PROUD

Proud

My psychiatrist told me to be proud of myself this week.

I made an appointment with her after, on Sunday, I spent 12 hours in the car returning my new puppy after having her for less than two weeks. Ashamed and at my breaking point, I was unaware how to move forward.

As soon as I brought home the puppy, which I had envisioned as the one-size-fits-all solution to the loneliness I felt after coming back from my extended visit home earlier in the pandemic, I was ecstatic. I’d been obsessively counting down the days from 36 to 0 and when she was in my arms, I felt like I was on top of the world.

That feeling lasted less than a day. It turned out that, since she was the runt of her litter, she was coddled so much that she never learned how to be alone for even a single moment. Anxious and needy, she started throwing hours-long tantrums that broke me as much as they broke her. She and I were not eating, sleeping, or functioning.

I knew, going into the process, that puppies were extremely difficult to deal with, but I underestimated how much raising a puppy would affect me mentally. As the days dragged on, neither of us had any quality of life. Everything became too much so quickly that I started to feel like I haven’t since my junior year of college - pounding heart, zero appetite, weak body, and anxiety so steady and pervasive that I couldn’t stop crying multiple times a day.

I tried so many things. Different kinds of training, forcing myself to be positive, reminding myself that there were good times to come. But as time continued, I couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel that was steadily worsening as the puppy developed physical in addition to emotional problems. I was at my wit’s end when I took her to a Zoom class and someone spoke about rehoming.

I hadn’t considered it then, but I burst into tears at the thought that there was a way for both the puppy and I to be happy, even if that meant not being together.

I used a strategy my psychiatrist calls a “brain dump” - which involves writing down every thought in my head until things start making sense. It didn’t take me long to write two pages that concluded with the idea that the only reason I was keeping the puppy for myself instead of returning her to the breeder for training and rehoming was a desire to prove that I was strong.

After talking this out with family and friends, I came to realize that it is strong to give up on a dream when it’s not working out. It’s strong to do the right thing and take the time and effort (which was extreme, considering the breeder’s distance and the complicated plans that had to be made) to ensure that the puppy will have a good future. My vet said I could drop her off at a shelter, but I wanted to do what was best for her.

We had one last full day between when I decided to give her up and when it was time to say goodbye. I carried her outside and sat with her on the grass. She met a few of my friends, some in real life and some virtually. I gave her treats and hugs and kisses and was able to be more positive with her as I finally felt the hope of calming down.

On that last day, I was a mess, even if I knew better times were coming. I convinced myself that someone “normal” could have dealt with such severe separation anxiety better than a person like me. I thought that there was no way for me to ever get a dog again. I cried and cried and the puppy licked my tears away as I promised her a much better life.

Two days after returning her to the breeder, I called my psychiatrist. I told her everything that had happened, how I felt weak for having even some of the intense symptoms I last experienced my junior year in college, the way I doubted my ability to take on other kinds of responsibilities.

She told me that she was proud of me, and I was shocked.

How could she be proud of me when I couldn’t even make it 2 weeks with a puppy? How could she be proud when I made the decision based on faulty logic from obsessive thoughts telling me that I was incapable of living alone, especially during a pandemic? I had listened to my thoughts and it led me down a path that came so close to breaking me. I was as far as possible from proud of myself.

She explained that she was proud of how I dealt with the circumstances. She recommended more CBT work to deal with the thoughts that got me into the situation in the first place, but she told me that it was a huge step for me to be able to know when I needed help, seek it out in a timely way from the right places, and make the difficult but ultimately right decision to return my puppy.

Instead of framing this as a failure, she suggested I frame this as using strength to get out of a lose-lose situation. I was so entrenched in my fear of being alone during the pandemic that I got myself into this situation, but I am getting out of it by using healthy coping mechanisms. It might take time, but hopefully soon, both the puppy and I will be in a much better place.

