Practically every day, I hear someone at school or in a store call themselves OCD whenever they are straightening up a piece of paper on their desk, or pushing all of the cans on a shelf back. What they never seem to notice is me standing behind them, shuffling in a doorway until my brain tells me that my feet have hit the ground in the right places the right amount of times. They never notice how they are blindly offending so many people living with a debilitating mental illness that can horribly interfere with their lives in catastrophic ways. 

OCD is not just cleanliness. Sure, there are certain types where an OCD sufferer has to keep everything neat and tidy, but they have to go through incredibly severe trials and tribulations to do so. If a person with this subtype of OCD sees something that triggers their disorder, they could legitimately have a panic attack. Just because you clean your house once a week because you “just can’t stand a mess”, does not mean you have OCD.

I have had this disorder since I was eight years old. Its commonly referred to as symmetry OCD, but its not necessarily about symmetry. Everytime I touch, see, or hear something, I have to even it out on the other side of my body. For example, if the tip of my right pointer finger touched a table, then I would have to repeat the action with the same finger on my left hand. But here's the kicker. It is practically impossible to touch something the exact same way as I did before. So my finger would probably add a little too much pressure on the right side, so I would have to add the same pressure on my other finger. But then my knuckle would accidentally touch the table whenever I was performing that compulsion, and then these little touches would continue up my arms and everywhere else my brain could think of.

People don’t understand that we can’t just not perform these compulsions. Our brains find a way to convince us that we have to. For me, I get filled to the brim with an overwhelming sense of panic and my brain is just screaming at me to make it even. If I don’t do it, I start shaking and hyperventilating, which leads to a full blown panic attack. 

OCD consists of two parts: the obsessions, and the compulsions. The obsession is the thought that enters your mind that causes extreme anxiety. The compulsion is the thing your brain tells you to do in order to relieve that anxiety. In my case, most of my intrusive thoughts (obsessions) are images of my loved ones dying or my parents getting divorced. These spike my anxiety, and my already unbearable OCD gets to the point where I don’t even want to leave my bed in fear of touching something.

The other issue with intrusive thoughts is that you can’t make them stop. I’ve had thoughts that lasted up to half an hour. My brain plays them through like a movie, so I’ll see my family getting into a car crash, then I’ll see myself at their funeral while crying, then I’ll see myself moving in with my aunt and uncle, and so on. These thoughts cause real emotions, they cause real grief to form in my chest to the point where I am on the verge of tears. And unlike a movie, I can’t just pause it or turn off the TV. I have to wait for the scenarios to play out, for my brain to decide I’ve suffered enough. And then it leaves me to try and fall asleep with these thoughts in my head.

Then we reach the compulsion section of OCD. As you already know, mine affects three of my senses, and a different sense that OCD has given me. I can literally feel objects that are not touching me.

In order for you to understand what I mean by that, you have to know what it feels like for me to experience a compulsion. Let's say my right knee brushes against my bookshelf. On that exact spot on my leg, I can feel a pressure building, almost like a weight. Along with that weight comes a tiny ball of anxiety in my chest. The longer I go without fulfilling the need to touch the bookshelf with my other leg in the exact same way, the heavier the weight and the anxiety become.

Now, back to the feeling objects without touching them. My face has three main symmetry points when I’m using my phone: the gap between my eyebrows, my cheekbones, and my ears. So, if I am reading on my phone and to reach the next paragraph I need to swipe up, I can feel each line of text that is leaving my phone screen touch my face and eyes. I have to turn my head in certain positions and blink my eyes an absurd amount of times everytime I swipe up on my phone because it has to feel even on my face and eyes.

I don’t expect anyone to understand what I just said because OCD is an incredibly irrational disorder that the sufferer rarely even understands. But I do have a better example. Last night, my phone was sitting on a glass table and my knee was beneath the table. I could feel my phone touching my knee even though the two were nowhere near each other. I had to even this out by putting my other leg into the exact position my right leg was in before. 

I spend around three to four hours per day performing compulsions, and trying to hide the fact that I do them from my peers at school. Middle school is hard enough, so I don’t need kids finding out that I have an irrational mental disorder. My brain tells me they’ll make fun of me if they find out even though I’ve never been bullied in my life. And all of this stress and anxiety from my OCD has caused me to become burnt out at the ripe age of thirteen. 

I should not be so emotionally exhausted at the end of school everyday to the point where the only thing I can really do is lay in bed. I should not be worrying so much about my family that I start dry heaving and can’t go to school. I should not have to spend an entire class period performing a single compulsion while simultaneously trying to finish work that I can barely focus on. I should be able to be a child while I still am one.

My anxiety and intrusive thoughts have caused me to become the top of practically all of my classes since the first grade. People may think that this is a good thing, but they couldn’t be more wrong. I get stressed about my grades to the point of nausea way too frequently for it to be considered healthy. My intrusive thoughts tell me that I have to be the best at everything or else my anxiety spikes to extreme levels, and then I rub my wrists raw on a desk because I touched it wrong. It's an exhausting routine to go through on a daily basis.

People don’t understand that OCD is a chronic disorder. It never goes away, and mine is still getting worse considering it gets worse with age and I’m only thirteen. But it can get better with treatment. Therapy is a great release, as well as speaking to friends or family about the issue.

The stigma and stereotypes about OCD have been around for far too long, and it is time to erase them.