Trap of the Mind

An invisible enemy, striking without warning, knowing every fault and weakness. I fight this enemy everyday, despite knowing that I can never completely win. The thing with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is that the thoughts will always be there, always changing and finding new cracks. The thoughts make a cage and circle me from every side, leaving me at the will of my OCD.

With having restrictions on when I go to sleep and wake up, my OCD is in overdrive. I constantly worry about time and if I will get my homework done. Sometimes my OCD will get in the way because the thoughts about not finishing my homework will cause me to not be able to concentrate, leading to panic and usually some crying.

I get trapped between the limits my mother has set and the ones my OCD imposes, unsure how to proceed. While I know standing up to the OCD is better in the long run, it is so much more terrifying and extreme. Everything becomes black and white, perfect or complete failure.

My OCD traps me with needed to perfect and complete homework each night. As the bedtime creeps closer, my OCD says that my homework isn’t done, and that I will fail my classes if I don’t spend more time on homework. It says that if I’m not perfect then I’m not worthy of life, and that if I’m not able to get perfect grades then I have to kill myself. However, I cannot just stay up because then I won’t be allowed to go to school, ensuring failure, and walking to school anyways would cause harsh repercussions.

My OCD goes even farther, trapping me even more. Even though it says I must die if my grades aren’t perfect, I cannot kill myself because I might not be successful, and I would then miss more school. Once again my OCD has me trapped by the need for perfection. I get stuck in the middle of this elaborate trap and I’m experiencing new levels of panic, making living so overwhelming and awful that in those moments I would give anything to cease existing.

Once the OCD has run its course and taken all of my mental energy, I go to bed (to awful dreams) and wake up to go through it all over again. I know at some point things will get better, or at least so I’m told, and I cling to that hope that maybe tomorrow thing will be just a little better.

I am capable of bearing more than I ever thought possible, I have gone through things worse than I ever could have imagined and I survived. While my OCD will continue to invent new ways to tear me apart, as long as I start to piece myself back together after each break, hope is not lost.