i make the rules, part i: OCD ignorance.
My entire life is on the internet. Sure most are, thanks to social networking, but 90% of my most personal life aspects are plastered on a WordPress blog for all to view. There’s a Facebook page where you can be a fan of my dark past in blog form. How many people are so open about their self-injurious vices and their depressing Emo past?
There is, however, one part of my life I am still fairly closed off about. What makes it even more uncomfortable for me is how easily I can talk about everything else (for ONCE) and this is still so difficult to bring up, even with my therapist. This, of course, would be the dreaded mental disorder that – make no mistake about it – I never wanted anything to do with. I will admit: I’m a little ashamed of my OCD.
I need to clear something up, and I apologize if this post seems attacking or overly bitter in anyway. I cannot take the jokes about this disorder any longer.
“Oh my God, I’m like, totes OCD.” Kill me.
I have heard this more times than I ever want to remember. More often than not, it comes from someone who’s a little picky, a little particular, and perhaps a legit perfectionist. “AAH, the line isn’t straight. I’m so OCD, HAHA.” No, you’re not. A perfectionist, maybe, and even that is a little extreme.
If you have OCD, you don’t find anything funny about it. More importantly, you know that you cannot “be OCD.” (You do realize you’re calling yourself “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,” right?) It has been taken down to the level of “ADD,” where apparently everyone has it so long as they’re acting a little hyper. The torture is really toned down by the humor.
Due to becoming completely fed-up with the ignorance of the disorder, I’m going to try something new. I’m going to try to open up a little in hopes of educating. I mean, it’s exactly what I did with my anorexia toward the end of my recovery and I believe – on top of helping who knows how many others – it really helped me pull through and overcome. Maybe this is what I need, because I refuse to let this continue affecting my life in the way that it does. And, even more importantly, I refuse to continue allowing people be ignorant enough to joke about something that has the power to destroy a person in so many painful ways.
E said:
Jan 26, 10 at 12:31 amYou dared to say what goes through my mind. Does the fact that the line you just drew isn’t straight torture you and cause you to feel (however irrationally) that you must fix it before you cause something terrible to happen? Do you have to redraw until it is just right? Do you have to then check that it’s straight? And then do some type of ritual after finishing drawing the line? No? Then you probably don’t have OCD. People don’t joke about having cancer or diabetes – they are physically diagnosable. With the multiple layers and manifestations of mental illness and the fact that explanation often requires injust simplification of the problem, mental illnesses sadly are fodder for humour (which as a coping mechanism to sufferers I’m okay with – comedy show material, ehhh). Heck, I’m so sensitive to it that when I was diagnosed as depressed, I refused to refer to myself as such, fearing that because I was “just sad”, I would belittle as those with true depression. Sorry for the length.