Crunch Time

Every second counts, don’t waste your time. With two hours of sleep slowly becoming normal, my mother stepped in and set a firm boundary to get me to sleep. Now, if I’m not in bed by midnight, I will not be allowed to go to school the next day. Some teens wouldn’t really mind this rule, but for my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) it is a nightmare.

I will admit that my lack of sleep was getting to be really dangerous, and something had to be done. However, threatening my ability to go to school seems rather extreme. There is so little time now to get everything done. It feels like I don’t have enough time to work through everything that happened at school before I start scrambling to get all of my homework done.

What I do after school is now becoming more and more important. I question if I really need to eat, if I really need to answer the texts on my phone. If it isn’t vital to school, chances are it will slowly be moved to be done after homework. With the reduced time I realize that I have no clue where my time goes. I start doing homework that I think should only take so long, then I look up once I’m finished and it’s taken at least twice as long. I get that I’m performing homework-related compulsions, but how can I not be aware of all of the time passing?

For now I continue to struggle, wanting nothing more than to get the time back from sleep. However, my body thanks me for giving it some more of the sleep that it desperately needs. While my OCD will most likely find some way to get in the way of my health, I will fight to find a balance amidst the chaos of life.