I've had obsessive compulsive tendencies all of my life, and I've come to realize that, for the most part, no one has any idea what OCD actually is. It ebbs and flows in severity, going from hardly noticeable to near-debilitating, but it's not quirky, it's not neat and tidy, and it's not funny or fun or cool in the slightest. Most surprisingly, though, it's not clean It's the very opposite of clean; it's a dirty, shameful, disgusting sickness.

Imagine the taste of battery acid and post-vomit gall shaken together in a cocktail with the feeling of drowning, and inject that into your retinas and your scalp, and that's the best way to describe it. I've never been addicted to drugs, but what I've heard of addiction withdrawals is oddly relateable to me. Because the thing about obsessive compulsive disorder: it's like an addiction to yourself, to your own mind, to your own screwed up perception of everything.

I've described OCD before as being like the world is balanced on a scale and it's my job to keep it steady, because it's always rocking and shaking with my every action, and so I'm constantly correcting and overcorrecting until it spirals out in the other direction, and the best I can get is a minute vibration, but nothing ever completely stands still.

It's also illogical and unpredictable. I've found certain tics and obsessions repeat and repeat, but others come as a phase, then just as quickly disappear. And they're absurd tics too, and I'm aware of their absurdity, and aware of how utterly unimportant they actually are, like “I know I don't have to set fire to this toothbrush. I know I can step on sidewalk cracks. I know I don't have to braid my hair till it rips. I know I don't have to pile scrap metal off the street in my room...” But, like, I do. It hurts me otherwise.

I want to clarify something, though; it does ebb and flow and there are always traces of it. But with time, counseling, appropriate meds and TONS of help from Jesus (an attribution I give not just to be a proper little Christian, but because I know how fundamentally true it is), I am not the wreck I was a few years ago.

There was a time, back when I lived in England when I literally couldn't lift my head when I walked, so I nearly forgot what the sky looked like. I would melt down and scream at random people for existing incorrectly; I could barely go outside without wanting to cry or hyperventilate. I would disassociate and everything (including my own body) would seem alien and unreal.

And these are past symptoms. I'm not 100 percent all the time, but I am a happy, upbeat, outgoing, optimistic person who lives a full and outward life, and really doesn't have too many of the old issues bother me at all. Sometimes I still get a disturbing obsessive thought stuck in my head, sometimes I'll be too twitchy, and I still mess with my hair a lot.

But there is hope, and a ton of happiness to be found and satisfaction in life, in love, in faith, in everything, and there is a path through mental illness, and growth and recovery to be had.

So don't you DARE misunderstand, caricature or diminish the severity of anybody's struggle, be it monetary issues, abuse, addiction, self-harm, depression, schizophrenia, or OCD; whatever the case may be.

We've all got issues, and they're uniquely ours but also universally shared, and we're all in the same boat. So if you're looking in on someone else's struggle, have empathy for their sake because it's probably not their fault. And if you yourself are struggling, don't you ever give up hope or think that things will always be at their worst. Because believe me, when things were at their worst, there was a time when light seemed dim and I thought the idea of getting over the brutality of OCD was a phantasm and a joke. But now, looking back, the fog of that sickness season is what has proven to be the dream and the lie.

Always hold onto the Light, because it's only darkness that's the lie.