Here is the story of my path to recovery.
A rainy Wednesday. She drove... I watched the drops slide down the window.
This was the day. The day I would find out the name of the monster that was nesting in my head.
I was diagnosed that day. By a young psychiatrist, who recently started her practice in an office near my home. This was the first time i would be getting an officially name for what I had.
She asked me a few questions and asked me to remember three words; Ball, Chain, Lamp.
Ball. Chain. Lamp.
How do you do in school?
Ball... Chain...
What is life like at home?
Ball.... Cha-..
Please repeat back to me the words I asked you to memorize.
Bat...
I couldn't remember. My condition had never been put on the spot like that... faced with such bold confrontation.
I laughed nervously as I tried to remember the words, my breathing getting faster and shorter, the adrenaline filing from my belly button to the tip of my nose.
I was in full on panic mode.
From three words I was on the verge of collapsing.
Collapsing in the small, peaceful office that had a dark grey dharma statue, flowing slowly with water.
Collapsing on a rainy Wednesday afternoon in the middle of March.
She noticed the fidgeting of my hands, the twitching of my legs.
She saw my eyes move rapidly, and followed my sight to the patterns in the couch cushions.
It's okay.
I felt tears fill one of my eyes. Only one.
It is Ball, Chain, Lamp.
Another Chance! Another Chance!
I repeated the words like a seance in my head. Over and over and over and over.
Over until the three morphed into one word. ballchainlamp
don't you dare forget. Don't.
Repeat the words back to me.
BALLCHAINLAMPBALLCHAINLAMPBALLCHAINLAMPBALLCHAINLAMPBALLCHAINLAMP
I said it so loud and with so much force she looked up at me.
There were beads of sweat going down the fide of my forehead. I don't even sweat when I exercise.
She wrote down some things on some paper in a pen color I don't remember.
I looked down and grabbed my lip with my teeth. Bit until it bled, I did.
After what seemed like years, she looked up once more and I turned my head like I had heard a gunshot.
Would you please call your mother in here please?
I tried to read her face. Was it bad?
Okay.
....
My mother sat on the couch next to my chair.
We both were bonded by our panic. Our fear. What was wrong with me.
Your daughter has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
The words I had heard. Heard in my own head. Now they were coming from someone else's mouth.
I will prescribe Prozac as a daily med. It should help.
should.
should.
might.
should.
Let's remember again. Remember with the part of our brains that does that.
Remember? Do you remember? Do YOU remember?
This was a moment for me that was a mess. Seemingly, everything was in order, not a folder out of place. Not a cabinet un-labeled.
This whole day was me veering off the path and trying to find my way back with a compass pointed in the wrong direction. I could't see which way was North.
should. that word was inked in front of my pupils; it never left my sight.
Trying to deal with the feelings of a label are trying to deal with your favorite author changing the name of her entire series, years after it was published. Harry Potter to British Wizards, for example.
A name I was used to.
It wasn't the OCD.
It wasn't the actual diagnosis.
it wasn't the medication.
It was the label. A label that painted my condition a certain color.
A color I wasn't used to. A brightness my eyes were not adjusted to.
The name. A combination of letters and sounds that let me say and say over again what it was.
O. C. D.
Three letters. Letters that all looked alike, and letters you learn in the first half of preschool.
What sort of condition do you have?
O. C. D.
Three letters that I repeated over and over for months to come. Three letters I used because i couldn't bring myself to say the real name. It was like Beetle Juice. Or Voldemort. Or something.
It had a name.
I didn't know it before, but now it had a name, and it was demanding I call it just that.
it had a name. A title. A breed.
I let the words sink deeper and deeper into my tan skin until they dyed me a dark grey.
Until the three letters were plastered over every inch of my body, and were written in every language for anyone to see.
I was a billboard. An ad for a brand-name.
It began to define me. It began to be a synonym for my name.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
You say it over and over, not seeing the irony. Never seeing the irony.
My fingers... my hair... the color of that chair... they were all wrong.
They didn't fit into the pill box I had in my head. My teeth. My tastebuds.
What was it called on Monday?
Tuesday? How about Sunday? Even Sunday?!
There is no weekend for OCD. No holidays, and no vacations.
Not even a coffee break. Not even time to stretch.
... As time passed.
As colors moved by like the cars on the highway,
As my hair grew and my waist thinned,
i learned the way.
I found the way to a new person, a person I had never met before.
Here I was. It was as if I was meeting myself for the first time.
I shook hands with this version of myself, her warm fingers wrapping around mine.
She glowed with a happiness I had never known, a light I had always avoided.
I wrapped myself in her arms, I wrapped my arms around her.
I felt my hands become my hands, and my eyes became one.
I no longer stood parallel. I was.
I was who I had wished to be, who I could have always been.
I was with me, I was with me.
Now I had a hand free to hold, and eyes free to adore them.
Now I had a heart, not weighed down by hot lead, by hot metal.
I finally passed through the mirror and became the sun, and the moon, and the stars.
I found my light, but I also found the dark.
The water rushed through me while the fire burned bright,
Bright light rushed through me, while the dark stayed light.
I found her. I found her.
We found each other, each one and the same.
I am thankful for my recovery, my rediscovery of the happiness I once lost.
Stuck in a chasm, climb out of the chasm, spit in the darkness you once inhabited, walk.
Walk. Walk.
I love me. I love me.
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