Sabira Solanki
“Oh, me too, a little bit, cause I really can’t live without excessively organizing my stationaries… haha “. That’s the response Eric got from almost everyone every time he told them he had OCD. “But that’s not it-“, he whispered, but was it really worth the effort at this point?
When he was twelve, he was diagnosed, after quite a lot of trouble, with this disorder that not many people understood. Some even said, like his one aunt with that purposely shrill voice, that it wasn’t even a clinically diagnosed illness, “All of this for a kid faking some annoying behavior to get out of school”, she said to his mom, who couldn’t reply anything back, and he felt it deep in his heart.
He felt his breath getting uneasy, must be the anxiety, as he remembered his doctor saying. Another voice reached the half closed door he was standing behind, “Come on Lara, it must be difficult enough for this poor lady to raise a kid with such a… how do I say this? Weird thing… let her forget that kid for a while and enjoy herself. Here, have this”.
Wow, so all this while he was a burden… the guilt rose to his throat like bile, except it hurt so much more, and there was nothing he could do..
School was difficult to catch up with, even though he was a good student. And his classmates, god some people they were. His weird thoughts made him want to punch them, and that made him not trust his mind even more.
Holidays were difficult too. His obsessions and compulsions made his days seem less than 24 hours, he couldn’t be consistent with meetings and schedules, catching up was hard. But there was something even more hard. More than this intrusive thoughts, more than the voices and unbendable rituals that restricted his life.
It was the indifference of other people towards his problems. He liked organizing, and apparently people thought it was okay to call him a “girl” for being clean. Where in the world was it written that boys had to be unorganized and careless??!
But more though, it was other people naming him down just to his illness. ” Oh the guy with OCD, look at him”, followed by snickers and whispers, hurt him. They never labelled him with his interests, always his flaws.
Is it really okay? Labelling people with what disorders they have? Through a lot of troubles, Eric tried to find himself. Some days were high, others were low, but his motto, to himself and to every other struggling soul out there was, “You’re more than your illness.”
