In the end all you will have is yourself; you will be alone.  That is to say, the three pounds of meat encased in your skull, the repository of everything that makes you YOU, is all you will have.  In a way, isn’t our whole life just a view of the world from inside a prison of bone?  But that’s beside the point.  What I mean to say is that, whether through death or distance, all your loved ones will eventually leave you.  In the end you can only rely on yourself, and your thoughts are your only comfort.

I am not alone.  I have a constant, unwelcome companion.  This companion is a voice – a voice in my head that is sadly my own.

You see, I suffer from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, which, in our haste to spit out words as quickly as possible, is often just referred to as OCD.  I’ve heard OCD compared to a faulty transmission that gets stuck in gear, or a machine gun with a sticking trigger.  What it means is that my brain often gets stuck on a single unpleasant thought.  I end up thinking this unpleasant thought over and over.  I obsess about it and fear that it’s real, and will perform some nonsensical ritual in the vain hope of relief.  I used to think and do things in groups of fours, convinced that the order and repetition would somehow relieve my anxiety.  I did the whole checking and re-checking thing.  I had a horrible period where I thought something bad would happen my Mom, and that those same thoughts would cause the tragedy I so feared.  I obsessed that perhaps I really did want bad things to happen to those I loved, or that I deserved to be punished for being a horrible person.  I’ve since learned that these thoughts are irrational.  The feelings they cause are not real.  The checking, the constant fear that something awful would happen, has almost completely gone away.

Unfortunately, I’ve found that the awful sputtering voice hasn’t gone away.  It’s just adapted.  As I’ve become comfortable doing more and more normal things, I’ve realized that some of my new frustrations and fears are just good old-fashioned OCD thoughts.  And that’s why I say I’ll never be really alone.

You don’t have any reason to be envious, because my companion isn’t comforting.  My only refuge is sleep, and even then peace isn’t guaranteed.

Buffer