First, I will need to deconstruct the thoughts that got me here in the first place. I was so convinced that I couldn’t make it alone that I needed a dog as soon as possible, and when I couldn’t get a shelter application approved, I relaxed my standards and went for a puppy when I had been determined not to do that. I got so obsessed with the idea of getting a dog as soon as possible that I fell for a scam and then, when I found a breeder, counted down the days with such a frenzy that it worried my family and friends.

Even though I’m still dealing with a lot of shame from both listening to these thoughts and giving up the puppy, I’m going to do my best to be proud of myself this week. It might take some time, especially considering how much I had bonded with my puppy while she was here, but in the end I believe I will able to get back to my equilibrium. Maybe even more than that - now that I won’t be using the puppy as a coping mechanism, I can try to work on my quality of life in a healthier way. I can use CBT and thought journals to deal with the fear I didn’t want to face in March and use my strength to get past this tough situation.

There will always be a part of me that loves and misses the puppy, but I know that I made the right decision for both of us. And with the decision made, she and I can both grow in a way that makes us both proud.

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.

MEMORY

Memory

I have very few memories of my childhood.

I cherish the ones I can, the ones where I am growing up happy and safe with my parents and Nana, surrounded by love. But there are also the ones I don’t want to remember, the ones where I am plagued by obsessions and not truly living life.

While writing this blog, I reach out to family to see if I can get any guidance on things I don’t remember, both the good and the bad. It’s important to see the whole picture, yet - as my psychiatrist told me - my brain decided to shelter me from the more painful memories.

It sheltered me from the specifics of the bullying I endured every day before I learned how to act “normal,” before I had good friends who thought of my abnormalities as “quirks” rather than anything to shun me for. I spent so long trying to be someone I wasn’t at the time, and not enough time figuring out how to make happiness in the moment that would stay.

I’ve always lived for the future. As an impatient person, I’m often looking forward to so many things that it’s hard for me to be in the moment. I hardly know how to, in fact, and when I try mindfulness, I lose patience quickly. When I’m waiting for something, I want the days to go by as quickly as possible, and it was like that when I was a child as well, so tormented by obsessive thoughts that I couldn’t let myself sit and linger on a moment that would turn painful.

Now that I’m older, I regret this mindset of my youth even as I find myself engaging in it now. It’s strange to have to learn about my own childhood from spreadsheets and stories, photo albums where I smile in pictures without remembering them. It’s weird to not be able to think of things for myself and have to ask, then get into awkward conversations about important things I should remember but don’t.

Today, I did an interview with Mom about my past. I knew the answers to some of the questions from similar conversations we’ve had, but I am also aware that many of these memories are likely not true from my own perspective. I likely experienced these moments differently - instead of as an adult watching me get bullied and teased, I was getting bullied and teased. Instead of hearing reports from the guidance counselor whose hobby seemed to be following me around at all times, I was watching her follow me around corners and write things down and I never knew what she was going to say.

It’s disconcerting, to say the least, that other people have more of a solid hold on my past than I do. My spreadsheet from Dad that he wrote about my childhood about is a good resource, but oftentimes it feels like I’m reading a story about someone else’s life instead of my own. I sometimes feel small ties to the past, bits and pieces that made it past my brain’s restriction, but sometimes I wish for more.

I wonder if what I experienced was really that terrible that it needed to be blocked off. I wonder if I would be a different person if I could remember everything, all the pain and all the good things that happened to me over the years. It’s especially strange considering that, even though I love writing characters with deep ties to their past and their people’s past, I have such a small connection to my own.

Small memories burst through the cracks of the fortress my brain has built around these memories, snaking through like flowers growing through the sidewalk. I remember some silly things, funny moments, books I read, and people I knew. But at the same time, it feels like trying to put together the puzzle of my life with so many of the pieces missing.

Whenever I’ve based a blog entry on a memory, I know that there must be dozens of other examples I could have used. What made this particular one stick out to me and stay in my mind after the others left?

I sometimes speculate that I remember things more easily when I wasn’t having bad days with my OCD. When I’m having bad days, they blur together until I can barely tell the days apart, my focus so heavy on what’s inside my mind that I can barely focus on what’s outside.

