No my house is not immaculate, sometimes it’s the opposite.

I don’t care if everything is lined up on my desk neatly or that there is no lint on my carpet.

OCD isn’t loving everything to be “just so”.

Too many people joke flippantly, “you know me, I’m just OCD”. No you aren’t.

Having OCD sucks hours of productivity away from your day because you can’t stop researching meningitis cause your neck feels sore.

Having OCD sucks joy out of your life cause you are obsessively worrying about whether or not you could do another person serious harm when you could just be relaxing on vacation with your family.

There are many OCD triggers and common obsessions and I think I’ve had most of them. None of mine have to do with obsessively washing my hands though.

Instead, I can hide my OCD pretty well. I mostly ruminate and do compulsions inside my head like reassuring myself, or praying or saying a certain phrase over and over.

Not knowing I had OCD until I was an adult, looking back I see it. How I kept walking up the stairs to my house over and over because it just didn’t feel right until I did it a certain way. Being horrified that I had committed the unforgivable sin of blasphemy. Needing to feel absolutely certain about everything. Worrying that I was going to ax my parents in the middle of the night. Obsessing over whether I closed the garage door or turned off the stove.

This is OCD and this is what no one talks about because if you don’t understand this disorder, you’d think we are crazy. But living with OCD is a burden and sometimes I feel trapped in my own head. I think I could probably be a great investigator because I can research like no one’s business. Sometimes that’s a beneficial thing, but a lot of times it’s also a waste of time and one of my compulsions that feels helpful but mostly isn’t.

So I guess I want to say, if you actually struggle with OCD, I see you. I know how hard it is to carry it around your whole life. You aren’t alone.