Am I Fit For Medium?

This is my second post on Medium and I am currently writing about my living experiences which you may or may not find relatable.

I didn’t want the title to be misleading. Hence there is a disclaimer in italics.

I was going through quite a few articles here since yesterday and thought…wow they write so well 😯, the topics are so interesting! And I am here just tapping on my phone planning to pen down how my day was 🫩, like people used to do in early 2000s. Personal blogs aka personal diary online that screamed “me me me me”. The internet is still “me me me me me me” but much louder.

I bought a large bucket today.

I was going to buy a dustbin too, but it was expensive. So I didn’t.

Yeah. Basically garbage.

My first post has only 1 read and I am pretty sure whoever came across that probably didn’t care. Thats alright. My doctor says “Baby steps. Everybody starts from scratch.”

Time to be serious. Okay so last time I wrote about my glorious discovery that I had OCD at 17.

Now, I don’t want to flaunt my college admissions. It was tough.

At 18, I was breezing through my first semester. Brilliant in studies, funny, sociable, bold, nonconformist. At college, we had a dress code. I decided to not to follow that religiously. This was not done to refute authority but more about persevering personal identity. I have noticed, whenever someone tries to control what I should wear on specific occasions (weddings, other festivals etc.), I basically find myself at loss. “I can’t wear a lehenga or saree”, I had pleaded to my best friend before her wedding 🛐

She considered my plea and we settled at Indo-Western. I don’t think I winged all the looks but now I can’t ask her to marry again… so that I can get the dress code right 🥲.

Dear reader, does it happen to you too or is it just me?

Anyway, back to college. Second semester was same but the old abominable OC thoughts were creeping in. Swirling at the back of my mind. During finals I started to have many flashbacks. It happened even when I was writing each paper.

Aced the exam. I was at the top and nobody was more sadder than I was after this success. Truth is, I didn’t want to be at the top. And as I heard my parents announcing my success to relatives and neighbours, I grew angrier and more anxious. I thought to myself, “Oh f*ck just like in my childhood, I again have to perform and win the trophy (trophy child problems) for them.”

But mind it, I am not a sage. I did pride myself on my success, especially at the faces of those who made fun of me at school.

See, it was a dichotomous situation but not exclusively synonymous. I was extremely proud of myself but completely terrified at the same time.

The “What ifs” had already started to sink in.

And thus OCD returned with its full vigour and I collapsed.

Sometimes I wonder, “what if” it was I, who brought it upon myself at an unconscious level, so that I won’t have to perform for others anymore.

Our Unconscious mind has its own life and it acts in a way that the conscious mind can rarely make sense.

My own thoughts decapitated me.

Have you ever felt going insane? Like… in a very bad way that you fear of ending up in a mental hospital? I was. I asked my parents to put me in one because I was a threat to everyone.

For example, I was afraid to touch the scalpel or tweezers in my practical box. “What if” I harm my innocent classmate? A seemingly harmless butter knife made me think “what if” I stab a family member of my own. I would come back from college and go straight under the blanket shivering in anxiety thinking “what if” I go completely gaga and commit mass destruction!

“what if”, “what if”, “what if”…that’s what Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is. I was never a “cleanliness freak”, like Monica, portrayed in popular series Friends. That is not OCD. The series “Monk” was better at depicting this monstrous malady. But nothing will ever portray the real thoughts that eats your brain away. It is very much likely that you often notice some quirks in your loved one. Are they “hiding something”?

The answer is yes. Probably your mother who is making breakfast for you is frightened with thoughts such as “what if I do bad things to my child!” but you can only notice she took one plate and touched the middle point apparently for no reason.

Sufferers hide decades of agony due to fear of judgement or being discarded. Sometimes I do wonder how many people take these thoughts to their graves. Nobody can know because,

“I am a bad person with bad thoughts and perverse intentions”.

After that butter knife incident, my dad believed I was truly sick and not making up excuses to abandon ny coursework. He took me to my doctor, who for the first time in my life acknowledged everything I had been going through since 14 and even before that.

It has been more than a decade since that day. Diagnosis did not give me comfort. I had to wait and trust.

This is the reason, I am following her prescription. ✍🏻

And OCD is curable. 👩🏻‍⚕️💊

🪣🧼🔪🙅🏻‍♂️

(In my next post I will go into a bit of nitty gritty about this disease. I’ll try my best to not to hit you with jargons but narrate real stories about real people. I don’t think Psychology Today will consider publishing that as a guest post. So, for Medium readers it is.)

Image from Pinterest. Also, I didn’t finish all seasons 💁🏻 I fell for Dr. House.