Why do I need a title for a basic question?

In 2023, as I was finally getting sober from harder substances, I found myself in one of the scariest mental spaces I'd ever known. I was still smoking daily, my relationship was rocky, and one night—it all hit me. It felt like I had slipped into a video game. Nothing felt real… or maybe everything felt too real. The world around me was distorted. I had always dealt with anxiety, but this? This was something else. I was spiraling—drenched in guilt over everything I'd ever done, every person I thought I hurt, every wrong I tried to make right all at once. It was suffocating. At 23, I tried checking myself into a mental hospital—something I hadn’t done since I was 17. I was desperate to understand what was happening. My relationship took a hit as I spilled every ounce of guilt I carried to my partner, unable to stop the cycle. It wasn’t just anxiety. It was OCD. And while the diagnosis was terrifying at first, it was also reassuring. I finally had a name for the storm inside me. I wasn’t alone. People I admire—like Jenna Ortega—deal with this too. It’s not just me. It’s real, it’s hard, but it’s also something I can face. Since then, I’ve made big changes. I stopped smoking—realizing it only made the noise in my head louder. I started therapy. My partner didn’t understand at first, but as we both learned more about OCD together, we grew stronger. We’re now engaged, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been. But now it’s time to reconnect—with myself. I want to find the me before everything. The creative, passionate, connected me. I want to start streaming games again and hopefully rebuild the following I lost. I want to connect with people again—I don’t have many friends left, but I’m determined to find my people again. I’m also diving back into my art. Journaling. Sketching—even when I don’t like it. Because it’s the act of creating that heals, not just the end result. I won’t let OCD run my life. I will prevail.

i want to get this out of the way; i’m not suicidal. i’m a 17 y/o guy whose been living with OCD for what i assume is most of my life despite only getting the diagnoses last year. i’ve been hustling on despite my mental health really consuming my life to moments in time where i question my sanity and self control. it’s the lack of control that really kills me with this disorder. each day i wake up, it’s the same persistent reminders; it’s the same meaningless conversations replaying; it’s the same small rituals that just barely let me breathe before the thoughts return. nothing i do is gonna stop that unbearable monogamy where i have to sit back and let my eyes be peeled open; i don’t know how to live with that. no pill has worked on me, and any response i give the thoughts just make them worse. right now i’m trying to just sit through it and not care. don’t let it effect me emotionally; try not to feel the discomfort. then it starts to manifest into physical pain where i feel the bones of my chest have this pressure—like staples entering them at the rhythm of a heart beat. i’m getting though this, but i’m not enjoying my life when doing so. i don’t know if i have a future where it isn’t just this repeating through the process of each day. i don’t want to spend the rest of my life avoiding the one thing i’m supposed to have control over. i also don’t want to drown my days in self medicating or get addicted doing so—like i already am. i don’t see the way to make this life of mine work, especially given how much i don’t have to do deal with at my age. of course that will come to. look, i’m not at risk; i really don’t want in anyway to die despite being basically hopeless. i’m numb to the pain of it, i don’t feel anything in my desire to escape these cycles, i just need an out. i’m not seeing a way to move forward. i’m willing to hear anything.

OCD has been in my life since 2019, and I have no idea how to get rid of it. Everything started when I was 14. I had just started high school, and when I walked into the classroom, I was trying to figure out the atmosphere there. I was a very quiet kid in high school. I usually hated my skin, so I would wear my cardigan in a way that covered my hands and listened to lessons with my hand on my face. A few weeks later, people started insulting me, hitting me, and verbally harassing me. The bullying got worse, and from then on, I started bottling everything up. At that time, I cared too much about what people thought, and I began to believe others would harm me. Because of these thoughts and fears, I failed around 8–9 classes. In 2020, when the pandemic started, classes went online. I hated it, but I was happy because I wouldn’t have to see those people again—at least until I lost my grandmother. She passed away due to COVID, and that pushed me really far down. Back then, I had an edit account on Instagram. I loved making edits and I had friends I really liked. Talking with them made me so happy, but over time, their behavior toward me changed. They turned into completely different people I no longer recognized. They became horrible, and all of this happened just because I replied late to their messages. I wasn’t always online—I’m human too. They added me to groups, threatened me, and sent me awful messages. I began to hate myself more and more. Around that time, I also started becoming paranoid about people. When I met someone new, I approached them with fear, and this dragged me down further. For almost a year and a half, both online and in real life, I developed prejudice against people. This prejudice was mostly fear—fear and prejudice made me antisocial. When the pandemic ended, in 2022–2023, I had to do an internship in a place and a job I absolutely hated and couldn’t manage. The people there constantly mocked me, which pushed me down even more. I didn’t know how to deal with these situations because I was alone. I did the internship for about two and a half months, and when 2023 came, all the traumas and obsessions echoed in my mind. I felt terrible because of the disgusting events I had experienced. It felt like my brain had completely shut down. By January 2023, I was in an unbearable state. When I walked into the classroom, my teacher noticed something was wrong and started asking me questions. I immediately burst into tears and told her, “I hate myself.” At that time, the students in the back were making a lot of noise, so they couldn’t hear me. My teacher said, “Don’t turn around so they won’t see—come with me,” and took me to the teachers’ room. I told her everything, and I think I respect myself for that. But at the same time, my orientation felt like a burden on my shoulders, because I felt pressure from my family—as if I was supposed to meet a girl and start a relationship. I explained all the pressures, my obsessions, everything from beginning to end. She guided me and supported me. Almost all of my teachers supported me, and my prejudice toward people completely disappeared. Back then, I really thought I had beaten OCD. But in the following years, it came back stronger. I started hating my body. I took too many showers. The traumas replayed in my mind over and over. The more I tried to erase them, the more I thought about them—and I wasn’t the one controlling it. I couldn’t. When I do something, I often repeat it 4 or 5 times. I can’t pass through doors. I can’t touch certain objects. Even when I play games on my phone, I feel like I have to choose a character, but I keep choosing and canceling again and again. It repeats endlessly, and I can’t stop it. It feels like everything that once made me happy just disappears in front of my eyes, and I’m still fighting this. My family, my sister, my aunts, and my past teachers have supported me, but I feel like I’m disappointing them. That makes me feel terrible. On this site, I see so many people sharing their struggles with OCD, and knowing I’m not alone makes me both sad and, at the same time, a little happy. I just wanted to express myself this way. There are still things I couldn’t write—I really want to—but my thoughts exhaust me so much that I can’t.