How It Begins
Date: Saturday, 22nd April 2023 Topic: OCDToday I wanted to write a little bit about why I made this site; for fun, absolutely, but also because I thought it might be nice having somewhere I could actually talk about what it's like to live with this. I've had OCD symptoms since I was nine years old, so we're at just over a decade of this now, and I've never actually spoken about it to anyone freely before! Gotta start somewhere, right?
It's changed a lot since then. When it first started, it was only compulsions and not a whole lot of thought behind them other than how it just 'felt right' to do them, although now I realise that's an obsession in itself. And then to cut a long story short, some stuff happened, and all of a sudden I had things I couldn't stop thinking about. I couldn't just do things because they felt right, I had to do them because I felt wrong all of the time and I needed that three milliseconds where I could breathe more than anything else. It doesn't feel good, I'd like to make that point clear. The relief is the absence of distress. You learn to think that's worth it.
So that's been most of my world for the last eleven years - fear, and the moments between fears. Wow does typing it out like that look miserable. I really want to say it sounds a lot worse than it is. I'm not unhappy, there's a lot of things in my life that make me very happy and this doesn't cancel them out, but it weighs on you a lot. I might just be an optimist, but I like the thought that laying it out like this could make it easier to carry. Here's to hoping!