It’s much more important than, say, a life lost to a mental illness. It’s about something else too, entirely. It’s about the OCD sufferer getting to that eventual place wherein they can, well, finally feel like themselves. OCD is not ourselves, not for a spilt second of time. And that’s important to state here. That it’s an imbalance and a very detrimental one at that. We can share how proud we are of one another on Instagram and whatever else between sufferers, that’s just something that needs doing, so as to check in with the other person. We are ALL IN, all the time, that’s just something that we have to do with this particular disorder which is always on, always attempting to derail our natural train of thought. I can’t describe it anymore or any better than I have done a thousand times before but I will say this, that it is manageable until, well, it’s no longer manageable. And the landscape OCD paints inside of a sufferer’s mind is outrageously irrational and outrageously pummelling on a mental note. Perhaps we cannot, for now at least, appear to be able to truly tame and actually take down the imbalance of the brain of a sufferer but what we can absolutely do is we can make the best of our minds and brains too. I did and do that with my scribbles, with how I am with the people in my life. With how I act and how I wish to eventually end up thinking. Every day, and often it is now automatic, the scribbles, but also it gives me an inroads into how I might be feeling at any given time if I wanna read it back to myself. Something I should definitely do more often, for sure. OCD is secretive just like any other mental illness really – schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, ADHD etc, etc. The sufferer is the only one who gets to witness how the illness actually feels inside of their mind. Are they making inroads with OCD? I hope so. I think so. I’d much rather be able to see that from the perspective of a non-sufferer because, really, what needs doing is the brain’s chemical imbalance needs to be rewired. That’s it really. That’s a fairly sobering and frightful thought in and of itself. So, really, the rest – the irrational landscape of mental anguish going on – is wholly for the sufferer to try and live well with. The rest is up to medical professionals to get to the nitty gritty of it all. And I hope they do, of course! But how do you turn off a switch that cannot even be allocated inside of the brain? Or maybe it can, just that it’s not the safest operation in the world for any medical person to attempt to do something with so as to hopefully balance things out to the necessary extent for the sufferer. I’m not sure, but I am certainly relieved that my illness is actually diagnosed as chronic OCD. Not obviously relieved about the chronic part but at least I know what I’m dealing with at any given time. A trip switch which carries an outrageous level of mental anxiety and fear with it for the sufferer. And that all may well be in our head but… how, then, to turn it off, turn off the noise as best we can? I’m not sure. And I’m not gonna waste my time trying to figure it out. Not this weekend anyhow. That’s for the professionals to take care of as best they can. I’m one of the sufferers and our job is to… fight with it as opposed to against it. It’s part of us albeit a gruesome and seriously separate part to the best parts of us. To bring our minds and, therefore, brains back to something resembling ourselves, that’s the golden ticket aim to reach for and grab like the utter fucking legends that we undeniably are. We had to be legends to have been able to withstand this thing 😊