I don’t like to think that my childhood had more days like that than days without obsessive thoughts taking over most of the day. At the same time, however, the fact that I don’t remember much combined with the fact that what I do remember is tinged with OCD in the background makes me think that this is how I must have grown up.

I find this terribly sad. I grew up with a kind, loving family who did the best they could with me, but their love couldn’t make me have a normal childhood. We went on family vacations where all I remember is getting sick or being afraid of getting sick. We read books together, sang songs, watched movies, went to plays. We did everything I imagine in a loving and happy childhood, but so much of it is tainted that it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I suppose the only way to go forward from here is to do what I’ve done all this time - live for the future - but also try to focus on enjoying the present, making the most out of everything I do so that I have memories to draw from in the future. When I have children one day, I might not be able to tell them what I was like at their age, but I hope I will be able to learn from the lessons of my past - even if they come from others - and build a future I can be proud of.

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.

Panic

Panic

Here’s what it feels like:

I’m in my first-ever improv show, on a team I joined to help me be more okay with saying “yes” to things instead of always being afraid and saying “no.” I started learning improv almost a year ago, and was supposed to have a show in March, but then the pandemic hit and the show was canceled.

Thanks to a strange series of events, several friends and I tried out for a team and I ended up making it, not knowing any of the people I’d practiced with before.

I’ve never been good at new things. I’m comfortable with doing the same thing over and over until I’m confident I’ll do it right, until it feels so rote that there’s almost no chance of it going wrong. But with improv, everything is constantly changing, so I thought it would be a good way to practice a controlled measure of chaos.

On the day of my first show, I was confident when I saw my friends writing in the chat that they were looking forward to seeing me, but I was also nervous that I was going to mess up in front of people I knew. I comforted myself by reminding myself that I knew exactly what I was going to do - I knew what games I was playing and who I was playing them with, and I did well in practice with those exact games and people.

As the time approached, I felt more nervous and excited. My emotions were ramped up and by the time I turned on my screen to participate, I knew it was game time and I needed to be ready no matter what I was feeling. It’s a sentiment that I feel when I go into major tests, job interviews, and other things that I’m nervous for ahead of time but can muster a good response in the moment no matter what my head and heart are doing.

I was going to be fine. But then, the person tasked with introducing the game changed how it worked. The entire premise changed, and all my plans went out the window. I was on camera already, so there was no chance of calming down. The smile froze on my face as the announcer left the screen and it was just me and my scene partner expected to do something I felt completely unprepared for in front of way too many people who I suddenly felt were judging me behind their computer screens.

It didn’t matter that the suggestion from the audience related to technology and computers, two topics I’m well-versed with. It didn’t matter that the people who came to watch me were my friends and family who had nothing but my best interests in mind. It didn’t matter that my scene partner was not going to let me fall because she wouldn’t want to fall either.

All I knew was that I was screwed, lost and gaping like a dead fish in front of a crowd of 40 friends and family members who were expecting the best.

My Fitbit recorded a heart rate of 156 beats per minute for just that one minute, the one where I had to wipe my brain of everything I had rehearsed and come up with something off the top of my head. My scene partner started speaking as I could feel my heart pounding, blood rushing, palms sweating.

My friends couldn’t see that I was panicking, because I did what I always do when I’m nervous: I started talking. Every time I go to the doctor for a blood draw, try to navigate through a tough point in a friendship or romantic relationship, or basically anytime I’m very nervous and don’t know what to do, I fill the silence in my brain by filling the silence in the room. I never know if what I say is going to make sense or if I sound like a rambling mess afterwards. I just know that it’s something I’ve always done, and even if it seems to be a little too close to a regression to when I was a child and couldn’t stop myself from doing this, it carries me through situations like this when panic takes over.

In improv, thankfully, it works better than in many other situations like chattering away at a nurse trying to take a vial of blood. I barely remember the suggestions I made or the things I did during the game, but apparently, I didn’t look nervous. I looked like I was playing a chatty character, which was the best possible outcome for that situation.

