This post is just serving as a journal entry for me, so don’t feel the need to respond, but if you do, thank you! Today was an incredibly difficult day, I have into compulsions again, I hate when I do, my brain convinces me that it’ll help me but it leaves me feeling like absolute garbage. Today was a bad day, even though my mom didn’t go to work today, which usually makes me happy because them I’m not home alone all day. She was taking care of my step dad, he had really bad heart burn last night and apparently couldn’t breathe, I think it’s called GERD, but he seems better today, but most of her attention was focused on making sure he was okay. I hate how selfish I feel, even though he actually needed help and watched today, I was still wanting to talk with my mom and have her attention. I hate OCD, I used to be able to just hangout in my room all day and not have to constantly be around my mom. But my anxiety has been flaring so much. POCD, Real Event, and False Memory are a horrible combination. I’m still terrified of what I saw weeks ago earlier in November. It’s left me mortified and scarred. No amount of reassurance has been able to help me, not from the suicide hotline, not from my mom, and not from my friends. I feel horrible and don’t know how I’m going to make until the end of the month. I just need to wait until January 1st before my insurance can cover any therapy sessions, so I have to wait. I’m looking into making a session with a general therapist just so I have someone to talk to this month. My past decisions, from when I was younger are haunting me, and again, reassurance has stopped working. I’m at a point where I feel like I’m ready to give up. But I could never put more pain into my moms heart. I wish I had someone in real life to talk to about OCD, someone who actually has it themselves and understands the pain that comes with it. I feel so alone, but I also really feel as if I don’t deserve help. I still want to isolate from the world, or banish myself from society as a whole. And as much as I know how cheesy or ridiculous that sounds, it’s the only thing that seems to make sense to me. I’m tired of compulsions, they don’t reduce my anxiety at all, maybe they did before, but now it just seems like these compulsions are self destructive and it’s my brain wanting to punish or destroy me. I’ve lost all motivation to do anything, I can’t even do chores without feeling incredibly torn down and defeated, I just sit around all day ruminating, or scrolling mindlessly through social media to just distract myself, I do nothing productive. This semester is almost over, so at least that weight will be lifted a little bit. I’m just done. Hopefully tomorrow’s journal entry is a little bit more brighter or hopeful, but I doubt it. I suppose these journal entries mainly serve just to let my thoughts out, and maybe read back on them someday to remember or for whatever reason I’ll need them. I’m gonna go take out my trash bins and then get into bed, everyone is asleep right now and it’s barely about to be 10 here. I feel like such scum and waste of time.

