A Trip Down Memory Lane
On a recent trip home, I found a few old flash drives that I used during middle and high school. On one of them, I found my first attempt at writing a story like the ones I write for this blog every week – sharing my experience with OCD.
The story I found is called “The Scepter and the Scourge” – I’d discovered the word “scourge” in computer camp and liked the way it applied to how constant and debilitating OCD was in my life at that time, and “scepter” was a nod to my brand-new love for Lord of the Rings and the association I formed between the obsessions in my head and my writing talent. I remember writing bits and pieces of the story, trying to come up with titles for each little section, and it was quite interesting to delve into my past.
The story begins with my first memories of my diagnosis. I’m pretty sure I was about nine years old at this point, as this was when I met the psychiatrist who’s been by my side ever since. She had a plastic brain in her lap, and she used it to explain to me about serotonin receptors and other things as I traced the corresponding parts on my own head. The biggest part I remember of that day is the question I asked her when she finally used the word “disease:”
“Is there a cure?”
“No.”
I remember feeling horrified that there was no easy answer, wondering if it was a disease like cancer that could just kill you outright or if it was something to live the rest of my life with. Either option sounded terrifying, and the best option she could offer me was a daily dose of Paxil. I’d forgotten how orange it was until I reread my own words.
But just as I’m going into this low point, the story shifts: I’m on the couch with Dad, as he urges me to look up from my Calvin and Hobbes comic book and watch Fellowship of the Ring with him. I was convinced it was for nerds, and being a nerd was a bad thing. But, as my younger self wrote, “everything I knew before and everything I thought after changed when I got my first glimpse of Lord of the Rings.”
It was the positive side of OCD, the one I’d looked for ever since that day in my psychiatrist’s office. I wrote about the euphoria that made me want to watch the movies from start to finish, even my willingness to work out while doing so – something I usually hated. I wrote about all the questions I asked Dad – all the mechanics of the world, history, geography, and the backstories of all of my favorite characters – until I could tell that he was wary of answering my questions in case he encouraged the obsession further.
And then my favorite part: I was sitting on the exercise bike, watching the credits of Return of the King roll by, and I couldn’t wait to start the whole trilogy again. I wanted – no, needed – a way to take this passion and carry it forward, and in that moment, I came up with my first original character within Tolkien’s universe. Her name – which I have never written in public before – is Ia (pronounced EYE-uh).
Along with the thrill of my favorite story ever invented came a crushing sense of guilt. I knew it was wrong to do this – it felt like some unholy combination of cheating, copying, and obsessing – but I was just a kid, and it was the equivalent of Chanukah and my birthday and enough snow to build a snowman and my favorite pasta dinner all at once.
I put in this character everything I wanted myself to be: brave, strong, mature, beautiful. Everything I disliked about myself, I tried to erase from this character, but I couldn’t quite get rid of things like fears and picky eating. After all, I wrote what I knew.
I wrote her story in my head all the time, creating the kind of high I can really only feel while deeply immersed in a story. All the possibilities of adventures within Middle-Earth felt intoxicating, and thanks to the repetitive nature of my thoughts, the feeling never waned.
In “The Scepter and the Scourge,” I relearn that her birthday is on March 23 (I was very much into zodiac signs, believing that the bravery of my own, Capricorn, might show up one day), and find the name of the original story file, which I believe to have been lost with an old computer (Forever Young, because of her journeys with immortal elves). I remember that her first story snippet involved a bully learning to be kind to her and accept her, which was one of my dearest wishes as a child.
But with the high came the shame, the knowledge that writing Ia’s story was just another obsession. Just like the ones about throwing up or drinking out of water fountains or anything else in my head. And so I did everything I could to keep it a secret. I embedded the document so deeply in a maze of files that I hoped Dad would never be able to find it, and in “The Scepter and the Scourge,” I detail the path: C:\Users\Michelle\Documents\My Private Stuff\Why are you snooping in here\I mean it\ok if that's the way you want to be\3\how did you get in here\ok now here are my files\Forever Young.
I hoped the guilt trip of clicking through all those subfolders would be enough, but in my fear, I deleted things I wanted to keep, I shredded any papers I wrote her story on in real life, and I kept my happiness in my head just as much as I tried to keep the obsessive thoughts that controlled my life.
The two most valuable things I found in “The Scepter and the Scourge” are a short section of Ia’s story that I never deleted – rife with spelling mistakes and contrived plot that somewhat makes me cringe, but is still somehow beautiful – and the following observation that I remember literally stopped me in my tracks as I got off the treadmill one day towards the beginning of high school – and, as the story ends:
“Out of all the roles that Lord of the Rings played in my life, whether as a fascination or a comfort or a cure, the most important thing about the movies is that they gave me Ia. And Ia gave me the strength to continue many times when I feared I would fail, and the courage to face each new day with an open mind, and the audacity to seek adventure rather than hide from it. Ia was a friend when I had none and an inspiration to write when my hands were sitting still on the keyboard.
But most of all, Ia made me an author. If I can create a character as strong as Ia in someone else’s world, why can’t I create such a strong character in a world I invent? Better yet, why can’t I be the character, in the world that we all live in? I know that I am ashamed of certain things about myself. I know that my OCD has hindered me from opportunities in the past, such as going to summer camp or drinking orange juice. However, I unconsciously put this one thing I wish I could cut out of myself into Ia, and I find that where it weakened me, it gave her strength.
Her ability to focus single-mindedly on one thing for extended periods of time is what gives her power. It’s what makes her do what she does. I’m not a doctor, but I’ve gotten pretty good at telling if someone else has OCD, and I can safely say that she has some form of it, at least the intense focus and dedication that comes with the frantic worrying.
When I realized it, it really made me think. My experience with my brain has not been good (I even looked up lobotomy on the Internet for a short while in the beginning to see if I could ‘fix’ myself), but only I have the potential to make it better—in short, to give myself a happy ending just like I gave Ia. So you might ask me, when has my worst trait ever been a blessing instead of a curse? Well, let me tell you:
Now.”
Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.