I was leading the next game, and since I had written everything down for that, I didn’t have to be particularly creative. It still felt strange, though, with anxiety peeking in at the strangest moments. Even as I called on people to perform their puns, I kept overthinking things - less and less as time went on, but definitely following a downward path ever since the one big spike when I didn’t know if I was going to crash and burn.

My chatterbox self took over in that moment because it’s who I used to be. As a child, I had to learn - over and over and over again - to let other people talk, to occasionally come up for air, to stop taking up so much space in conversations and classrooms and more. I trained myself well, and only in situations where the panic takes over do I revert to the endless motormouth pattern I displayed throughout my childhood.

It comes out at times of pure, raw panic when my executive function shuts down. Panic, for me, is not something I remember afterwards. It’s not something I can try to try to mitigate in the moment, in the middle of a scenario where I’m terrified and feel like the only option is fight or flight. My body shakes, sometimes, when I’m in the grip of it, as if it can’t decide whether to hide or flee. My eyes tend to go wide. My mouth falls open. I never, ever know what to do.

Luckily, panic moments for me are few and far between, but it wasn’t always like that. I had my first panic attack during my junior year of college and thanks to my OCD, I was unable to calm down at all. Whereas most panic attacks last for a few minutes at best or a few hours at worst, mine went on for days. I couldn’t sleep or eat. I started losing touch with everything I was as the days blended together.

These moments of panic remind me what it felt like then, when everything was so far out of my control and nothing anyone said or did could bring me back. These moments make me want to hide under the table, wait for my heart to stop beating so fast, and then take an evening of self-care as I feel thrown for a while afterwards.

Strangely enough, no one noticed that I felt like this at the show. Apparently, my talking looked confident, and when I was reading off my script, I looked like I knew exactly what I was doing. No one realized I forgot to take off my sunglasses at a crucial moment and no one realized I was twirling them around in my left hand instead of putting them back on. No one knew this time, but in past times, I’ve lost friends and alienated myself inadvertently when I lost control and people did notice.

These moments are strange because they’re so different from my typical experience with OCD. Usually, when I’m afraid of something, so many thoughts cloud my head that it’s difficult to isolate a single thought or think clearly. But when I panic like this, it’s the complete opposite experience. My mind is completely blank, and that almost never happens in daily life so it’s even more alarming. The mere fact that there is nothing in my head makes me think “Do something!” over and over and over, but forcing myself out of the rut almost never works.

Even considering this reaction to my first show, I am glad I signed up for an improv team. Giving myself more opportunities to not know everything that’s going to happen and try new things can hopefully help mitigate these moments in the future, as trying something new won’t be quite so scary if I can desensitize myself to the experience of saying “yes.”  

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.

Confirmation

Confirmation

One of my earliest memories from my childhood is sitting in the back seat of my family’s car on the short drive to school, being told by my mom that if I asked one more time for her to tell me I didn’t have a fever, I was going to lose my computer time for that night. But I couldn’t help it. I remember trying so hard to get myself to not say the words I’d already said so many times, but in that moment, the need to speak overcame my (often very large) need for computer time.

“But Mom, do I have a fever?” I asked, and I had no computer time that night. I also didn’t have a fever, and never did.

As a child, I often confirmed that I was okay with my parents or any other adults around. I thought that these adults would protect me, and if they said I was okay, I knew that I was going to be okay. For a few seconds. And then the thought would occur to me that maybe they were lying, or trying to hide the worst from me to protect me, and I wound up right where I started.

My child therapist told my mom that confirming my thoughts would only make my thought patterns worse, that I would learn to only feel okay if my being okay was confirmed by someone else instead of me figuring it out on my own. That’s why she, after telling me I didn’t have a fever at least half a dozen times, threatened me with taking away my computer time. I was supposed to learn from this experience to trust Mom when she said I was fine the first - or the fifth - time I asked, and eventually, to learn that I was okay without asking at all.

