𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕠𝕟𝕘 𝔾𝕚𝕣𝕝𝕤 ℂ𝕝𝕦𝕓 ☁︎☀

OCD~Aimee

OBSESSION

I hate telling people about myself. I hate telling people that I have a problem. I hate that this problem has gotten so bad that I can't keep ignoring it. I hate that now I have to admit to others that I'm not like them. I hate that I can't walk down the street like everyone else. I hate that I can't go to school like everyone else. I hate that I can't live like everyone else.

I hate what this thing inside me is forcing me to be.

It started when I was young. Back when I thought that how I viewed the world was the same as how everyone viewed it. Back when I thought that all the other kids counted the minutes passing by in their heads, too. Back when I thought I was just like everyone else.

But then I noticed people staring. I noticed they would do things that would frustrate me simply for the sake of frustrating me. I noticed they would laugh when I moved my eraser back where I had it before they came around. I noticed that no one else had their pencils in descending order, perpendicular to the side of the desk.

I tried to stop doing these little things. Washing my hands when they felt a little strange, tapping someone on the shoulder if they tapped me first, not focusing on what the teacher was saying because I was staring at the clock. But I couldn't. Even when I forced myself to look away from the clock, all I could think about was the clock, and how it might be ticking faster now that I'm not looking at it.

I didn't understand why no one else did these things. I didn't understand why they thought it was funny that I did. And I certainly didn't understand the school counsellor when she said I was different. "A little more particular about some things compared to others," she would say, telling me it was "a gift-of-sorts in certain situations, but a tribulation in others."

She taught me ways to fight against the urge to watch the clock. She taught me how to focus in class, and how to recognize when the other children were trying to make it harder on me. For a small while, I was able to function.

But then I got worse.

So much worse.

I tried avoiding people in the halls, praying that when I passed by them we wouldn't brush shoulders. I would ask to go to the washroom when there were only a few minutes left so that I could avoid the swarm of people moving between classes.

It worked for a while.

But not long enough.

My obsessions were getting worse, and would be the cause of my death one day. I knew, because it kept reminding me. On the hour, every hour.

I would have dreams about my family home being coated in flames because I wasn't there to stop it from happening. I knew I couldn't go to school because if I did, no one would be home to put out the fire.

So I would pretend to be sick. I would make myself vomit in order to prove I wasn't lying.

But I always was.

I had missed school too often, and my teachers were starting to notice. "I'm fine, I just had the flu last week. And the week before that, I had a bad head cold. And the week before that I had pulled a muscle in my back and it was painful to move."

I was so accustomed to lying at this point, that I started to believe these stories I was telling other people. I started lying to myself, telling myself that I was fine. That all these things I had been doing were normal, but everyone else just wouldn't admit they did them, too.

I stopped sleeping, because if there was no one awake in the house, it would be easy for someone to come in and kill us all. So I had to stay awake. I had to, otherwise my family would die.

It wasn't until I had gone three nights straight without sleeping that I finally admitted I needed help. I finally realized I couldn't keep lying to myself. I finally went to the doctor and asked him what was wrong with me. Why I couldn't be like everyone else no matter how hard I tried.

And so he handed me a bottle of pills, saying they would help. And they did, in a sense. They made it so that if my pencils weren't lined up, I didn't have to fix them. They made it so that I didn't have to be thirty minutes early to everything. They made it so that I acted like everyone else.

But I still couldn't think like everyone else. I still would have alarms ringing in my head when all I wanted to do was rest my eyes. I still would have a miniature me in there, telling me that because I went to school that day, my house, along with everything in it, had burnt to a crisp.

So I stopped taking the medication and tried other things.

I did research and found some things that were supposed to help me. Talk therapy, exposure therapy, and even electroshock therapy.

I was always too scared to try the last two, but I forced myself to try the other.

And if I'm being honest, it was the best decision I had ever made.

While it never truly eradicated this invisible virus I have coursing through my neurological pathways, I finally understood it. I learned ways to help contain it. Not control it, mind you, as I still stress about walking through the hallways, but it doesn't have a grasp on me the way it used to.

There are still some days that I wake up on the wrong minute, and so I am unable to go about my day, but these are now rare. I can sleep at night, knowing my family is safe. I can walk down the sidewalk at a good pace, no longer scared of what I may step on.

I can now enjoy my life, even if it isn't like everyone else's.

I can now by happy with who I am, even if I may seem strange to others.

So I encourage you, all of you, to seek help if you need it, and continue seeking help until you have found what truly helps you. Because all of us in this world deserve to be happy with who we are, regardless of who that may be.

Stay strong. There is light at the end of the tunnel. You just have to make it there.

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Written by @Ezia12 . She's an amazing writer, check her out!