Choosing to Love Myself, OCD and All
The other day, my mom said something that completely stunned me: “I love the way your brain works.”
It’s not something I think often. In fact, when I think about my brain, I tend to think negatively. I think of OCD as something that sets me apart from other people, and not in a good way. It makes me doubt whether my friends and family really want to spend time with me; it makes me wonder if I can ever live a “normal” life; and it makes me imagine what life might have been like if I never lived with mental illness.
I don’t remember a time before my diagnosis. Every memory of mine is somehow etched with OCD, whether for good or bad. Most of my childhood, it was negative, and now, even after conquering so much, challenges still rear their ugly heads at me and make me question all the progress I’ve made.
But Mom, who’s had to deal with the brunt of it, especially when I was too young to know what to do with my obsessive thoughts, saw it otherwise.
She said this when I was explaining a new story idea to her. It’s something I love to do - call my family when inspiration strikes, and guide them through whatever world my head is in at the moment. I don’t do it every time I’m inspired - the idea of bothering people still lingers in the back of my mind - but it’s always a thrill.
I asked her what, specifically, she loved about my brain. Her response was the actual way I think - the way I connect all sorts of unrelated things and weave them together into stories and more.
I know exactly where that came from. It’s how I made the connection, in my childhood, between touching a Snoopy figurine in my room a certain number of times in my room and throwing up. It’s how I reasoned my way through every one of my compulsions, putting things together that didn’t go together. And, at the same time, this thought process has been the driving force behind every one of my stories.
“What if?” is a common beginning for story ideas, the seed that allows creativity to grow, and yet, it’s the same thing that’s caused so much trouble in my life.
One comes with the other. My conversation with Mom made me think: what if someone could choose between getting some sort of talent that also came with a hindrance, or if they could simply choose to be like everyone else?
I wondered, if a choice like this was possible, what my “normal” life might be like. I imagined the things I saw other people experience: summers at camp, arms around friends who would stay for life; long days at amusement parks and cookouts; enjoying a variety of extracurricular activities and growing up with pets and a thousand other things that I never got to experience as many other kids did.
But at the same time, it’d mean giving up the exhilaration of a new story idea; the way I love to live in my head and explore countless stories in worlds far beyond this one; the pride I feel when I manage to get words on a page and someone likes them.
I didn’t quite know how to reason through this can of worms I’d opened, so (in true Ellie fashion) I wrote it out in a story. In the tale, a character with a talent as a blacksmith and jeweler has a dream where he is faced with the choice between a life with that talent but also with significant trauma in his past, and a life with none of that.
The more I wrote, the more puzzled I became. What was the right choice for him? And what would I do, if given a similar choice? Would I choose a mind I could love under any circumstances, or would I stick to what I know and have learned to live with?
At the end of the story, the character is glad that it was just a dream and he doesn’t have to choose. It’s an impossible choice, after all - and it’s the sort of quandary that can distract from living the best life possible with the cards you’ve been dealt.
For me, hearing things like what Mom said to me makes my lack of choice easier too. I know she wouldn’t have chosen for her only child to have to struggle so much, but she can love me anyway, mental illness and all. And it only makes sense for me to do the best with what I’ve got, and also help other people along the way.
Loving myself, OCD and all, means accepting that some things I imagined might never happen, and that’s okay because other wonderful things will take their place. I might be imaginative instead of adventurous, and have three close friends instead of thirty, and neither of those things are problems. I’m inspired by how Mom sees me to try to see things in that way, especially after a week when I’ve come down harshly on myself for experiencing negative thoughts regarding myself and my friends.
After all, in the absence of that fantastical choice, the best I can do is choose to be happy with what I have, knowing that I’ve got what I need to make a different, yet equally meaningful, life.
Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.