My OCD: Invisible

I know what everyone immediately thinks of when they hear OCD. Everything must be neat, tidy, what have you. It is so, so much more than that. It can come in all kinds of forms, but I’m here to talk about my specific form of OCD.

In all honesty, this is really hard to write about. I know it’s all going to sound ridiculous and nonsensical, but it’s something that needs to be done. Why? I wish I could tell you.

The type of OCD I have is Just Right OCD. You may have heard of it, you may have not, and that’s okay.

No one really picked up on it when I was a kid, and neither did I. I didn’t know it was a disorder, I thought it was just a normal, every day thing. Because of that, it ran rampant, undiagnosed and untreated for too many years.

I asked my boyfriend yesterday, “Do you ever notice that I’m always clicking or grinding my teeth?” He said he never noticed it, and why was I asking?

I always felt like my disorders needed to be visible to everyone in order to be valid, but that’s not the case at all. I’m diagnosed with MDD (major depressive disorder), GAD (generalized anxiety disorder), OCD, ADHD and Unspecified Personality Disorder. Some are more easily identifiable than others, but that’s just how it is sometimes.

To say my mind is an exhausting place is an understatement, but my OCD is really just the cherry on top.

Going back to the teeth clicking, it really is something I do all the time. Quite literally. As I type this I’m very aware that I’m doing it, but I can’t stop it.

I’ll try to explain this as well as I possibly can. If I feel my teeth click on one side of my mouth, I need to click the other side. Then, I need to click both sides twice, and then my whole jaw twice. If I don’t, I just feel wrong, unbalanced, and it has sent me into panic before.

The same applies to hitting or bumping myself. If the side of my head bumps into something, I must bump the other side. Then twice on both sides, and then I can finally rub my temples and clear the slate.

If I get an itch on the side of my nose, I need to scratch the other side. Then I rub both sides with my fingers until I feel the slate is clear and reset again.

This is something that is constantly on my mind, with both my anxiety and ADHD feeding it. The more I feed it, the more it demands to be fed. It grows and grows, with no end in sight. Will I run out of food? I don’t know. I hope I don’t.

I can only crack my back if I twist to one side. If I twist to the other side, nothing happens. Do I still try? Of course. Then I’ll keep twisting until things finally feel evened out.

I can only crack two fingers on my left hand, and no others. Is it hell? Absolutely. But that doesn’t stop me from trying to crack the same two fingers on my right hand. Rinse and repeat.

It is exhausting. I wish this was something I didn’t have to deal with, especially on a daily basis.

A part of me is mad at my parents for not being able to pick up on this (or any of my disorders, really), but really, how could they? Everything is such a small, subtle quirk. Being mad makes no sense. I think I’m allowed to be frustrated, but I can’t help but feel bad. They didn’t know.

I’ve tried to explain it to them before, but I’m honestly not sure if they really believe in that area of mental illness.

My younger sister is autistic and very high functioning. Honestly, most brilliant mind and memory I’ve ever seen on anyone. Although her symptoms are severe and she won’t be able to live on her own, I slightly resent my parents for getting her immediate psychiatric help as soon as it was obvious that there was something going on.

I mask very well. I don’t like it, and I can’t control it sometimes. My OCD screams in my head every minute of every day, and it would be wrong of me to say that my sister doesn’t understand. I’m sure she does, but we have our own different struggles.

I wish someone would notice, even though I know that it’s a lot to ask for. It’s embarrassing whenever I do explain it to people, because how do you make sense of that?

How am I able to make sense of needing to “even out” my teeth clicking and grinding, hitting myself, and itches?

I really, really wish I could explain the reasoning behind it, but I can’t.

That’s the worst part.