My Whole Life, Perhaps
Writing this has been in my heart for some time.
When I meet you, I don’t tell you right away that I have OCD. When I hear you at work say, “that’s just my OCD,” I don’t get offended. I don’t tell you these things because I don’t want you to think of me “as my OCD” because of course, I am more than that. In the process of not telling you, you start to misunderstand me. Even those that know me the BEST may not even understand me, and that’s because I have spent the past six years since my diagnosis trying to beat it.
The doctor that diagnosed me did not start by diagnosing me. I was nineteen years old. I felt very misunderstood and suicidal. I went into his office and I explained what was going on. After about almost an hour of listening, this is what he said….“You are a very loyal friend, in fact, the most loyal. When you do something, you do it all the way. You never do it halfway. You give everything that you do 100 percent, whether it’s a small test or a trivial friendship, even just an acquaintance. You go all in. you don’t know how to go halfway in.
You are committed to all that you do fully, which makes it hard for you to understand when someone else is not.Sometimes things can become very black and white for you in that way, but you try your best at everything. You also have obsessive-compulsive disorder.”