What Lies Inside
Last weekend, while playing Dungeons & Dragons, my group was enacting a scene where our characters were on board a ship in a storm, and many of them (including mine) were getting seasick. When we broke for dinner, I mentioned to one of my friends in the group that it was a little hard for me to play that scene, even though it was just listening to and making sounds like we were throwing up.
When he asked why, I didn’t hesitate to tell him something along the lines of, “I’ve been afraid of throwing up for a very long time, and since I have OCD, those thoughts can get stuck in my head.”
I wouldn’t ordinarily share something like this with just anyone, but considering I’ve known this guy for close to six months and my D&D group is getting very close considering we spend a full day every week together, I thought it was safe.
His instant response: “I couldn’t tell.”
My instant response: A sigh of relief, and “Thank you.”
I was taken aback by my response. As we kept talking, I felt so strange. Why had I responded so strongly to his remark that I would normally deem well-meaning yet insensitive?
Ever since college, I’ve been trying to turn around the notion in my head that there’s something wrong with me because of my diagnosis, some hurdle that makes people not want to be around me. I came to associate my lack of friends with visible compulsions that I used to do, like stepping in a sidewalk square an even number of times, running my fingers along walls, and spitting sideways when drinking out of a water fountain. I also talked nearly constantly and had difficulty telling when people were no longer interested.
Since these actions likely contributed to my lack of childhood friends, I associated OCD with loneliness. I was firmly convinced that anyone who knew I had OCD would never want to be friends with me, and so, in order to try to make friends, I would have to hide in plain sight.
I tried to avoid talking about things I am particularly interested in, so I wouldn’t run the risk of rambling. I lived my life like I had a great big secret and couldn’t get too close to anyone, or it would come out and they wouldn’t want to spend time with me anymore.
Even with my years of trying to reverse this lifestyle and these beliefs, I still find myself in moments like these, taking neurotypicality as a compliment and a sign that I’ve done well at hiding a large part of myself. This response was so ingrained that I didn’t even realize what I said until after the conversation moved on. It was like a reflex, a knee-jerk reaction to interpret being seen as “normal” as ideal.
And yet, the more I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t been acting very “normal” that session, even though I was making an effort thanks to a new player joining the group. When someone named his new character a very obscure Tolkien reference, I practically jumped across the table, exclaiming “I got it! I knew it was from the Silmarillion!”
My friend saw that - a clear expression of a reaction too big for someone neurotypical - and still wanted to be my friend. His words were meant to comfort me, to show that he understood why I was responding that way to the seasickness scene but also to show that it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
He went on to say that he sees me as a passionate person with intense, but not strange, interests. He likes that I’m in the group, and knowing my diagnosis doesn’t change anything. I felt overwhelmed then, in an entirely different way, as he passed me the phone where we were all ordering food.
We were ordering food from a place where I feel comfortable eating, talking all about writing our various stories, and I couldn’t have been happier. Yes, I had that ingrained response in me, but as I looked around the room, I realized I was just as much a part of the group as anyone else, OCD and all. It wasn’t the big deal I imagined when I was little, and it felt great to learn that. I hope that one day, I’ve learned this lesson well enough that my first response isn’t relief and thanks, but for now, I’m going to add another observation to the ones I gleaned as a child:
People living with mental illness can have friends!
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.