this is about me, behind the photos and limited words
I am Alice and I suffer with OCD
the word OCD is often thrown about without any real understanding of what it actually is, and does, I am not a continual handwasher, or need things to be really neat. yes some things I own have their place, but they're not all in straight lines. OCD has a big spectrum, and with me it affects absolutely everything I do. every movement and thought is dictated by OCD thoughts scaring me into only doing things at certain times, in certain ways. from the little motion of moving my hand to actual activities, it is really debilitating and really difficult to explain.
writing things is really difficult, every word of this has taken a lot of effort to write and a lot of the time, I actually use the speech part of my laptop to write most things as touching the speech button is slightly easier than touching each single letter, where I am told by my head I have to thinking certain thoughts before touching anything, that takes a long time and even more worry.
it takes me hours to do every day tasks, so when it comes to things like posting a photo online, it takes ages. from walking into a room and picking up my camera and then sitting in a certain place to upload a photo. then editing the photo at certain times of day, clicking buttons back and forth between worrying thoughts, and only using certain bits of an editor. to standing in a certain place at a certain time of day and thinking certain thoughts before actually being able to post the photo, and this is just a posting part, not the actual preparation of and taking the photo in the first place.
I get scared to use certain words, and worry about the order of words. so when communicating, especially online, whether it is commenting on someone's photo, or captioning my own photo, it is very difficult, captions and comments are not very long and a bit disjointed, and my actual personality does not come across.
my actual real personality, aside from my mental illness, is an OCD free thoughtful, playful child like person. and this does not even really come across, OCD takes each moment of my life and fills it with fear, a happy emotion is shut down through worry and my personality is suppressed
basically most the time my OCD head tells me that every decision I make whether it's when I blink, to posting a photo is a death or life decision.
I wrote this to myself a while ago and have to remember it;
there is that smile, that real smile,
the one that emerges with force and pushes past the ocd rules and for a second appears,
until the ocd quickly packs it away again,
the ocd says that smiles are like a flag for vulnerability,
but really it is the smiles that are made vulnerable by ocd,
and by listening to ocd my smiley life is kept locked up
so let that smile out
keep blossoming BEARS
and keep living
Alice
OCD is not all that I am and sometimes talking about it weirds me out and blossoming bears also kind of represents ‘me’ away from OCD, the real me