Soul Soup for Two

Obsessive Compulsory Disorder.

Obsessive: Being totally captured and engulfed by it. It consumes you. Your mind, your bones, your actions.

Compulsory: You can’t stop it. You have to do it. No matter the voice in your head knowing that it is completely irrational, you cannot stop.

Disorder: The slowly growing recognition that this itch under your skin, and the fear in your heart, is not shared by the people around you.

“Regular” people don’t worry if they have just led to their family getting killed by not checking the door ten times to see if its locked, they don’t knock on wood seven times to dispel the bad thoughts in their mind, they don’t feel confused as to what thoughts, thoughts, are their own and what aren’t.

I was always a scared and anxious child. I would count to seven, seven times, because I knew it was a lucky number. I would rearrange things so that they were “safer”, and I would get so tangled up in my thoughts that there would be periods of time where I would just look like I was staring into space.

It is frustrating and relieving to know that I have OCD.

It is also very isolating.

I have spent years pretending and assimiliating myself with my peers and it feels like that it was all futile. There is something fundamental that is wrong about my brain. Something I cannot change.

I do not know how to speak about.

I sometimes do not even want to acknowledge it.

Because what if I am making excuses? How do I know, that my shortcomings, my failures, were due to some unchangeable fact? Or was it the real me?

I don’t want to know the answer.

I don’t want to seem like I am making excuses, or looking for pity.

But it is hard. The mental stuff. No one can see them. And when you tell people, it feels like you have to prove to them and say:

Hey I’m not lying about this! Trust!

It doesn’t help that mental health has been warped by social media to be a badge you collect, or some cute quirky thing that you have.

There’s two extremes and no middle.

The truth is it’s hard. It’s want-to-tear-you-hair-out hard. But I still wish that people could see and understand.

I wish I could understand.

Thyme xx