I mentioned before that I wrote an OCD song. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qjAzRx-IzPk&feature=youtu.be

These are some of my experiences with some theatrical flare to better depict how it feels. I decided to share this because when I saw this community I suddenly felt less alone in more human. Lovecraftian door Lurker: I don’t know the subtypes so I’ll just be talking about my relationship with OCD. OCD! that lonely woman in the ocean singing your praise's, sure she’ll love you forever! Of course she isn’t a siren planning on dragging you to the depths and tearing you to shreds. OCD! that haunting whisper in the wind calling you to fly! fly! OCD! that Lovecraftian abomination chanting at you from behind a locked door. Banging demanding you bow to it’s will. For me it latches on to my trauma and PTSD circling them like some demented teacup ride. A daily occurance for me is recalling the day I died when I was like 6 i remeber each detail of the day the kids i met the activtes we particapated in, the heat. The height of the slide before i plummeted to my death. This day consumes my life. “Thud thud!” I ask my parents about it often they tell me it never happened i tell them they weren’t there. Each time they lie and say I’ve never told them. My boyfriend whom I’ve been with for three years hears the story offten and often deals with me asking him if he’s seen me ask my parents. “Thud Thud” Each time he says yes and I asked how they responded “like you’ve never told them.” I constantly become afraid that my boyfreind will drown because he can’t swim. “Thud! Thud!” and because he can’t swim that the car will go off the road into some body of water and he will die. ”Thud! Thud!” I feel the water filling my lungs turning them into fire, the fear of reaching out my hands with no aid. “THUD! THUD! And he will die alone too and there’s nothing you can do to stop it! THUD THUD!” I scream that same fire fueling my rage my tears running down my face like gasoline igniting the thought spiral further burning deeper into my self hatred. I scream again banging my hands on my head. Wish and hoping it will shut up the thoughts.“why? Why?! WHY!” Sobbing until I’m nothing but a puddle. . . Ya know a few months ago I was depressed the thoughts became too much, so I wanted to get high. I thought it would make them stop “Thud! Thud!” So I took a gummy it was unpackage, from a friend of a friend so now the word dog, in reference to a person is a permit part of my vocabulary. And I have memories from being in a comma because it turned out to be DMT and my 6 hour trip end up feeling like 6 months of HELL. The ocd thoughts that i usually see, in a flash became so real that i just cried for hour terrified i was stabbing my eyes out dead and this was my purgatory for leaving the church. ”Thud! THUD!” I stopped using my favorite water bottle after that. Before the incident The bottle up against the wall with the straw to the side of the wall because the thought that would repeat in my head would be that because of my clumsiness I would trip and fall onto the straw and it would stab my eye out and kill me. I had this thought often I kept look up what to do if you accidently get something stab/stuck in your eye. “Thud! Thud!”

I wanna start out by saying, I am really proud of how far I've come in recognizing my OCD tendencies and learned about how it can show up intersectionally for BIPOC folks who have racialized trauma and how me, being a White person, how it manifests itself for me. I'd also like to say, this is gonna be more of an analytical and reflective post. Please feel free to read and respond with any critiques or thoughts you have. I'm embarrassed about it nowadays, but it's important to acknowledge because it was a HUGE part of my teenage personality, unfortunately. I used to be a HUGE Shane Dawson fan 😭 like, his content was my strongest hyperfixation to date. So at this point in time, I feel like I'm still trying to decipher what kind of racial commentary and satire and jokes are genuinely funny and which are just perpetuating stereotypes and straight up minstrelsy. Shout out to D'Angelo Wallace for making the video essay that woke me up to seeing this issue more clearly. I try to be aware of how I can easily fall into just laughing at racial stereotypes without being aware of the serious consequences it has for BIPOC people, but at the same time, I don't want to be too worried about everything being racist and therefore that means it's bad and should be banned, cause that's also not always helpful, I've noticed. So racialized fear and polarization is something I'm deconstructing. I hate to admit this, too, 'cause it's embarrassing, but my OCD seems to latch onto racial issues. I end up obsessing about whether or not I'm causing marginalized people harm or not, particularly when it comes to racism. I believe this is because I know I was one of those White kids who was into "edgy" humor when I was a teen. I think it's just lingering guilt from knowing that was wrong, but OCD makes my guilt and rumination and therefore compulsions to "fix" it so much worse than most people. It's frustrating, but I have come a very long way in confronting and dealing with it. I'm very proud of myself for being aware that that's an issue I have. I've got to give credit where credit is due, to my biracial friend (who also happens to have OCD) for essentially helping me learn this, albeit the hard way with many arguments about racism and trauma. It's something that isn't talked about much, but we're learning to build bridges in our understanding of how mental health affects us as people with different forms of racialized trauma. Mine's not so much trauma, but social stigma, whereas his was from actual bullying and harassment and physical assault, simply because of his race. I've also learned how to recognize and deal with my own mental health issues WHILE confronting race because of Black advocates like Tony Nabors who does Racial Equity Insights, F.D. Signifier who does really great intersectional analyses on social issues pertaining to Black people, and D'Angelo Wallace for being the first Black YouTuber that made the problem with Shane Dawson video that finally helped me break out of my lowkey toxic parasocial/trauma bond relationship I had with him, lol. Does this post seem too wordy and analytical for this forum? Let me know if this isn't the right audience for this type of writing and reflection. I just wanted to talk about it because it's something I had to figure out largely on my own. Wondering if anyone else relates to this or can see themselves in this.

In 2023, as I was finally getting sober from harder substances, I found myself in one of the scariest mental spaces I'd ever known. I was still smoking daily, my relationship was rocky, and one night—it all hit me. It felt like I had slipped into a video game. Nothing felt real… or maybe everything felt too real. The world around me was distorted. I had always dealt with anxiety, but this? This was something else. I was spiraling—drenched in guilt over everything I'd ever done, every person I thought I hurt, every wrong I tried to make right all at once. It was suffocating. At 23, I tried checking myself into a mental hospital—something I hadn’t done since I was 17. I was desperate to understand what was happening. My relationship took a hit as I spilled every ounce of guilt I carried to my partner, unable to stop the cycle. It wasn’t just anxiety. It was OCD. And while the diagnosis was terrifying at first, it was also reassuring. I finally had a name for the storm inside me. I wasn’t alone. People I admire—like Jenna Ortega—deal with this too. It’s not just me. It’s real, it’s hard, but it’s also something I can face. Since then, I’ve made big changes. I stopped smoking—realizing it only made the noise in my head louder. I started therapy. My partner didn’t understand at first, but as we both learned more about OCD together, we grew stronger. We’re now engaged, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been. But now it’s time to reconnect—with myself. I want to find the me before everything. The creative, passionate, connected me. I want to start streaming games again and hopefully rebuild the following I lost. I want to connect with people again—I don’t have many friends left, but I’m determined to find my people again. I’m also diving back into my art. Journaling. Sketching—even when I don’t like it. Because it’s the act of creating that heals, not just the end result. I won’t let OCD run my life. I will prevail.