Thankfully, most of my impulses to ask for confirmation that I’m okay or my thoughts are valid have gone away with time. After many repeated experiences like the one on the way to school that day, I learned not to ask so many times and eventually, to not ask. I kept the cyclical thoughts in my head, where they gnawed away at me until they would eventually be disproven.

As an adult, experiencing a thought that I feel the need to have confirmed is deeply upsetting to me. It feels like backsliding into old habits, and I’m always ashamed when I feel the need. But it’s the same feeling that I experienced as a child, perhaps even stronger for its rarity: the intense need to know that my thought is valid, that I’m not crazy, and I am going to be okay. My heart starts to thud faster, my thoughts race through my head at an astonishing speed, and I find myself unable to think of anything else until I can get the idea out of my head.

One of these thoughts cropped up this week when I was attending a Zoom work meeting. I got a text message, looked down at my phone, and saw that it came from the second of two French bulldog breeders I found after I got scammed. I knew what this breeder was going to say as soon as she sent me two pictures of a brindle French bulldog puppy that looked about a week older than the one I put my deposit on from the other breeder. I wasn’t surprised at all when she said that there had been a cancellation on her waiting list and this puppy was now available.

I was, however, surprised that my first reaction was not relief but panic. This breeder supplied two dogs over the last decade to my coworker who vouched for her reliability, and the breeder I put a deposit with was someone who I found online and vetted as best as I could without knowing any of her clients. I instantly became panicked that I was falling for another scam and that I was going to miss my chance to have a puppy if I said no to the breeder my coworker knew.

Even though I had plenty of evidence to support the claim that the breeder I chose was legitimate, my mind instantly went in the exact opposite direction. I thought about the fact that she let me choose from six puppies when the puppies were already born when I put my name on the waiting list. In the beginning, the breeder was more proactive with reaching out, but as time went on, I usually initiated our interactions, even though she replied quickly. I hadn’t seen pictures of the parents, and the puppy pictures could have been taken at any time.

Throughout the rest of the meeting, I could barely focus, I was so worried. I kept looking down at the message from the breeder my coworker knows, realizing that that breeder is a 100% safe choice and as someone who hates taking risks, I would normally gravitate towards odds like those. If I hadn’t sent in a deposit to the other breeder, I might have changed my mind just then to ease the anxiety. But I did, and the puppy from the breeder I chose has a coloration I vastly prefer (black and white pied).

In the end, I broke an unspoken promise to myself that I made when I first made the agreement with the breeder. I reached out to her, not about a legitimate question I had, but to assuage my fears. I asked her for a photo of the puppy she promised me next to a piece of paper with my name on it, photos of the puppy’s parents, and an explanation for why I got to choose from so many puppies when I was so recent to the waiting list.

By the time my work meeting was over, I had a response to every one of these items. I got a picture of my puppy, looking tired and a little dirty from the mushy wet food she’s learning to eat, sitting next to a piece of paper with my name on it. Photos of both of her parents, and they looked like the breeder told me when I first inquired about the litter. And an explanation that this litter was composed of black and white pied and brindle Frenchies, and she called people on her waiting list who rejected the puppies because they wanted blue or merle.

Instantly, I felt a deep sense of relief. She was as kind as she always had been, and I was able once again to see the evidence that she is legitimately going to give me a puppy the day before Halloween: she asked for a small deposit up front and let me pay by check to avoid scams; she takes cash on the day of pickup, which I consider safest since if there’s no puppy I keep my money; and she has repeatedly cited a history of being scammed and would not want to do that to someone else when she seems like such a nice person. Not to mention that when I was setting up an Instagram for my future puppy, I found another account of a French bulldog puppy that came from this breeder and was now living in Chicago.

Although I felt relieved in the moment, it didn’t take me too long to feel guilty. I had decided, when I first signed a contract with this breeder, to not bother her with silly things. I didn’t ask her opinion on toys I bought or other supplies I might need to get. I didn’t ask her for advice about owning Frenchies, even though I still have many questions. I was determined to present myself as normally as possible and not make her think I’m too much, and yet, my first impulse when I was anxious was to contact her.

