If I could describe the urge that sloshes around my insides before I carry out a compulsion, I’d describe it as needing to scream for help after your vocal chords have been extracted. Or the instinct to sway at fire ants covering your body, all the while knowing if you irritate them you’re doomed to face their fiery, stinging wrath. But you do, because you think they could kill you. Because you think the urge will drown you, or pull you under, or bury you alive in some shallow grave. It feels unavoidably necessary. Urgent, even. Then relief comes over me from the compulsions; the repetitive comfort; the question mark reassurances.
“You’d tell me if you wanted another?” “You’d tell me if you weren’t attracted to me anymore, wouldn’t you?” “Don’t you think you should be with another? But I’m not good enough. You deserve someone good enough.”
And I could make him the happiest he’s ever been, and I’m modest, not cocky, here when I say I do make him the happiest he’s ever been. His family has echoed this like a chorus to the things he said to me too many times to count.
Some of my compulsions include picking at things, but most are hidden. I’ve always been so ashamed of them, of the intrusive thoughts, the nature of my ruminations and themes. I’ve felt like a pervert, a monster, someone worthy of exile from society. Despite never doing anything wrong. Even that sentence, in all its confidence, is anxiety-inducing for me, because what if I do something wrong in the future? Because of the confidence, maybe I’m meant to fail such a statement. I feel the need to not only analyze everything, but to clarify all that which causes anxiety until I’m comfortable with the new arrangements of things.
I know this post isn’t very relatable to many, but it pays homage to the very real fact mental illness comes in such varying forms. Most are so good at concealing themselves from those around their “host”, that it’s devalued as any true struggle. And the stigma and the shame and the bottling back up of it, remains until some breaking point is arrived at; sometimes then it is the vehicle to drastic, permanent measures. And you can never get them back.
I think a huge misconception for loved ones of those battling mental illness is you have to understand. That’s not it. We don’t expect understanding — I speak widely and broadly when I say, more than that we need encouragement and an ear, every now and again, and support. Support to get better, to seek help, to desire help, to not feel….less than. We don’t expect you to understand because we are aware you might not have experienced it.
My fiance doesn’t completely comprehend my OCD. He’s had a form of Pure-O a few years back, coupled with agoraphobia and depression; but my particular themes and compulsions, he doesn’t understand. But I’ve never been upset by that. One of the most special things he’s ever done is he joined a few Facebook groups for OCD sufferers. I don’t know if he knows just how paramount that is in my mind, but seeing him try to understand and support me and want me to get help was all I needed to see.