It’s my birthday today and I was wondering if any of you could share some encouragement or your favorite quote. OCD and depression have been dominating and I really want to get my life back!!

“The only thing that technical exists is the present”

Happy birthday my dear! A quote I like from Jon Grayson is: 'we' ll pretend it's ocd, treat is as such anf we'll deal with it tomorrow when it comes"

OMG HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! ?????????

“Always know that in every girl, there is a princess with a strength of a warrior.” ~ unknown ? “I think that the best kind of change, is the change that comes from the inside and begins it's way out until it emerges on the outside; a change that is born underneath then continues and spreads until it has reached the surface. That's a true change. A powerful change. And I have found that while we are emerging, changing into something glorious; it is actually us becoming who we really are. A water lily is born underneath the water, inside the soil at the bottom of the river or lake. And the water lily has always been a water lily for that whole time that it was sprouting out of the wet soil, reaching up through the dark water towards the sunlight, stretching and grasping for the surface; where it then buds and blooms on the outside in the sunshine. It doesn't bud and bloom on the surface and then try to reach down below into the soil.” ~ C. JoyBell C. ? “From the ashes I rise. I am blooming into something radiant.” ~ Melody Lee

“We have OCD, we are not OCD” happy birthday ❤️

Okay. So I don't have quotes I love, but I do love poems. Here is one that pulls at me: The Madness Vase/the Nutritionist by Andrea Gibson The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables, said if I could get down thirteen turnips each day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives. The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight, said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do. I handed her the twenty and she said, “Stop worrying, darling, you will find a good man soon.” The first psycho-therapist said I should spend three hours a day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed and my ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet. The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth,  said focus on the out breath, said everyone finds happiness if they can care more about what they can give than what they get. The pharmacist said Klonopin, Lamictal, Lithium, Xanax. The doctor said an antipsychotic might help me forget what the trauma said. The trauma said, “Don’t write this poem. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.” But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi dove into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.” My bones said, “Write the poem.” To the lamplight considering the river bed, to the chandelier of your faith hanging by a thread, to everyday you cannot get out of bed, to the bullseye of your wrist, to anyone who has ever wanted to die: I have been told sometimes the most healing thing we can do is remind ourselves over and over and over other people feel this too. The tomorrow that has come and gone and it has not gotten better. When you are half finished writing that letter to your mother that says “I swear to God I tried, but when I thought I’d hit bottom, it started hitting back.” There is no bruise like the bruise loneliness kicks into your spine so let me tell you I know there are days it looks like the whole world is dancing in the streets while you break down like the doors of their looted buildings. You are not alone in wondering who will be convicted of the crime of insisting you keep loading your grief into the chamber of your shame. You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy. I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside. Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside some days. I know my smile can look like the gutter of a falling house but my hands are always holding tight to the rip cord of believing a life can be rich like the soil, can make food of decay, turn wound into highway. Pick me up in a truck with that bumper sticker that says,  “It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society.” I have never trusted anyone with the pulled back bow of my spine the way I trusted ones who come undone at the throat screaming for their pulses to find the fight to pound. Four nights before Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington bridge I was sitting in a hotel room in my own town calculating exactly what I had to swallow to keep a bottle of sleeping pills down. What I know about living is the pain is never just ours. Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo, so I keep listening for the moment the grief becomes a window, when I can see what I couldn’t see before through the glass of my most battered dream I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds. So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin don’t try to put me back in. Just say, “Here we are” together at the window aching for it to all get better but knowing there is a chance our hearts may have only just skinned their knees, knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming let me say right now for the record, I’m still gonna be here asking this world to dance, even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet. You, you stay here with me, okay? You stay here with me. Raising your bite against the bitter dark, your bright longing, your brilliant fists of loss. Friend, if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other, my god that is plenty my god that is enough my god that is so so much for the light to give each of us at each other’s backs whispering over and over and over, “Live. Live. Live.”

Thank you, @ELO, I def needed to be reminded of that;):) @sweet potato - Wow, I have chills, that resonated in me so much❤️ If I didn’t have loved ones around me I’d prob start crying, but I’ll save that for tonight when I read it again. Thank you:)

@sweet potato - I just turned 21 and if you’d asked me if I was going to make it to this day a few months ago I would’ve said I didn’t know - maybe by God’s grace I would, maybe by my own hand I wouldn’t. So thank you ?I really, truly connected to that poem.

Thank you all!!

And*