Dear voice in my head,
It’s crazy to wrap my mind around the fact that one voice, your voice, the one that leads to many of my actions, thoughts, and behaviors can have so many names, and that those names can vary among different people. To one doctor, you are obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, general anxiety disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. To another doctor, you are obsessive compulsive disorder, general anxiety disorder, and situational depression. No matter what the labels are, one thing doesn’t change - you. You never leave me alone, no matter how hard I try to make you go away.
Dear Regina,
After a lifetime of hearing you, putting a name to you made you seem a lot more “human”; which is bad and good. Making you seem more human is terrifying, because you have a figure now, and I can see you in my darkest moments, and not just hear your screams in my mind. Making you human is good, however, because that makes you mortal. I can defeat you. I can kill you. I can squash you like a bug, because I am bigger than you are. I can win.
Dear OCD,
What’s the point? Why do I feel the need to panic every time I go outside into nature? Why does everything need to be even? Why does everything need to be straight and tidy? Why do I only feel calm, steady, and relieved every time I clean the dishes, vacuum, and dust every surface imaginable? I just don’t understand.
I will never forget the first time I had an OCD attack, something that is very different from anxiety and panic attacks. I was cleaning the house with my family, and I got the job of cleaning the front closet. After cleaning out the closet, I found a towel in the back crevice of the closet, a towel that was discarded, forgotten about, and incredibly dirty after months of dirt, dust, cobwebs, and dog hair collected on it. Not thinking about the impending doom, I picked it up with the intent to set it off to the side to put in the laundry later. While holding this towel, I started to feel the germs float off the towel and crawl onto my hands like tiny parasites with the intent to cover my entire body. I could see tiny dots move rapidly in unpredictable trails along my hands and slowly up my wrists and arms. I ran to the kitchen to wash my hands, and no matter how much I scrubbed or how much soap I used, the dots and the crawling didn’t go away. I then told my parents to get me some hand sanitizer, which I proceeded to use lots of, to no avail. I then started to seriously panic, because what happens once the dots go to my face, my eyes, my nose, or my mouth? What happens if the crawling feeling never goes away? I started to sob uncontrollably, while shaking until I felt light-headed. My mom, trying to calm me down, tried to embrace me, which scared me even more. I couldn’t touch anyone or anything, because I was covered in germs - what if I got her sick? She could die because of me! I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself. I ran from her, to the front room where I collapsed onto a stool and continued to sob. My dad then followed me, and sternly told me to tell Regina to stop and to force myself to stop crying, but I couldn’t. I was so scared, because Regina told me that I was going to die because of those germs that had traveled up my arms and were at my shoulders at this point. She told me that anything I touch is now contaminated, and anyone who then touches said objects will hence be contaminated as well. I kept sobbing, washing my hands, and shaking until I became too weak and I then laid down on my couch, trying not to think about how I was contaminating it, and I slept away the feeling. It was a horrible, terrifying time for me, and it makes my heart race even to think about it now.
Dear Zoloft,
Mental illness is found in, as expected, the brain - it affects the chemicals your brain produces and can even deplete them, in some cases. In the case of OCD, those chemicals are unbalanced in the behavior response parts of your brain, as there is too little in some places and too much in others. To try to rebalance those chemicals, medicine is often used. In my case along with many other people’s, zoloft was prescribed. Thank you zoloft, for being just another way to help control my symptoms. Thank you for existing, because without you, my fight would be much harder. So, once a day for the rest of my life, I am going to have to take a pill, a once-a-day reminder that I have a constant battle to fight that I will never fully win, only take control of.
Dear future husband, family, and friends whom I haven’t met yet,
I hope that, the first time you see my pills, my “strange” behaviors, or even worse, an attack, you don’t get scared or think of me as strange. I’m human, and I have imperfections just like anyone else. My imperfections just want me to be the definition of perfect. My imperfections are invisible. My imperfections are just as valid as yours. My imperfections make me human. I wouldn’t love you any less if you were an amputee, I wouldn’t stop hanging out with you if you had a lazy eye, and I wouldn’t want you to change anything to be around me, or not be around me at all. I may just need to wash my hands a little bit more often than you, or may have to pause the movie to close the blinds when it gets too dark out. The only thing that I do want you to do is to listen and to learn if you don’t already know. The only way that you could help me, if you ever needed to, is to fully understand the situation at hand and what to do when it happens.
Dear readers,
I am simple. I am complex. I am a music lover. I am a future scientist. I am loving. I am a good friend. I am a lover of makeup. I am a book reader, and I am more than my mental illnesses. I might seem strange at times, but I’m trying. I’ve been fighting this monster inside my mind for years now, and I will never be able to stop. There is no cure to most, if not all, mental illnesses, only some soldiers to add to your army. If you have any concern that you or a loved one has a mental illness, please talk to a doctor or therapist for their opinion, because the sooner you can start fighting, the better off you can be. For those who don’t have any mental illnesses and know people who do, ask them if they would tell you what to do during their attacks or what you can do to make their fight even a little bit easier. Every mental illness is different, just as every personality is different. Fighting this battle is so much easier when you have a support system to go to during the hard times, whether it’s one person, your family, or a whole team of people.
We, the often silent population of those who struggle with mental illness, are a strong, powerful, and courageous people who need to educate those without as much as possible. Without teaching others about our illnesses or how to help treat them, how can we receive help when at our most vulnerable? We can win this war.
Dear voice in my head,
I’m coming for you.