By Tilly Whyles

OCD is a long-standing gimmick. The term itself is thrown around with oblivious disregard, used aimlessly to describe a love for excessive cleanliness and organisation. It has rapidly become the laughingstock of psychiatry, fallen victim to mindless stereotyping and trivialisation. But the honest, unfiltered truth about OCD cannot be found in a bottle of antibacterial handwash. It can be found in the messy rooms and the red-raw hands, the mood stabilisers and the late-night hospital admissions.

The truth about OCD is ugly and frightening.

Entering my early twenties with OCD felt like drowning in a pool of wasted potential. All I wanted was to peel away the cloak of adolescence and bask unapologetically in new-found adulthood. I was ravenous for a taste of liberation, desperate to embrace the woman I was soon to become.

Instead, I gradually succumbed to an illness that would eventually steal years of my life away. None of the girly coming-of-age magazines could have ever prepared me for the gut-rotting pain that I would eventually come to feel.

The run-up to my twenty-first birthday was marked by a six-month-long breakdown. I couldn’t eat, sleep or breathe without choking on the disgusting, incessant nature of my intrusive thoughts. My hands had started to crack at the knuckles, sore to the touch and bleeding sporadically. The knots in my stomach were bound so tightly that it felt like I’d swallowed a pile of rocks. My airways were clogged from the sobbing and spluttering. I spent my days in bed staring aimlessly into nothingness, eyes glazed over, wondering if I would ever actually make it to twenty-one.

I felt like I was stuck in a surreal purgatory between adolescence and womanhood. I wasn’t a child anymore; I had responsibilities. But as the independence turned into loneliness, I slowly realised that I was falling behind.

Whilst my friends were out soul-searching and exploring their place in the world, I sat alone in a dark room, convincing myself that I had accidentally had sex with a pet or a family member. Had I? The answer was always, obviously, no. But as I succumbed to relentless dysfunction, distinguishing between reality and fiction became increasingly harder. I felt less like a woman and more like a statistic.

Periods were always the most problematic. The slightest change in my hormones would propel me into the darkest crisis situations. My inability to control my emotions during those times led me to many an A&E waiting room; sat amongst the bruised and broken, I often wondered what the point in any of this was.

I wasn’t getting the help that I needed. As a result, my condition was only deteriorating. In those moments, my desire to survive weakened. My reasons for clinging on slipped further and further away from me. I felt like a shell of a human, rotting away in those slimy laminate hospital chairs.

At twenty-three, I was undiagnosed, medicated and wondering where it all went wrong. Time had passed me by, and I felt no different than I had two years prior. I watched all my female friends evolve into beautiful, outspoken and unapologetic symbols of womanhood. They grew into themselves as effortlessly as the seasons changed, all of them stunning portraits of 21st-century femininity.

I couldn’t help but feel like an anomaly among them. I was a ticking time bomb, waiting for the next intrusive thought that would encourage me to pick up a razor blade. Everything seemed so futile; I definitely was not afraid to die.

Being a woman does not make my experience of OCD any more urgent or sensational. I cannot speak for the pain and suffering that other genders are subjected to. My experiences are certainly not unique; they are just a small glimpse into the overbearing world of OCD.

Navigating life with any kind of mental illness is overwhelming and tiresome. OCD is just a small footnote in the long list of debilitating psychiatric disorders. My ambivalent relationship with OCD will never fade; it will always be a part of me like the wind in the tide. But I will not wear blood-soaked dreams forever. There has to be more than this.