*something i wrote a few days ago.* it is no secret that anxiety has run my life. there was a time where i didn’t worry my parents were going to die today, that i wasn’t going to make it past 22, that the assignments i handed in were completely plagirised even though i knew they weren’t, that the children i babysat weren’t breathing when i would put them down to sleep, that i was cheating on my boyfriend and blocked out everything i did or that he was going to get into a car crash and die, that i was going to jail for something...i worried so much over everything it made me physically ill to the point i couldn’t eat and lost 10 pounds. everyone would tell me i looked wonderful because weight was shed, but they never knew or asked how. i wasn’t sleeping because my dreams would reflect my fears or anytime i tried to fall asleep and heard my dad make a loud thump in the other room i’d have to get up to check if he was alive. the uncertainty and what if’s drove me insane. the doubt made me sick. i’ve been in therapy for 2.5 years for grief work when i told her what was going on, she told me i was displaying characteristics of someone with ocd. “ocd?” i said. “i don’t have compulsions. im not scared of germs or clean everything.” then she explained to me how that is a common misconception. i have ocd because i get an obsessive thought, like my father dying, and the compulsion is to check on him. if i didn’t check on him, my brain would come up with 100 different scenarios of what happened so the compulsion to check is to make sure everything is ok and safe. its a disorder because it disrupts my daily life. when she said that it all made sense. we then went over my other fears. fear of cheating? i checked every social media app, every message, every memory to make sure it didn’t happen. fear of plagirism? i’d check my assignments over and over to make sure they were all original thoughts. i’d put them into many different plagirism checkers to reassure myself. fear i was going to die? constantly check google for symptoms of different health related issues. ive made countless doctors appointments to make sure there was nothing wrong. i was a compulsive checker. constantly checking on everything. if i didnt check or reassure myself the knot in my throat would grow bigger and bigger. if i did check, itd go away for a little bit and i felt relieved. this is how ocd works. its a monster.