College essay

I'm writing a story about a little girl with ocd. In the first chapter she does not know she has it, what subtypes should be shown and when and where that gets her family a bit concerned.

I had avoided a lot with school specifically, but I did do it in other areas of life as well. School for some reason has been the biggest trigger that sends me into avoidance and it has been for the longest time. Does anybody relate? If so, what did you do to help besides therapy? In high school I used to sit in the bathroom stalls for hours so I could avoid going to classes. I was struggling to keep up because my OCD makes me perfect my school work so much so to the point where I’d never turn it in because I’d never be satisfied with what I’d produce. I’d get so incredibly frustrated with myself and the fact that I could never meet my own standards, never mind the rubrics given. I took ages analyzing all my writing, all my answers, all my google slides and I burnt myself out. So I stopped trying. I stopped turning in work because I’d never be satisfied. I’d cry because I felt I wasn’t good enough. Then I’d be missing assignments, getting them done but not submitting them because I was too ashamed. So, I avoided classes because I’d be in trouble or be called out for not getting anything done. Unfortunately this habit bled into my first year of college last year, and OCD coupled up with depression, made going to the dining hall and attending classes even worse. So I avoided it all together. It’s so hard being a freshman in college, so so hard. I unfortunately failed out of that school but I tried to medically withdraw either semester. No, I wasn’t partying, or drinking or smoking or hanging with the wrong people. I was a college freshman struggling with ocd and depression. I’m trying to not make excuses for myself either because I’m well aware this is my fault and I’m trying to reverse it now at community college. Right now I’m trying to get those Fs turned into Ws from my old school so I can fix my gpa. I want to transfer, I want to be a forensic psychologist, I want to be independent, I want to be ok. It’s gonna take me so long to transfer from community college but that’s on me. I’m willing to put in the work. I’m so embarassed, please help me.

I wrote these two poems for an open mike poetry night at my college a few years ago. Freshman year of college my anxiety ate me alive. I chickened out last minute and never performed, but I recently found the notebook I wrote these in and thought I’d share. i’m sO sCareD You say, "Oh my god, I’m so OCD about my notes," while I am drowning in the undertow of thoughts that refuse to let me go. You say, "I just like things neat, you know?" while I check the lock again and again, wondering if this time will be the time my brain believes me— but it never does. It's the monster under the bed except it lives in my head, whispers masquerading as instincts, warnings dressed as logic, fear that wears me like a second skin. And oh, how easy it is to laugh it off, call it a quirk, a habit, a punchline, while I stand at the brink of a thought so loud I can feel it crack my ribs. You say, "I’m so OCD about my computer icons." I say, I can’t hold my mother’s hand without tracing the veins, make sure she’s alive, still beating and bleeding, rewinding, replaying, repeating, repeating, until I become the pattern itself. I say, I live on a hill. And if the picture frames aren’t straight, the ground will shift, the walls will give way, my home will collapse beneath me. And I can’t let it go? I say, I step in threes, three, three, three, reset, three, three— reset. Because if I do it wrong, something worse will happen, though I don’t know what, only that the terror knows it for me. I am not particular. I am prisoner. So when you say OCD, I hope you mean the way it steals— the way it clings, the way it suffocates, because it is not about preference. It is about survival. hallway girl. Why can’t I have the helpful OCD? The organized one, the productive one, the one people praise instead of whisper about? Why can’t my compulsions make me a genius instead of a joke? Why do they make me the hallway girl— “she’s still walking the hallway” as if it’s a comedy show. As if it’s funny to be trapped in my own head. You see it in sitcoms— the guy who can’t handle an uneven stack of papers, the woman who scrubs the counters too much, laugh track ringing loud— but no one laughs at the panic that coils in my lungs no one sees the terror when the stairs don’t add up and suddenly the earth is shaking and I can’t move No one shows the moments I cry over a step miscounted, staring at the hallway, knowing I have to start over, but already too exhausted to move. No one shows the shame, the whispered apologies, the effort of convincing myself this time, maybe, I’ll be strong enough to resist— but I never am. And no one shows the shoes. How I would run, sprint, chase time through our fifteen-minute break, Back to my room, because if they moved— if they weren’t exactly right— my dad would have a heart attack. And it would be my fault. So I checked. And checked. And checked again. Until I was breathless, But still had to sprint back to class and pretend I didn’t leave my mind behind with my shoes. So when they call me hallway girl, I bite my tongue so they don’t see how hard it takes Because if OCD is a joke, why am I the only one who isn’t laughing?