With OCD, I don’t think there’s any real way to get to the nuts and bolts of living well without a level of chemical balance that just isn’t there in the first place. That’s the plain truth. It may seem like a simple explanation to others—one they can eventually come to terms with—but the OCD brain will lose that very insight all on its own. The sufferer’s brain is triggered without us even trying. And even when we do try—which is almost all the time—to find some level of calm, it simply isn’t there. It is complex, profound, and beyond anything anyone else could imagine, let alone understand. It is a distortion of the mind, a catastrophic feeling of dread occurring at an automatic level for the sufferer. The truth is that we try in ways even we can’t fully get to comprehend just to avoid getting caught-up all over again. Yet, because of the OCD, we see a distorted interpretation as a whole new catastrophe that must be stopped. Its nature is relentless, even at its ‘calmest.’ There are no fitting comparisons for the out-and-out discombobulation and outlandish hold it has on the mind. There needs to be a more ‘seal-tight’ kind of help for those with this pulverizing illness—something to give us a mental reprieve. As it stands, living with this is the most excruciating ‘shitshow’ on earth, from A to Z. I do everything in my power to live with this thing as well as I possibly can. I’ve lived with this since I was eleven. Naturally, I’m heartbroken—how could I not be? But there’s this other rather perverse thing happening alongside the OCD: my mind never really gets the chance to feel, let alone process, that heartbreak long enough for it to truly take hold in its own right. So, yeah… OCD is inescapable. Unless, of course, a sufferer can achieve the one thing they’ve been striving for their entire life—even if it’s entirely against their own willpower—which is that missing sense of mental balance. That last sentence sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? Trying to cure the illness by doing the one thing you really shouldn’t be doing at all, not even one bit: going all-in mentally and pleading with your mind to find some way to stop the chaos. ‘Sickeningly perverse’ is the only way to describe the pitfalls of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
