#OCDame

An obsessive spiral is largely invisible, with no quirky Monk-like hand washing to ground it in reality. The hand washing stuff — the compulsion — comes later.

For a long time, I kept a mental list of things that I’d do once I was “better.” I yearned for a sound mind and a thin body — two things I was not born with but figured I could somehow earn. Once I had those two things, I could do anything I wanted.

We need to stop trying to be perfect. I know better than most that it is much, much easier said than done.

Even if I have no plans to leave the house — or if I had plans to leave the house and got to anxious to follow through with them — I find a great deal of power in the simple act of painting my face and commemorating the ritual with a selfie.

Do you feel stuck? Paralyzed by fear that you will be bad at what you want to accomplish? The never ending cycle: perfectionism, procrastination, paralysis.

I have sought out solitude my entire life — up until pretty recently, it was a hard thing to come by. 

When someone denies my personality disorder, it makes the process of identifying and challenging the thoughts and behaviors that disorder causes even more difficult. There are broken parts of me that I can’t see. I’m working very hard to uncover them and heal them in a way that improves the quality of my inner and outer life. I don’t need anyone else muddying the waters of my trauma; I do that enough all on my own.

I don’t want to spend another summer waiting for winter. It took years to realize this, and even more years to act on it. This is the work of healing that no one mentions: you have to find the wounds you didn’t know you had.