When you spend the vast majority of your life being one person, it's hard to adjust to life as another. To make a long story short, I've had OCD for 10 years, nine of which without treatment. I also dealt with panic disorder and anorexia nervosa. Life without treatment was unbearable. My peers didn't understand. Truth be told, I don't even think they noticed. For six hours a day I lived a lie; I laughed and smiled while inside I felt like screaming. The only real conflicts my OCD caused during my early years were between myself and adults.
To my teachers, I was the problem child. I was the one who ran out of the classroom screaming every other hour and couldn't sit still. I was the one who kept re-asking questions and cried every day. There are two situations in particular that stand out in my mind. Once, in kindergarten, after upsetting my teacher with my compulsions, she proceeded to tell me that I was useless and didn't deserve oxygen. I know she didn't mean anything by it, but her words always stuck with me. I've spent my life trying to prove her wrong, though at times I felt I'd proved her right.
In fourth grade, I once nearly got suspended for running out of the classroom screaming six times in three hours. I didn't know at the time, but I was having repeated panic attacks. I would always run to the nurse, because, call me crazy, but I always felt safest in bathrooms, and the bathroom in the nurse's office, I figured, must have been cleaned and disinfected many times a day. When I ran to the nurse's office the sixth time that day, my teacher ran after me, threatened me, and then argued with the nurse for a half hour over whose job it was to "deal" with me. It was as if they forgot I was there. Don't get me wrong; I know they didn't know any better. To them, I was just an undisciplined child beyond help.
My first "treatment" came in second grade. My teacher was a Sister who was training to teach at a school for the blind. She had more patience than anyone I have ever known. When she saw I was struggling, she referred me to the school counselor. Every Wednesday during gym class, I met with the social worker in the janitor's closet. Ironic, isn't it, a germophobic seven-year-old being treated in a janitor's closet. I think I was the only person the counselor ever saw at my school. She left a year later.
I don't remember much about my childhood. In my mind I can only call brief scenes of terror. I remember waking up every day wishing that I could just be saved. That's all I wanted. It sounds selfish now, but that was the only thing I prayed for at night.
As a child, I was a germophobe, checker, prayer, and repeater. When I got older, I became a studier, memorizer, and checker. All of a sudden, I found that I was no longer the problem child to my teachers. My parents, to be honest, either didn't notice or didn't want to notice that there was anything different about me. My grades, to them, were a sign of my improvement. They saw the end result, not the hours of checking and studying and rewriting and worrying and doing anything to avoid imperfection.
Once, in seventh grade, I came across OCD on the internet while researching a project for school. I showed the article to my mother and asked her if that was why I was "different." She replied that she guessed she forgot to tell me that I caught OCD when I was little, but it was gone now. I wasn't satisfied.
Now, three years later, after hitting rock bottom, I am finally getting help. One night, I just broke down and begged my mom to find someone to help me. Now, I feel like I'm deconstructing my life and rebuilding a new, better one. It's a battle that's nowhere near over. I'm not sure if it ever ends. Either way, my life now is better than I ever thought it could be.
The first time I visited a psychiatrist, he asked me if I ever thought of dying. I told him I assumed I'd have died already. He seemed shocked. He asked me to clarify what I meant. I told him that if God had made me this way, I just assumed --. I stopped there, because I realized that I didn't know what I had assumed. I just never imagined living trapped inside my mind for long. Now I can, and I will.