The Girl With OCD

Chapter 1

     My hands fly to my head to keep the thoughts out. To refrain myself from hearing the twisted words that are supposed to be helpful and protect me but all too quickly turn into grotesque screams. I try to remind myself that it's just thoughts. Thoughts aren't real and they can't hurt me, I repeat in my mind. But thoughts can hurt me - I scrunch my hands tighter over my ears to try to stop the fresh round of pelting words, and you can bet that it hurts. Hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt. That word rolls over and over in my head, and I think it an odd amount of times. Three, nine, fifteen. Fives are okay. Seven is okay, but never six - no, never six. Six is the number that I avoid the most.

     People laugh at Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. They laugh at the perfectionism and perceived phobias. I laughed, too, before it came and grabbed my throat. OCD doesn't like being laughed at. It's told me I'm going to hell, or killing those I love, and becoming contaminated with an unknown pathogen - sometimes all at once. Obsessions tell me what I will do. The compulsions are "rituals" I do to resolve these thoughts: say things backwards, write sideways, whisper prayers, freeze in certain positions, or breathe in just the right way. The disorder - well, that is it's own lovely piece of work. Disorder means that it can't be easily cured. It's not like an infection that I can take antibiotics for, and after they are done their work I will be fine. No, I take my medication, I finish every prescription like you should do with antibiotics, but I won't be fine. I want to be fine. I want to be okay so, so badly. That's the thing about anxiety - it grips your mind and sucks out your soul. Then, if you're a lucky one, depression seeps into the empty spaces and you're left about sixteen - no, fifteen, fourteen, nineteen, twenty, anything but six - shades sadder than you used to be. I lie awake at night, wondering when it will stop. I'm lying awake now, this very night.

     Sun shines through my blinds - it's obviously no longer night. Little laughs trickle through my open window, and I covet the lives of the small children I hear playing in the park. My mother's voice soon joins in with the giggles:

     "Rosanne, come on downstairs!"

     I don't move.

     "Rose, did you hear me?"

     If you move, or say anything, then your mom will die today.

     "Rose!"

     Don't! Don't even think about it. In fact, if you even think about going to see my mom then I'm going to die! I will die... 

     My "friend" switches between first-person and third-person, which makes it all the more frightening. Am I thinking? Are my thoughts thinking? Or are my anxious thoughts my own thoughts? I hear my mom calling. Now she's coming up the stairs, but I just can't move. The world whirls around me, and I can't stop it. My mother's voice fades into a general hum, mixing with the birds' chirps and children's laughs and our furnace's buzzing. It's a cacophony; it's a symphony in my mind. How lovely.

      I scream with my mouth closed tight. I scream and curl into a ball, hitting my skull against the wall in the process. I repeatedly smash my head against the wall, complying with the OCD's bloodthirsty cry for my pain. I rip my head away from the wall, and throw myself onto my other side. I hold my head between my knees, trying to protect it from the OCD. Prickles spiral up my spine as my neck grows stiff from its position - but I just can't move.

     I'm afraid.

     I feel alone, abandoned in the eternal boundaries of my OCD. Since I was little, it has imprisoned me in a painful cell of loneliness. It's my life. Apparently naming it helps me to deal with it - or so says my psychologist. I call it Cage, because it imprisons me. My own limitations are set by it. It holds me captive in my own mind. I have a hard time doing anything, from naming my stuffed animals, to getting dressed, to typing up an essay. Who is Rosanne Larsen? Who is she? A small, tired girl hiding in the back of her brain, praying for a chance to escape.