The best day of my life was the morning I woke up, having taken medication for my symptoms for the first time the night before.  For the past year, I had awakened and instantly burst into tears upon recognizing I hadn’t died in my sleep.  That morning, I woke up, shut off my alarm clock, and made it all the way downstairs before I realized I didn’t mind being alive.  For the first time, I wondered if things just might get a little better.

I have been on 7 medications in various combinations and doses.  I have contamination fears and cleansing rituals, compulsive checking, intrusive images that appear in front of me, and voices in my head.  Medication doesn’t cure a mental health patient, but it helps clear my head, so I can focus on working to make myself better.  It’s exhausting and terrifying work, but I know someday I’ll leave my house and show myself as me, and not through the lens of a diagnosis.

When I work through therapy, I have a mantra that helps me through it.  I repeat to myself, “I will not die under a diagnosis.”  When I’m finally done living, hopefully to a ripe old age, I want to die having lived at least one day in perfect freedom.  I can’t wait for that day when OCD will be a distant memory, and I know if I keep working, I’ll get there.  But for now, there are exactly 300 words in this text.

‘Kristen’

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