Content warning: This article mentions religious trauma, intrusive thoughts and bullying.
“It feels weird to be weird”
High school is truly a waking nightmare. It is a little world apart from society; filled with social cliques and raging hormones. To be seen as different, you truly don’t have to do much at all. Part your hair a little weird, walk a little sideways or wear a little too much black. In my freshman year of high school, I attempted to bubble-wrap myself from these social faux pas. I had bright blonde hair, mascara higher than the trees and a wonderful assortment of Garage pink crop tops. I had it all perfect. Every interest was curated; from my love for rap to my sudden interest in the Seattle Seahawks. It was foolproof, yet it still failed. Putting a dog in a horse costume doesn’t make it a horse does it?. I continued to stick out like a sore thumb even after years of perfect cover-ups and the cracks only continued to grow throughout my teenage years.
Since I was young I knew I was a tad bit odd; a black sheep so to speak. From ages five to eleven I carried around my favourite stuffed animal absolutely everywhere I went, cried at the sight of an ant being squished and always called my mom to pick me up from sleepovers. The oddities were surely there but the summer before my twelfth birthday was when all hell broke loose. My brain began to be infiltrated by these terrible thoughts that I just couldn’t shake; thoughts that directly countered my beliefs and morals. For example, have you ever been driving and thought “I could just swerve and hit that car and die”? Most people do and they simply dismiss it but those like me obsess over it for days or even months. In the OCD community, that is what we call an intrusive thought. Now let’s be clear, an intrusive thought is dire, disturbing and all-encompassing, not something along the lines of “Oh my God, I’m totally gonna dye my hair pink tonight. I’m letting the intrusive thoughts win”. If we let the intrusive thoughts win, I would not be alive to write this article right now.
To have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is to have two sister symptoms; intrusive thoughts and the compulsions they bring.”Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) features a pattern of unwanted thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead you to do repetitive behaviors (compulsions)” (“Obsessive-compulsive disorder” Mayo Clinic). By the age of eleven my obsession was Catholicism; mind you I have since transitioned my beliefs to the title of spiritual instead of any particular faith system. Religious OCD is a very common type of OCD but for the small tween me who knew nothing about any mental illnesses, I was simply possessed by a demon. I would spend my days sobbing from the thoughts I was experiencing such as “Today my hand brushed up on my friends, I am a sinner and I’m going to burn in hell”. These thoughts would likely be followed by something like “the only way to avoid being burnt in hell would be to knock on this door frame exactly four times, not three times, not six times, but exactly four times”. That is how intrusive thoughts and compulsions work together to debilitate you. From my first intrusive thought that fateful June evening in 2016 I continued to spiral further and further into a dark, dark, lonely hole. I was formally diagnosed at the age of thirteen. I refused to believe my diagnosis for the first few months. I tried to convince myself that I simply wasn’t like people with OCD; I wasn’t weird, I wasn’t a clean freak, and I surely was nothing like Sheldon Cooper. This is when I first noticed the myth of OCD. The only media portrayal I saw of someone like myself at the time was this caricature of what Hollywood thought OCD was; someone socially awkward, brainy and obsessed with cleanliness. What I began to learn as I started CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) was that though contamination OCD is a type of OCD, it is surely not the only type. I learnt that types of OCD vary from person to person. Everything from magical thinking OCD, harm obsession OCD, and even relationship OCD. I finally felt as though I understood myself; everyone else though, they did not.
All throughout middle school, people would catch me knocking, checking or counting no matter how hard I tried to hide it. For thirteen-year-old girls, seeing a “lunatic” knocking on trees and counting to herself was a bullying goldmine. The harassment, the bullying, and the torment, all had such an effect on me. I basically became a social recluse by the end of the seventh grade. At this age, I couldn’t understand why they hated me so much. I did exactly what they wanted to the best of my abilities but it never ever stuck.
This is when I learnt that these girls, as well as myself, all craved social belonging. Whether they got a sense of community from the bullying is beyond me, but I do believe that picking on the little guy brought them together. These girls were always in a specific social clique, as were almost all students going into and throughout high school. You had your band geeks, your sports bros, your theatre kids and your brainiacs. All kids who are just looking to be accepted. No matter how I bent and molded, I always had the sense that I was just a bit weirder than others, even my theatre friends, and that’s saying something. Why did these people hate me? Why did I always feel like an outsider within my own communities?
I pose one answer to those questions, social stigma. OCD is one of the most misunderstood and stigmatized mental illnesses there are. These inaccurate media representations and harmful language such as “we are all a little OCD” all drive from ignorance and miseducation. OCD is very hard to grasp if you do not struggle with it and studying it in depth is something people don’t often do (which I do not blame them for). But from this ignorance comes these portrayals of OCD as a quirky little trait that only brainiacs have. This informs the general public as to what OCD is, a disorder we can all point and laugh at. This severely impacts the quality of the social life of those who struggle with OCD, making them feel isolated and alone, just as I did. Pair that with your usual bullies spewing garbage such as “Why are you doing that weirdo”, “Just spare us the pain and kill yourself” and my personal favorite “Stop attention seeking”.
Now you’re probably wondering how we can fix this problem, how we can help other little kids in the same spot I was. I have two words I want you to take away from this: awareness and education. Try to educate people on the truth about this disorder, try to uplift the voices of those who struggle with this disorder and try to look for accurate representations of people with OCD, such as John Green’s painfully accurate novel “Turtles All The Way Down”. Be kind, live life with empathy and learn as much as you can in life. Knowledge is power.