As an OCD sufferer you will be single-handedly pitted with – on a mental note – actually letting an outlandishly imbalanced brain, all of it utterly against your every natural will, just… be that thing. Imbalanced. The scope of racing thoughts, etc. which the imbalance proceeds to entertain in the sufferer’s mind is as obviously a mental imbalance to an outsider’s perspective, as it is impossible for the sufferer to haul themselves away from it. What starts off as an imbalanced brain and will only ever be utterly illogical and agonising for the sufferer until such a time when the sufferer can get close enough to a balanced state of mind. To do that? It takes indescribable strength, truly. A mental strength that no-one should ever have to work with inside of their own brain in the first place. Everything up there in the brain is discombobulated owing to the initial imbalance. The sufferer will have done everything to get by with this particular mental illness. To turn it off, which really is all that you can hope for, it seems, so as to get to live a good life, is almost impossible. But this is the one mental illness whereby, really, the sufferer has literally NO SAY WHATSOEVER in what happens to their brain AND mind as a result of the illness. Like watching a disaster ensue and somehow being unable to stop it from happening for years and years, and often decades even. All a sufferer can ever do is live with the imbalance and hope that it can one day calm itself down to a sizeable and suitable, of course, extent. Mine was pretty calm these past few weeks. Drinking at the weekend did not help it, but then that helps no one and I have to accept that all the more-so when it comes to my brain. But the OCD brain, or at least my OCD brain, is never really… calm-calm anyway. Always on lookout for a possible catastrophe occurring and figuring out how to stop that very thing from happening. There’s no amount of explaining that will ever give the sufferer a piece of mind. It’s all on them, all of the time. I’m proud but I’m also extremely heartbroken that I know I can pretty much always be able to explain to people what the illness does to my particular thoughts or how the imbalance goes about stopping me from thinking through the day-to-day things that happen to someone on an initial normal note and actually learning and working with and from them. And in not getting to understand these things in a straight-forward and learned line, my mind freaks out as it’s utterly unable to… well, think straight with very necessary occurrences and it will, therefore, end up even managing to mistake these things for disaster too. I know how good I am, and I know JUST how hard I try. But I also know just how atrocious this whole thing is for me. I need to keep going as I have. I need to trust that part of my brain that IS still mine because that part? It’s done everything to get to me with this illness. No comparisons today because, truth told, there are none. It’s beyond any, to be honest. I am at the moment figuring out the best sort of meditation for my brain. It needs to be, well, rock solid and capable of bringing my brain back to a place of as calm as this particular brain can get itself to.