gathering nubbins, my brother and I had another chore that we both loathed, and that was keeping the corn thrown back. This was usually on Thanksgiving Day and in the mountains, it was almost always freezing with sleet, or most likely freezing rain. The older brothers and sisters would go with Dad to the cornfield with the horse and Courier and Ivies sled with sides nailed on to hold the corn. There, they pulled the ears from the stalks and filled up the sled. The horse would pull the load to the end of the barn just beneath the door to the barn loft. Dad would have already seen my brother and me climb up the ladder and into the loft and then have taken the ladder away so the horse could pull the sled load of corn as close to the end of the barn as possible. Taking away the ladder also prevented two hapless peasant’s sons from disappearing into the surrounding trackless forests. Next, he and the other siblings would toss the life sustaining provender, handful by handful, up and into the open loft door. My brother and I had the unenviable task of keeping the corn thrown back, so it did not pile up near the door. After every load, Dad would replace the ladder and climb up and see if were keeping the corn tossed back properly. He always growled and complained and threatened dire punishment if all was not in order, and for him, it usually was not. Remember that this chore was always on Thanksgiving Day and our feet would get numb with cold and our gloveless fingers even colder. I inherited this chore when I was about five years old! When I look at my little five-year-old grandson today I cannot imagine him in that cold barn loft throwing back that corn under any circumstances.

Because we lived on a subsistence farm, we obviously had to help plant and harvest by hand all the crops we planted. First, my oldest brother plowed shallow furrows with special plow and a horse mule. Then, my next oldest brother, from a bucket held under his arm, dropped handfuls of fertilizer every several inches apart. Next, my sister dropped the kernels of corn or beans or whatever, into the spots of fertilizer. Last, my wood gittin’ brother and I covered the fertilizer and corn with hoes.

That evening when dad got home from work, he made a big show of marching down to the field to see if the job met his approval. A more complete list of what we raised is corn, beans, pumpkins, potatoes-sweet and Irish-and all the vegetables in the large garden.

The most time-consuming time spent in harvesting was the corn. After planting, when the corn sprouts were six or seven inches tall, we had to do the first hoeing of the tender shoots, and you had better not cut one down! A few weeks later, we had to do it again and a few weeks later we had to do it a third time. After the corn stalks matured, we had to pull the blades (fodder) from the stalks and bundle them up for storage, usually in a stack in the field. The part of the stalk above the ears of corn were cut and bundled by my dad and my oldest brother. These tops were stacked in the field around a pole under the bundles of fodder. Of course, we had to pull the corn on Thanksgiving Day.

I was about eight or nine years old and could barely reach the highest leaves on the stalk. It was time for that’s your row, boy, and keep up.

Potatoes were the next most odious crop to harvest. This involved keeping the potatoes in your assigned section in the row picked up and piled into a stack ‘fore ole’ Masa could git back through the row wid dat mule plowing out even mo’ potatoes for youse to pick up!

The chores that were most abhorrent to the harvesting of these crops was picking beans, breaking them, and getting them ready for canning. After we had worn our finger to a frazzle picking them and bagging then in several tow sacks, they were carried into the living room. For two or three nights, every one of us from the youngest to the oldest, had to either string them or break them into bean-long pieces. Next, Mom put them into glass jars and cooked then outside in her large tin tub.

Another dreaded chore was the shelling of a bushel of corn every Friday night with raw hands for grinding into meal for the following week’s corn bread.

Another chore my brother and I had to do in the summer was to take two, large, butcher knives to the creek banks and cut armloads of weeds for the family cow. This was because our pasture was so unproductive of grass. Needless-to-say, we hated this drudgery.

We never could go to a movie or magic show at school because at five cents per person, it was too costly. My brothers and sisters and I sat in our classrooms with a few other students and waited for the students who had