I thought I was pure evil

It’s like a tug of war with your own mind. Half of you is the voice of reason, constantly reassuring yourself that your dark, twisted thoughts are nothing more than a veil over who you truly are. The other half, the winning side, is screaming that you are destined to be the most evil person in history; that your violent, pornographic thoughts represent your true self and that one day you might act upon them.

After developing OCD at 15, my biggest issue was that I hadn’t heard of the true symptoms and effects of OCD. I had no idea what I was experiencing and hadn’t heard of it outside the realms of ‘likes to clean things’. Therefore, I couldn’t put my thought processes down to mental illness and purely thought that I was evil. Like many other sufferers, this led to depression and suicidal thoughts.

I couldn’t bear to be a person who could possibly harm their loved ones, who could hurt someone and perhaps enjoy it. On the flip side, I couldn’t stand to spend every day wondering if certain people would die, whether it would be my fault and completing ritual after ritual in a vain attempt to try and ease these thoughts. I struggled to say goodbye to people without the hammering thought that I would never see them again.

At 20, nearly 21, I have learnt to somewhat cope with my thoughts. Purely through excessively reading up on and researching OCD I have managed to extract the ‘believing’ part from my thought process. Whilst I still suffer, I have learnt that my thoughts and fears are the result of a mental health issue, not my own evil destiny. I think it is important that, moving forward, people become aware of the authentic meaning behind what OCD actually is. That way, less people will go through the torment of not knowing what they are even suffering from.