When you have a combination of anxiety and OCD, things can go terribly wrong very quickly.

VERY quickly.

There have been a few instances in my life where I thought I wasn’t going to be able to mentally make it through the day. Those moments are the moments I don’t necessarily share with others, but for someone like me, it’s incredibly important to be able to express them in some way.

There was one instance, one time, that I completely broke.

It was only a few weeks ago. I was on the verge of turning in a ten-page paper, working on a presentation that was worth a quarter of my grade, having tech rehearsals for a show I was in, and trying to get enough sleep during all of this.

Yeah, it wasn’t going to work well no matter how hard I tried.

That night, at around three in the morning, I suddenly felt the overwhelming sensation to move.

OCD is something you can’t control, and when a serious wave hits, it’s not something that’s fun or as simple as tidying the room. People need to understand this in order for my story to make sense and have the proper effect.

At three in the morning, I got up, walked around my room, and tried to stop myself from screaming.

My roommate wasn’t there - she was out of town - so I had free reign to break down without anyone noticing.

I sobbed on my bean bag chair, frantically cleaned everything in the room, and even organized my desk in such an intricate way that the book I was reading was parallel with the grain of the wood on the desk. I had to have everything in perfect order, and there was so much going through my mind that everything I saw in my room drove me crazy.

This drove me into a panic attack at approximately 3:30.

Nobody could hear me, nobody could see me, and I was alone. So, I let it all out and cried silently as my nails dug into my skin.

When I personally have an attack like this, I do whatever it takes not to fall into it, and only one or two people have picked up on the stages I go through.

Stage one is where I can feel it coming on but I don’t want to say anything. That’s when I start picking at my cuticles, because even those need to be perfect. If there’s a piece that’s just slightly uneven, it must go or be fixed. It’s gross, it can cause me to bleed, but it’s something I do whenever I’m starting to feel an attack coming on.

Only one person has picked up on that, and whenever he sees me doing it, he picks up my hand and kisses the fingers that I’ve been messing with. He then holds them tight and doesn’t let me pick at them until I’ve settled or can escape.

Stage two is when the attack starts to happen and I can’t stop it. My nails end up getting dug into my skin. Claw marks will form after I realize I’m doing this, and although I feel the pain, it’s a warning to myself that I need to get out of there. It’s such a natural behavior of mine that I don’t even notice I’m doing it.

No one’s noticed that I do this. I’ve told them, and I’ve shown them the marks, but no one has realized that it happens when I’m at that level of panic.

The last stage is breaking down. Tears will sting my eyes or my mind will go blank. I won’t talk to anyone and I won’t communicate. At the drop of a hat I’ll start crying, and this has caused me to be looked at in several different ways.

This is what happens most often, because it can happen without the lead-up. I can be in class and start crying because I got an answer wrong, or I can be backstage during a dress rehearsal and completely break down before I go on.

Example: "Big Fish" - the play I was in only a month ago.

It triggered within minutes, and instantly I felt like a nuisance. I felt as if I was being stared at and mocked. There’s obviously people older than me there, and the only thought going through my mind was that they were going to look at me and think one thing:

The baby freshman couldn’t handle it.

I had people there who helped me. They assured me I wasn’t doing anything wrong, and they helped me calm down and breathe. I owe them everything for that, because I felt that attack for the next week, it was so bad.

My point is, OCD and anxiety go hand in hand for me. Because of my overwhelming need for everything to be perfect in my eyes, I can easily fall down this step of stages that bring me to a full blown panic mode.

People need to realize that everyone has their warning signs, and if it happens to one of your friends, you need to be there for them, because one of the scariest things during a time like this is the feeling of being alone and being a bother.

Sure, some people will request to be alone. If they do then allow them that. People have their own preference.

Just remember that not everybody reacts the same way, and if someone starts crying all of a sudden, don’t look at them like they’re crazy.

Because that can be a step towards something even worse.