I’ve come to a point in my life where I can be very happy. I have a safe environment, a loving community. Yknow I’ve really healed through or moved on from a traumatic past and as I say to my boyfriend from time to time like a broken record: I feel like nowadays the only thing bringing me stress or at times misery is myself. I am a fairly joyful person, when I’m comfortable I’m very goofy and like to sing dance and have fun. I find that I relate to so many amazing people I meet that are the nicest, most fun, elevating individuals, who also struggle with the hardest sometime debilitating things. It truly sucks because when I find those moments of peace I see the power of what an ocd mind could be as a person. We are people who may over analyze, but I myself also always find the good in people. And aye if in a moment I don’t think anything is doomly wrong and if I don’t try to understand it I may parish 😅 then that moment feels like the best one in the world. But on the other side of that when I’m not in a quiet mind moment and I’m left with myself to take control of what life in front of me looks like in or around me. I almost have been crumbling. Like I said at the beginning of this story here, the life around me is not so situationally stressful. And it’s also fairly simple. My boyfriend and I live together in a small cozy trailer with our two cats, he works full time very hard and I work part time where I spend as much time as I can working and then have a few days around the house. We’re saving for a home and are quite content with our lifestyle at the moment with work and being “lazy”, or resting and going out for fun now an then on our time off together. Most times though I do have day or two off during the week by myself, which usually goes one of only two ways. Like I said before I do like to work hard, especially now that I have a part time job that’s fairly easier than others I’ve had in the past. So I work 6-7 hours then drive home, air up my tires and wash my car sometimes because I like doing something after work while I still have energy.Or I go to the store. Come home make food, prolly nap and not really worry about too much because I’ve worked all day. But on my days off. I find myself waking up with a lot of anxiety. I usually fight it off by going back to sleep. But my OCD is heavily circled around shame. Even though I only sleep in till 10-11, 12-1 at the latest. I find myself thinking about how wrong (in nice terms) it is to do that. And the funny thing is the older I get (I’m a 21F). I’m not as pressured by this thought, even though it’s still stressful it literally just feels like a thought I can’t escape from. To put things in simple terms. I truly psycho analyze my actions breath by breath and my intrusive thoughts are critiquing those actions bit by bit. I’ve recently have started medication and it was a tremendous difference in the beginning and it helped me cope with the acceptance and letting go (f it or just care less) of those thoughts. But let’s say I forget to take it, or I wake up one morning by myself all day and I’m super tired or unmotivated. That day will feel truly debilitated. And now I’m definitely to the point where I’m battling that, but also have a thin vale behind that where I now know what is going on. And the thoughts are shameful for “not trying to get better or be better” Because I do Like I write a lot, and it truly is one of the best coping mechanisms for working through intrusive or obsessive compulsions. I could also write all day, and if I don’t listen to that ease of the anxiety from writing. And try to keep going the writing will turn into a compulsion itself I feel like I should not stop or critique it as well. But luckily I’ll hopefully find my place in explaining the cycle of what I do when my brain is very loud about things. The next time it’s too loud:)

Never feels like I can fully put my mind to rest. The problem with OCD for me is once I'm over one worry there's another buried deep into my mind that I'm not fully over. The two events I'm not completely over is when I tried to help a 17 year old with POCD when I was 19 and the topics unfortunately were detailed and even then I explained to them I wasn't comfortable with talking to them. I guess I just had a hard time saying no to someone needing help but it eventually made me so uncomfortable that I stopped talking with them altogether at some point. Then the other thing is being so worried that I committed a crime because my elbow touched someone's behind when I didn't want that to happen at all. I didn't want to listen to my OCD by saying move my arm or something horrible is going to happen so I didn't and then something bad actually did happen. I thought it would just be a light touch while zipping a bag up but then it was worse than I ever wanted it to be and it was so awkward and I hated it. I feel like I just won't be able to get back to the way I was before OCD started all of this. Aside from that I've just had extreme health anxiety but am too afraid to reach out to a PCP even though I need to. Something deep down is telling me I should do this but I'm just so anxious and embarrassed about sharing things to them. I can't even enjoy the things I used to do because this is constantly just messing up my life. I'm hoping I get a start of positivity next time I see my therapist. This just sucks. Feels like others around me are doing so much better than I am and I'm just kind of stuck on these same problems and feeling absolute shame and guilt from the past over and over again. I'm just so sick of dealing with this every single day so I just use escape whenever I can. Even that doesn't really work. I just wish I could go back in time.

Lately, my mood shifts so frequently. A couple of minutes ago, I got triggered and decided that instead of doing a compulsion, I'd write in my journal (since I haven't done that in a while). But after writing not even half a page... I'm okay? Well, sorta! 😭 I'm experiencing a resurgence in old obsessions, which is disappointing. A couple of weeks back, I was doing a lot better, but now it's just one thing after another. Really wish therapy was more affordable. I'm already seeing my psychiatrist, but she wants me to see a specialist as well. When I think about living with this for the rest of my life, I can get a little emotional. I know it'll get easier to manage as time passes, and it might not even affect me in the future, but right now...? It's a lot of work I'll need to do to overcome this. I'm willing to do it, but I get discouraged at times... But that's enough of my little vent! I hope anyone who reads this is doing okay. Hang in there 🤍