Finding Myself
How a little boy fought OCD, and the indomitable will that led him to victory.
I think, therefore I am.- Rene Descartes
When I was 6, I was hit with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
OCD marked the end of my innocent days, forcing me to face a harsh, unrelenting world a decade before I was ready.
They came in waves, each of them turning my world upside down. I was distressed and in a constant struggle with myself, my identity and my place in the world. It was a maelstrom of my greatest fears- all of which I had to face alone. Armed with only my will, I set out to change my own destiny.
Part 1: Direction
Childhood. The future was bright, the sun shone its benevolent rays upon the world. It was a time when children were out in theme parks, playing catch and reading their first short stories. I had more to worry about.
As kids, we’re taught what’s right and wrong, and my parents couldn’t have done it better. I was just beginning to grasp morality; but the line that divided good and bad remained obscure. My mind was frail, and I didn’t have a will of my own.
Lending someone a pencil is good. Punching someone in the face is bad. What if I accidentally hit someone in the face while reaching for my pencil?
Today, I would apologize and pat the other guy on the shoulder. We might even crack a few jokes over it before walking away, forgetting all about it by the time we get to bed.
Not so for poor 6-year-old me. Rather than accepting something like that as an accident, I had a moral conflict within myself. The thoughts “Why do I keep doing bad things?!” went on again and again in my head. Obsessive thoughts about wrongdoing wouldn’t go away.
As I was told, bad things happen to bad people. They would be punished for their sins.
OCD hinged upon this ethical dilema, and it came down hard. Before long, I was compelled to avoid anything that was the slighest bit immoral. I found myself keeping track of everything, punishing myself mentally whenever I stepped on a flower or let slip a piece of rubbish.
Such minor mistakes are unavoidable in life, and so my days were filled with misery. It HURT more than anything in the world — the fear of commiting the slightest wrongdoing threatened to make me cut myself off from the world.
One day, I approached my parents in the bedroom. Confused and disoriented, I told them with wide tearful eyes that I felt I was doing everything wrong.
“You aren’t doing anything wrong, honey. Look at you, you’re a good boy!”
I didn’t know what to say after that. They just didn’t understand! Perhaps I could’ve spoken more, but I couldn’t bear to continue.
You see, the problem wasn’t because I was becoming bad, but because I was trying to be too good. At the peak of my OCD, I was compelled to pick up every scrap of rubbish on the floor, even if I didn’t have anything to do with it in the first place. If I came across an alley strewn with garbage, it would be the end of me.
Weeks turned into months. The pain slowly began to dull, each session just a little less miserable than before. Still, it took me years to realize that it is our choices that define who we are.
I chose to be the good boy, and it was enough to leave it at that. Plucking flowers and occasionally leaving a piece of plastic on the roadside aren’t severe forms of miscounduct. I began to embrace them as what they are: a normal part of childhood. It’s better to accept the fact that sometimes, even good people have their fair share of accidents and mischief.
Part 2: Perfection
After what seemed like forever, I thought all the pain and struggle had left. After all, teacher always said that the good things we do come back to us. Well, I was the guy in class who answered questions and finished all my homework. I was a good boy. What could possibly go wrong?
It turned out good old OCD wasn’t going to give up. At least not so easily.
Over the course of a few months, I developed an extreme obession over my handwriting. I have no idea how I started, but it was too late when I found myself writing and re-writing the same word.
This compulsion at ‘perfecting’ my handwriting wasn’t simply a love for neat and tidy words. It was different. I’m an extremely practical person, and wasting precious time on handwriting that’s legible anyway wouldn’t even come across my mind, were it not for OCD.
Then, even tiny flaws didn’t escape my notice and it was hell. I erased word after word, just because my “h” looked more like an “n”, the “O” wasn’t round enough… you get it. Sometimes, my letters were perfect but the urge to change them remained. The paper got so worn that little bits of it started coming out.
I still remember that day- one of the worst days I’ve had in my life.
It was a sunny afternoon when I decided to do my homework — a particularly easy worksheet. I had done loads of harder ones and I could finish it in ten minutes. Max.
I realized something was wrong after writing the first few lines. A compulsion for correcting my letters had been going on for at least a year now, but I had managed to keep in control most of the time. Someone could pass by and remark that I was just “highly meticulous”.
Oh boy, that day was different. I found myself urged by an unseen force to correct every damn word. It was super irrational and stupid, but I just had to do it. I don’t know why, but somehow resistance was pointless. I must have written and re-written each letter ten times. Multiply that by the number of words in a page, and you’ll feel my pain. Tears were beginning to stream down my face, staining the paper as I cried.
