- Date posted
- 42w
“You can’t have OCD, you’re too messy!”
This is just a petty rant, but has anybody else had this experience where you tell someone you have OCD and their response is “Really? 🤨 YOU?” I’m a pretty disorganized person. Cleaning isn’t easy for me, I’m not good at prioritizing small details, and my physical presentation is acceptable but not excessively neat by any means. So sometimes when I’ve told people who know me that I have OCD, they almost don’t seem to believe me, because their image of someone with OCD is “clean freak (but only in a convenient and acceptable way).” Things like cleanliness and symmetry have never been themes of mine. I’m sure those who have it can attest to the fact that those types of themes are very much not pretty up close, but the popular concept of OCD seems to encompass only that theme and only in “cute” ways. Like when people go “I’m so OCD haha I have to keep my car super clean!” And it’s just so frustrating, because it feels like people think you’re making it up if you don’t have whatever they’re looking for from your mental illness. It feels like they look at me and my messy spaces and go “If you had OCD, you would be more organized than this, so you probably don’t have it.” I developed religious OCD when I was seven. I mentally ‘erased’ sinful thoughts and raised my hand to get saved every Sunday because I was always afraid I didn’t mean it enough last time. I developed suicidal OCD at twelve. I hid pills from myself in the back of my dresser and refused to be home alone and laid on my floor for hours completely still because if I didn’t move I couldn’t hurt myself. I developed POCD at seventeen. I looked away from every commercial with a child in it, monitored every sensation in my body, hid in bathrooms during family gatherings because I thought I might be dangerous in a way I didn’t even know I was. I developed home invasion OCD at nineteen. I checked every lock day and night, kept a knife under my pillow, slept on the bathroom floor because I was sure if I opened the door someone would be on the other side waiting to hurt me. I developed existential OCD at twenty one. It’s been two years. I’m not a Christian anymore. I don’t want to be. I’ve found something different that makes me happier. I wonder every day if I’m demon possessed. I look for answers and find that everyone says they have them but nobody can prove it. I sit alone in my bedroom and beg for mercy from a god I don’t believe in, just in case. I almost want to die sometimes, but I can’t, because if I die I’ll get my answers, but if I’m wrong about what I believe I’ll fast track myself to eternal suffering. I look at my loved ones and their spectrum of beliefs with suspicion. Who of them is manipulating me? Who is being puppeteered by something evil? Who is just…wrong? If I could trust myself, I would, but I can’t. This is what OCD is for me. For a lot of us. This mental illness doesn’t exist to make our cars prettier for people without it to look at.