All of it- it’s been a chaotic scatter-crashing of utter mental agony and mental discomfort AND, henceforth, discombobulation. That’s it. That’s the work of an imbalanced OCD mind, for all its worth on Earth and inside of a sufferer’s brain. You are left in complete and total darkness of mind. Watching everything happen around you amidst a level of pointless answer-seeking which truly cannot he imagined by anyone else other than said sufferer. It’s a brain-lock. A most tragically disgusting one, in fact, and one that has no part to play other than to entirely antagonise the sufferer’s mind. Your personality is of course altered. Your thoughts are not your own whatsoever at all anymore. You try every single day to make yourself feel better by feeling ‘normal’. It feels entirely right AND normal, though, to be thinking these ruminations that are going on in your mind. Thinking them through until you finally unearth a calming answer. But there is none. It’s a complete waste of time and complete and utter aforementioned discombobulation. OCD will eventually grab at anything that comes before the sufferer. Their landscape is utterly, UTTERLY altered, leaving you feeling… mental agony, really. Mine has lasted for about twenty-eight-years. I was.. perhaps… eleven?! I’m not entirely sure now, but one thing I can say is this, that to have reached this place in my life now and at 39 years-of-age really is an absolute miracle of the mind. How would you survive a level of unprovoked uncertainly sprinting and hopping and BANGING AND BaShInG about inside your addled brain for almost three-decades?! You most probably wouldn’t. All bets are off. Sorry to say it but you’d undeniably be six-feet underground by now. I’m not. Obviously. And that is, ALL OF IT, down to one mother who never, EVER stopped trying to find the problem and to work with it and with me. My mother. My everything. My absolute rock and amazing person who does not have a bad bone in her body. Truly. I mean, what can I ever say about this particular woman other than that she’s been a phenomenal person. Mother. But, I think, above all else, incredible friend. But as for my resulting resilience in the face of utter, mind-PUMMELLING mental agony? That surely comes from the pit of her being. Where it all started. Where I come from. Who I am. What I care about and who is in my life and just how much I navigate my life to suit the situation my mind is in, it is all entirely down to her. My other family members, too, of course. Dad, also phenomenal. However, not everyone needs to understand this particular thing. I mean.. I honestly do not know if I would if I was any of them. But he gets it, he gets what I go through, and supports me like no other father on earth, I feel. My landscape inside of my mind has been built differently because of the OCD, and he gets that too. My brother and sister, Shane and Claire. Wow!! Just amazing friends and support systems to me, too. They saw it all. The bedridden years, the petrified mind of a child then adolescent, then adult. All awhile they NEVER ceased in trying to understand what was happening to their brother. I owe these four people the world, to be perfectly frank. I owe them the brother they always should have had, and I will always, and do think I have always, tried to be that particular version of a brother. The mentally unprovoked version of myself. It’s OCD. It isn’t easy, possibly never will get to be for me. And that is fairly fine with me, actually. So long as it doesn’t make be bedridden again. Make me petrified by my own mind while I simultaneously try and enjoy my time with my girlfriend. My good friends, etc. Oftentimes it is like walking into the utterly unknown and that can be.. fucking hell, HORRENDOUS. But I will do it. Have to do it. I cannot suddenly turn-off my OCD, I’ve learned that the hard way. However, what I can try and do is to make it as tolerable as humanly possible. What I’ve been through will stand to me. Heck! It does stand to me with each and every day, I’m sure. The scribbles. Goddamnit, I did that!! I made my style work for me. Same style I dreamed about creating since I was perhaps as young as… I dunno, five?! That’s all me. All my lot. I cannot say or do more than what I have always done. But to perhaps eventually pen the story in all its guts and glory because, really… this needs to be done for other sufferers to see and JUST KNOW? That will take a version of me so much better and on an even keel with calmness 😊