Thankfully, she responded to me quickly and kindly, with no indication that she was bothered by my requests or questions. And with this worry out of my mind, I don’t see other reasons to contact her except to coordinate the details for picking up the puppy. While I hope she contacts me in the meantime to share puppy photos like she promised, I am convinced that she is a legitimate breeder and is not going to scam me.

Although I’m ashamed that I had to ask, it occurred to me that unlike that morning in the car, I only asked once, and took her answer at face value. I didn’t let the thought that frightened me cycle around endlessly in my mind. I put it to rest after getting just one answer - which, if I’d done that that day, would have meant I got to play on the computer.

Living with OCD means taking these little milestones as signs of improvement and seeing how far I’ve come even if some behaviors and thought patterns still stick with me. Even though I have very high standards for myself and always yearn for perfection, I have to realize that there are some things that are innately part of me, and by working with them instead of against them, I can get a better quality of life.

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.

OCD Awareness Week 2020: My Monster

OCD Awareness Week 2020: My Monster

Throughout my childhood, I would have used the word “monster” to describe my head. I thought there was something so fundamentally wrong with me that could never be fixed, and then when I went to my child therapist, she encouraged me to see the OCD inside me as a monster who I had to beat.

It would take me a good deal of time to see myself as separate from my mental illness. For so long, I couldn’t separate the Ellie who felt magnificent when reading my favorite books or marvelous while I played my favorite games from the monster that lived in my head. As a fan of fantasy from an early age, I took to the imagery of fighting monsters in my head to help me fight back against the thoughts that plagued me.

Even with these images in my head, I found it extremely hard to forgive myself for what I perceived as failure. Anything from doing a compulsive behavior to obsessively worrying about something for a whole day made me feel like maybe the monster wasn’t something inside me, it was me after all.

Self-love has been difficult for me throughout my life, as throughout my childhood I berated myself for my interests, for failing to behave like other children, and for being - in my opinion - the worst coward in the world. My opinion of myself has improved over the years, even though I still find it very hard to think of myself as brave even when other people try to convince me.

I haven’t thought about this moment of trying to love myself and think of myself as a monster at the same time for a while, but I was reminded of it when I saw the International OCD Foundation’s activities for OCD Awareness Week 2020. The first challenge - and the one that stuck out to me the most - was to “draw your monster.” In other words, the challenge asked people living with OCD to draw a representation of what it felt like to have a monster in their head.

As someone whose artistic skills (or lack thereof) are nothing to brag about, I started looking online for pictures of monsters. Maybe, I thought, I could write out what I was feeling and come up with a way to describe a monster so well that it could be visualized by someone reading what I write. And once I decided to write about a monster, I thought of how I usually write new characters - I think of everything I can about them physically and emotionally.

I started to think about monsters. Did the one in my head have mucus that it leaves behind in a sticky trail? Perhaps it was gooey, grotesque, or gory. Some of the pictures of monsters had protruding bones or were just close enough to human to be unsettling. Did my monster walk on two legs or four, or some other fantastical number? Did it have shackles for hands, or wires to keep a prisoner inside? Or perhaps, did it have a fair form that belied its cruel inner nature? And what color would it be? Yellow, the color I hated for most of my childhood because it reminded me of vomit? Red, because even though it’s my favorite color, it reminds me of blood dripping and congealing?

I Googled monsters to get more inspiration, and after the obligatory pictures of the energy drink can, most of what I found was Cookie Monster, my favorite Sesame Street character. I instantly dismissed the idea because he is not at all scary to me, and since OCD is experienced through a life of fear, I needed something terrifying. I then realized that I would be equally scared if a demon-looking monster or something like Mike Wazowski from “Monsters Inc.” came into my bedroom in the middle of the night. In other words, just fear can’t cut it.

