Small wins

Last night was the second night I slept in my own bed, in my own room. To every other person on this planet, sleeping in your own bed is a mundane task. Its something that everyone does everyday, without even thinking about it. Last year, July of 2025, I had a scary intrusive thought while laying in bed. For 10 months I was terrified of sleeping in my room, in fear that it would trigger another intrusive thought and send me down a spiral I was too afraid to go on. For 10 months of my life, I slept on the couch, only ever going to my room to get clothes from the closet. Eventually, my room became nothing but an extended closet. I had clothes everywhere, on my bed, on the floor, on chairs. Clothes covered new furniture I bought last year, furniture I was so excited to buy for my room. Funny enough, one of my new year resolutions for 2025 was to completely revamp my room, to make it into a room I was truly excited to be in everyday. I think I achieved that pretty well, but I was never able to fully enjoy it, because of ocd. This weekend I impulsively decided to clean it. I picked up every piece of clothing off of my bed, off of the floor, off of the furniture, all of it. I built up the courage to make my bed, and actually sleep the night in there. I was uncomfortable, I had thoughts that made me feel that anxious feeling in my chest. The exact feeling I was too afraid to feel months ago. The feeling I was so scared to feel that I spent months trying to avoid. Despite this, I stayed in my bed, I let the uncomfortable feeling be there without having to run away from it. I slept 6 hours full hours on my own bed. Last night, I was hesitant to sleep in there again, ocd kept telling me I wasn’t ready yet. Maybe I wasn’t, but I slept there anyways. I noticed the uncomfortable feeling wasn’t as loud as it was the night before. I even felt okay enough to read a book, to take pleasure in an activity. Ocd so often prevents me from feeling any pleasure. Ocd tells me I don’t deserve to be happy or something bad will happen if I let myself off the hook of its grasp, and the thoughts were still there last night. I think they will unfortunately be there for the rest of my life, which sounds exhausting but, waking up this morning in my own bed, with the sun coming through a window I can call mine, made me believe that maybe I can handle it. I slept 8 hours in my own bed, in my own room, last night.