im a little bored so im going to tell you all my ocd story. it all started in elementary school when i thought “what if my siblings stop breathing?” this caused me to stay up late to ensure they were still breathing in there sleep. on road trips i would always be the one to stay up while my siblings were sleeping so that i can make sure they were ok. then it turned to another theme where everything i did on one side of my body i had to do on the other. for example, if i opened a door using one hand then i had to do it with the other hand. then it turned into religious ocd. i thought that everything i did would cause me to sell my soul to the devil. if i blinked 5 times i would sell my soul and it would be a bunch of ridiculous things like that. when i fell asleep i would feel as if my body was being possessed and that there was a demon in the corner of my room. now onto the worst theme i have had to go through, hocd. this began in quarantine while i was on tik tok. i would see these tik toks where the person would be like “if your favorite movie was tangled then you are gay now” “if you like drinking sprite then you are gay” the most ridiculous things right? well sometimes i related to what they were saying and that got me worried. around that time i rejoined the one direction fandom. a running joke in the fandom is that everyone is gay. that is what took the worry to another level. i live in miami so i have been exposed to homosexuality my entire life and many of my friends identify as lgbtq+. i have nothing against homosexuality and have been a proud ally my entire life. but i dont personally identify as gay (umbrella term) so when this began it caused me mass amounts of worry and anxiety cause its not me at all. i have been boy crazy my entire life and it made me feel amazing when i had a crush on a boy. so the thought of losing that and my future doing a complete 180° terrified me. what took it to another level is my insecurities. i have never been the thinnest person in the class so i always admired the girls that matched the beauty standards. i would often compare myself to the tik tok girls that had perfect bodies. i thought they were beautiful and i aspired to look like them. then ocd put the thought in my head “what if you actually want to date them?” that caused me to get so scared. i soon developed all these compulsions where i would check if i was attracted to every woman i saw, would look back on my memories and see if anything i did showed signs of me being gay, and spend hours researching sexuality. i never felt connected with any of them except for heterosexuality because i have always only been romantically, sexually, and emotionally attracted to men. but i never felt like i had a definitive answer cause my mind would think “i cant be straight if im having these thoughts. why wont these thoughts stop?” i felt like i had to accept me being gay even if it didnt feel like me at all. i spent months living this torment of not knowing who i was until i found ocd. i thought ocd was the stereotype of uncontrollably cleaning. i read more into it and found hocd. it made complete sense. before i knew about it i would always look back at my past and would say “dang this feels a lot like what happened with my siblings breathing.” so i have always had ocd but i didnt find out til this theme. im still working toward being recovered but i feel much better knowing i am not alone and that there is tons of people experiencing this. this just goes to show that we as a society have to do more to educate others on ocd because there are hundreds of people that are suffering in silence due to the fear of being judged. im sorry that was long just wanted to say that:)