One Comic Disorder?

I have an annoying tendency to look back upon previous blog posts and cringe, but yet even as I re-read them, I'm not quite sure that I want to delete them. Maybe I wouldn't write them in quite the same way now but I am glad that I made the point that I did: I do want to change people's views on mental health issues.

In many ways, things do seem to be going in the right direction in terms of awareness but, as my friend said to me earlier, things are pretty bad when it comes to OCD.

People will all too easily make some throwaway joke about how they are 'so OCD'. They laugh at the fact that they felt an urge to straighten up the line of coloured pencils or don't like to step on the cracks in the pavement. I'm no judge and these certainly could be symptoms of OCD, but I think that the majority of times that such comments are made, they shouldn't be. OCD is a hideous disease that can take over the sufferer's life, not something that neatly fits around their tidy life to get them attention when desired. Indeed, it is listed by the WHO as one of the ten most debilitating diseases.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh, but when tests come up on my Facebook feed, which tell you 'how OCD you are' based on a series of spot the odd one out questions, I can feel my blood boiling. That's spatial intelligence or something, it's not OCD.

My first encounter with OCD was when I was about 10 and my little sister was diagnosed with the beast. I didn't understand at all. She'd wash her hands endlessly: that made some sense, she liked things clean, I guessed. But she'd stand on the stairs in a complete trance for long periods of time, oblivious to however much you might shout at her to move. She'd count under breath; constantly retrace her steps (family walks were painful); she stopped eating chocolate because my (very) little brother told her it was cursed. As I said, I didn't understand and I'm not sure I even tried that hard to, but I do know it upset me. I remember one meal time just completely losing it with her. I'm not proud of this, but such was the mystery and evil of this thing that taken over my once playful sister. It affected her hugely and it also affected us.

Then came my own first hand experience of OCD. It had decided to enslave me as well. Over the years, I've been affected in varying ways by it and to varying degrees of severity. I am very thankful that right now it doesn't have too much of a hold on my life. But let's rewind a few years...

I am walking round Sainsbury's trying to work out whether I might have made a girl really unhappy because I looked at her funny. Perhaps she was already really depressed, on the brink of suicide and maybe I'd just pulled the trigger. She was going to kill herself and it was all my fault. If I hadn't looked at her, she would have survived but because of me....oops, I knocked a trolley. Oh gosh, better move it back. But is that quite right? Oh gosh, I don't think it is. Now somebody is going to come along and trip in it and it will all be my fault. They might be old and die from the fall. Oh and there's also that girl I might have killed. But what should I do about the trolley? I don't know what angle it was at so I'm sure I've made it more of a trip hazard and I don't know how to make it better. I guess that will do. I walk on, worrying. Oh no, better go back and check the trolley. Also, it's one thing potentially killing these people, but maybe it was deliberate? Surely it can't have been; I'm so worried, I can't have wanted it...but maybe I did?

Can you sense the distress I felt, albeit totally irrational? It was hidden but it was there. I didn't want to tell anybody because I thought they'd think I was a murderer. I'd generally have to swallow my pride and phone my mum to ask whether I should be going to prison. I'd have to check from every angle. She'd get annoyed. I would cry but check from a few more. I then may or may not be convinced that all was fine but before you knew it another problem would appear.

OCD is probably the most hideous thing I have ever experienced. It's really not a joke.