A Love Affair with OCD and the word Freak

I am terrified of growth sometimes. It is hard for me to imagine growing without my friends, growing without my partner, growing into someone that I do not know yet.

I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in the fall of last year. Less than a year ago. Toss out every idea of what society has told you about OCD, this shit is unpredictable. The reason why I fear change, why I fear commitment, why I fear growth: because my OCD tells me to.

It feels as though the second I finally get comfortable in my own head, in my thought process, in my surroundings, it changes. And that is absolutely horrifying. To me, that means graphic nightmares 6 nights out of 7 about being stranded on a deserted island and gruesome and bloody fighting to get off (someone told me that’s because my subconscious feels out of control and lonely). Thanks Freud. It means crying in meetings, it means spending 48 hours at a time in bed, it means all sorts of things.

I am still trying to figure out what the hell this diagnosis means in my life.

But most of the time, this diagnosis means that I feel like a freak. It means that my partner offers to go ask the front desk if they can “turn down the music” for a sensory-sensitive pal (me). It means some days if I bang my head against my lofted bed once, I have to do it 49 more times until I feel better. 50 is my number most of the time. It means scratching my face with my fingernail until I leave a burn mark when it’s finals week. It means that I get intrusive thoughts like: “You should text your partner and tell him you would rather die than see him again” or “you should just not go to class for a week” or “you should stop eating because that means you’ll be in control of something for once.” That’s what a freak is.

This trip will change my life. The first time I heard that, I went home and cried. I had perfected the balance in my life! I was medicated, I was intrusive-thoughtless, I was in control. It occurred to me why it bothered me that I might change: what if I turned into a freak again? I had just finally perfected my state of mind to appear stable and unbothered.

As I go through this journey of discovering what it means to reclaim the word “freak,” I am going to need to be gentle with myself. And I think that there’s strength and bravery in doing so. It’s so incredibly easy to get caught up in the ways that I have hurt myself with the usage of that word before, and I think that this trip will help me to see that it should not be a hurtful word.

The word freak has power, it has bravery, it has the ability to claim yourself in ways that society has never allowed you to before. There are parts of my identity that have been hidden away by shame and guilt, fear of being labeled a freak, and I think that has inhibited my ability to grow in many ways.

I am terrified of growth sometimes. It is hard for me to imagine growing without my friends, growing without my partner, growing into someone that I do not know yet. But I think that’s okay.  

I don’t always need to know what kind of freak I will have the strength to transform into next.