A Different Kind of Writing
It’s coming up on five years since I started writing for No Shame On U’s blog, and over that time, I’ve become comfortable with writing about a lot of different topics.
Most of the time, I try to keep things light and focus on everyday life with OCD beyond the stereotypes. I could have done that for this week’s post, too - talking about a coworker making repeated OCD jokes or the sudden nerves that hit me at the prospect of my first catered lunch at the new job - but this week, I’ve actually been doing a lot of writing about OCD already.
Most people who know me know that it’s been my lifelong dream to be a published author. I remember that, when I was little, I used to talk about getting published every time I wrote a paragraph on a piece of lined paper, and I couldn’t wait to show everyone what I had done. As a teenager, I got more into fantasy and science fiction and started writing a novel a year for National Novel Writing Month.
But it took me writing this blog to actually have a chance at getting a book published. A couple of years ago, I put together a manuscript from various blog entries and started sending it out. And this week, after I decided to pitch the book in a new angle focused on the power of positive obsessions, I finally got a bite.
I am a manic mix of excited and terrified at the thought of the publishing company representative reading the chapter I sent him. We had a wonderful conversation last week about the new proposal and the ideas we both had for the book, and then he asked me for my most powerful chapter.
Even though I called Mom to get her advice, I already knew which chapter was the most powerful. It’s one that I wrote separately from the blog, one that I decided to rewrite again to make it even stronger even though it hurts just to think about it. I wanted to give myself the best possible chance at fulfilling my dream - and, ironically, the way to do that was by writing about the time in my life when I didn’t think I’d survive to fulfill any dreams at all.
It’s not just the blood clot story, which I’ve touched on in various posts here. It’s what happened a year and a half later - the nervous breakdown I didn’t think I could survive.
Even though this happened nine years ago, writing about it makes it feel as fresh as peeling off a newly formed scab. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to not be afraid of something like this happening to me again or being afraid whenever I have a major change in my life like losing Nana.
Aside from this blog, I hadn’t written anything since Nana got sick - and really, since before I went to New Zealand. It’s been almost nine months since I wrote a story that wasn’t for work or a volunteer commitment - just for myself. And this was the most horrifying story I could possibly pick.
As soon as I got off the phone with the publishing company, I knew what I had to do, but I honestly didn’t think I could do it. Sure, I could write an article for my old job or a post for this blog, but turning the scariest and most intense time of my life into 5,000 words that would impress a publisher was something I thought beyond my purview.
And yet, somehow, I wrote 2,000 words the first day - more than I’d written at once in well over a year. And then another 2,000 the next day, and the last 1,000 the day after that. The story poured out of me, likely because I wasn’t just writing about OCD - I was writing about the way my connection to a video game called Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors helped me survive the blood clot and breakdown.
It was easier to write about Akane’s experiences in the game than the ones I faced. I started with those parts of the chapter, delving into what I identified with and why. A near-fatal crisis of the body breaking the mind is something you don’t often see in video games or visual novels, but it’s something that has stayed with me for years since, to the point that I still say 999 is my favorite video game.
Once I wrote about Akane, I could start to write about myself. The reasons I associated with her feeling tortured was because I felt tortured. I felt half-alive too, chained to a moment in the past that I couldn’t control or forget.
Writing the chapter was cathartic, but so different from this blog. Even though I share intimate things here, the chapter I wrote is a whole new level of intimacy I haven’t reached before. Most of my close friends don’t even know this level of detail about my junior year of college, so it feels strange to dive so far into my breakdown headspace for someone who I haven’t even met.
Not to mention I couldn’t call Nana like I always did when I wrote anything while she was alive. She wasn’t there to tell me that my work deserved a Pulitzer no matter what the publishing company said, and even though I knew she would have said that, it was still painful to write without her there.
Even so, I was proud to send what I had written to the publisher. I’m anxiously awaiting a reply, trying to not check my inbox more times than necessary but desperate to know if my gamble paid off. He asked for something powerful and I delivered something far more than I thought I could, something beautiful and horrifying at once that I hope will lead to my first book deal.
If this works, it’ll be the ultimate proof of something I’ve been trying to convince myself of for years: my greatest weakness can be my greatest strength.
Michelle Cohen, a writer in 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.