My parents thought I was just having trouble with my homework; and I felt truly alone in the world. No one understood me, I didn’t know how to search for it online.
All in all, that worksheet took me an hour and ten minutes to complete. I wrote down the starting time and ending time on the upper right corner and handed it in. I didn’t give a shit what grade I recieved for spending 70 minutes for an exercise that should have taken 10 minutes. Guess what my teacher did?
I found out the next week. The worksheet was handed back to me, and there was a “Well Done!” on it. What the heck?
Apparently she decided that I had mistaken the hour when I wrote it, and thought that it took me the expected time: 10 minutes. I never told her about the truth. She would’ve dropped off her chair.
Part 3: Realization
Ahh…the days when everyone starts thinking about sex- but it’s all hush hush and eww eww. Such thoughts are always regarded as gross and taboo, and few people speak openly about it.
That was the problem. I was in need of far more than the tidbits of information I managed to glean. Adolescense is a time of change, and what teenagers really need is guidance to live up to their sexual identity. After all, their peers aren’t much help; they’re too busy figuring out the same thing for themselves.
Yet, teens often don’t get enough advice. I was one of them, too shy to ask for help. Instead, I became a lost soul in the turbulent ocean of transition.
Arousing thoughts and emotions were blooming inside me but I remained reluctant to utter so much as a word regarding it. My friends were the same — anyone who talked about them were labelled as a pervert.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder once again siezed its chance. The more I wanted to avoid these “inappropriate” thoughts, the harder it was. I developed a constant obsession towards such things. My life was plunged into misery for the third time, due to lack of information.
Once again, I viewed myself as immoral and perverted. What else could I assume, when those obsessive thoughts kept on coming?
Part 4: Salvation
I might have lost myself, were it not for a sudden twist of fate.
I came across an article online that we humans were able to control the energy in our body. Think of this energy as a kind of flowing white light, an aura that all of us radiate. Indeed, some people regard it as a kind of “life force”, one that we can project out into the world. There are claims that practitioners can change their body temperature, heal wounds and set things on fire.
I’ve never been a believer of the paranormal, but every child wants to have superpowers, and I’m no exception. Thus, I set out to explore this brand new world.
I found that the first step to achieving something like this is visualization. To channel energy into my hands, I would have to visualize it flowing through my body, and pooling into my palms. This energy could then be compressed into a ball, made to flare up, or blasted to short-circuit the television.
Everything was centered around belief and force of mind- if you projected your energy into the clouds and “willed” them to disperse, they would (or so I was told). I tried that with the greatest amount of “force” I could muster. My eyes were literally drilling into the cloud, and within five minutes it was gone!
Well, I didn’t turn out to be superhuman. The surrounding clouds (ones that I didn’t focus on), dispersed as well. I tried it many times- sometimes it worked, sometimes not. I persisted for two years, but in the end I just gave up trying to “psychic” myself some superpowers.
None of it worked, and to this day I’ve no proof pseudoscience exists. I could be dead wrong — but I’m just here to share my story, and I won’t advocate nor criticize it.
I might have been disappointed, but all this wasn’t in vain. Those two years gave me a heightened sense of willpower, and I became more confident and sure of myself.
It was also through practise that I learned to split my mind into two separate parts. When trying to make clouds pop, the rational side of me knew that it wasn’t going to work. Yet, I didn’t let that hinder me — I forged on with all the willpower I could muster. It didn’t matter that it was my 100th failed attempt, I held a steadfast “belief” that it would work.
This wasn’t a mad chase after fruitless pursuits. Instead, I remained in control of the two halves of my mind, but they could operate independent of each other. I was now able to believe that I could do anything in the world, regardless of the odds stacked up against me. I was free to chase my dreams, with my cool logical mind operating in parallel.
My childhood menace wasn’t immediately banished for good, but the tables were now turned. OCD no longer had a stranglehold — I slowly became aware that sexuality is a part of human nature. Such thoughts aren’t gross; they’re perfectly fine. Similarly, I realized I wasn’t even close to being a bad person.
Obsessions and compulsions continued to tug at my mind, but I now had an unshakable belief that I need not yield in. Most people with OCD realize what they’re doing is irrational, but they can’t control it. For me, OCD could overwhelm my logical mind, but my other half was safe.
It’s been nine long years, and it has been a difficult journey. But Rene Descartes once said, “I think, therefore I am.” I now hold the belief that I’m free to follow my heart, and so I am.