I took some more time to reflect on a walk around the neighborhood. What would a monster look like for someone who is scared of so many things, but this monster is the origin of all the fear? I thought that it might have to be something enormous like Cthulhu or Godzilla to encompass all of its facets. I tried to use my imagination, picturing monsters as I walked.

Surprisingly, I didn’t picture something like in the sample photos from the organization that depicted a one-eyed, many-limbed monstrous creature that looked like a villain in a Disney movie. Instead, I thought of a picture I found some years ago and saved in my mental health advocacy Pinterest board that felt more like what goes on in my head than anything else.

It’s a picture of a wolf pacing in the snow, circling and circling and circling until its paws bleed. The blood outlines a perfect red circle. The circle has to be perfect, just as OCD rituals have to be completed perfectly or they feel like they don’t count. But even in that picture, the monster is never shown. Just the wolf, emaciated and scared, yet fiercely determined. There is a fierceness in its eyes and the way it grits its teeth that shows that although it is still circling, it is fighting back as much as it can.

As I reflected more on the wolf, its dogged determination to fight back whether it’s alone or in a pack, I thought of animals in groups - and the answer came to me.

The closest I can come to assigning a monstrous form to my OCD is a large group of German cockroaches spread out across an apartment, a house, a life. I had an infestation when I was in grad school, and the experience felt similar to my overall experience with OCD:

Every time I entered the apartment, I knew that there were going to be cockroaches there, but I never knew where they would be. I didn’t know if they would affect me during a normal part of my routine or if I would have a day free of them. They were just there, endemic.

 Every time I saw a cockroach, I felt filthy and disgusting, just like how I felt every time I succumbed to the immense pressure in my head to do a compulsive behavior or act differently based on obsessive or anxious thoughts.

I didn’t know if a cockroach sighting was just going to be one single roach or a group of them clustered together, like when I found a large group in the shower when I fled there to escape other roaches. Likewise, I never know if a single derailing of my day will be all that happens, or if I will be assailed by negative thoughts on all sides.

Cockroaches aren’t inherently disgusting. Even though I’m so disgusted by them, the main thing that repulses me is the idea that they are carrying germs. In other words, they represent more than they are, and they give me a visceral reaction even though they’re not themselves able to bite me or harm me in any other way.

Cockroaches are small(ish) bugs like ants, which is what I’ve called my automatic negative thoughts since I went through cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

They also remind me of the experience of collecting the corpses of dozens of cockroaches only to be told by my building manager that I was exaggerating things, that he didn’t believe there was a problem, and I was far too sensitive. “One or two cockroaches are normal,” he kept saying, and he didn’t believe me even when I had fistfuls pouring out of the vacuum cleaner. Likewise, I have been told so many times that OCD is just in my head and I could overcome it easily. These people don’t see what is truly there.

And then there was the day when I was eating macaroni and cheese and a live cockroach walked out of the bowl. I dropped it to the ground, grabbed my purse, and practically ran to the nearest police station, desperate to get help from someone who would believe me. I ended up getting help from a very kind detective when I reached my breaking point with the infestation, something that has happened to me with mental health as well. It’s not necessarily a huge, traumatic event that breaks a mind, although it can be. Sometimes, it is the small things accumulating over time until there are so many things on one’s mind that another one is simply too much to handle.

Most importantly, even though my first reaction to cockroaches usually involves running and screaming, I can beat them in a variety of ways. I got them out of my old apartment with paper towels and by vacuuming them. I got rid of many of them by asking for help from my roommate, a detective who ended up declaring the building unsafe and in need of bug bombing, and with the chemicals used in the bug bomb. Some of the bugs were defeated without help and others needed help from a variety of sources.

If I had better artistic skills, I’d draw a pile of cockroaches hissing and writhing in pure anarchy, disorganized, diseased, but still looking like regular roaches. It can blend in, after all, but there is still something making it different. A certain attribution making it monstrous. And this year for OCD Awareness Week, I encourage everyone to think of the monsters that may be afflicting them and be kind and accepting to others, because we can never see their monsters unless they feel safe enough to share.

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.