You go with it as far as you can possibly go. You let it be there – the thoughts, whatever kind of a hold they have, or have not, over your mind and at any given time. You smile like you were born to do. Always. You help others and you let your own truest personality come back to itself again. And again, if needs be. You understand the disorder as well as you can. You live with it. You make it work to your advantage as well as you can. You… stop and think about all of the things that you have in-fact achieved with this thing along for the ride. And, to be perfectly fair, it is an outlandish amount of stuff that you’ve achieved. Maybe much more-so in a mental instance but it is still remarkable whichever way you tend to try and look at it. Really, for a sufferer of chronic OCD to ‘excel’ is to, well, more often than not simply be okay as well as they can inside of their own brain and mind and at any given moment. It’s all in there, and even though it is indeed a complex and awfully, AWFULLY difficult and disheveling moment-to-moment disorder/distortion to live with, you live with it and you do smile with it, and you let your mother know one-hundred percent-PLUS JUST how ******* thankful you are for absolutely EVERYTHING that she does for you, as well as the rest of your family as well, of course. It is Monday, the 12th of May, and Mary and I just picked Mom up from Baxter’s Bridge as her car broke down out there. And, as per usual, I tried to explain to Mom where this took my OCD mind to, or even where my mind had been going to much, much earlier-on in proceedings today, and of course she replied with the usual “I understand, it’s okay.” And OF COURSE it pummels your natural free-thinking way with things and even can manage to get in the way of your personality to a very, very large extent as well as anything else, but neither do you need to please everyone, not even one bit. You never really did. People know precisely what is wrong with you. God damnit, it is diagnosed times-a-thousand, and they are ALL OF THEM with you throughout it all. And even if they’re not with you? Then fuck ‘em ❤️