My mind started racing a billion and one thoughts per second, my heart was about to rip out of my skin, and my breathing was becoming more shallow and rigid. It was happening again. It was a sensation that I related to way too often than need be. I felt the tears as they trailed down my cheek. Someone used my hairbrush, my own hairbrush. An object that I personally use, just me, and now it was infested with someone else’s germs.

I wash my hands all the time. I barely share drinks unless I am very close to the person. I couldn’t share clothes and I went through hand sanitizer like some girls go through makeup. That wasn’t the end of it. Not only did my obsession with germs flourish but so did my obsession with numbers.

1…3…7…9… Volume is set to 13, the AC is set to level 3, I walk in 3 foot measurements, and I set 7 alarms at odd time intervals in the mornings. I needed to sit in the third seat of the 1^st row and the 3^rd column. I would need computer numbers ending in an odd number; and when I pumped gas, the total has to be $9.99 or $11.11.

Everything I do is revolved around this train of thought. I haven’t told anyone about the way I think. My friends knew about the volumes and the generic idea of it, but no one has known how bad it has gotten. My obsession, this compulsion was slowly spiraling into a chaotic nightmare. The older I have gotten, the more pronounced it has become.

At first, I didn’t think anything of my obsessions with germs and odd numbers. I thought that everyone had this train of thought. It wasn’t until I started having these panics and worries that I noticed that something incredibly odd was going through my mind. I hid it from my friends, my coworkers, and family. What would they think if they saw how obsessed I was, how compulsive it can feel; especially over things so irrational.

I tried to stop. I tried to get over these obsessions. I tried sitting in the 2^nd row. I tried buying gas with the total resulting as $10.00. I tried sharing my drink. I tried as hard as I could to get over these thoughts but I couldn’t. The more I tried, the more I felt I was suffocating. I will admit, I did get a little better. I can now share drinks with close friends, but I still have that fear of germs infesting me.

These thoughts control me every day. They consume everything I do. I can’t walk in patterns of 4, I can’t step on cracks and the thought of waking up on an even number unsettles me. I still use hand sanitizer more than a normal person should use and I scrub my hands more than some people do in a year. What I don’t understand is why people joke around about this.

OCD is an internal struggle every day. It is the struggle to live as comfortable as possible with the knowledge that I could go into complete hysteria within seconds because of the simplest thing. It is the struggle to hide what everyone might think is weird. It is the battle between the knowledge that I know my thoughts are irrational and the fact that I will go into hysteria if someone even coughs in the same direction as me.

I don’t see the humor in the shirts that say Obsessive Christmas Disorder, I don’t see the light heartedness when people joke around about ‘probably’ having OCD. I don’t see how people can take this so light, how they brush it off like it was something you can just “get over.”

How can you tell someone who is in the corner, dry-heaving, trying to slow their breath, crying, that their issues don’t matter? The feeling of an anxiety attack because of these obsessive and compulsive thoughts are heartbreaking, intense (sometimes too intense), and can destroy you. So, next time you feel like joking about OCD, or telling someone that this disorder isn’t real… Tell me that when I am in the midst of a breakdown because the volume is set at 8, or when someone uses my hairbrush.

These obsessions are not controllable. They are real and this mental disorder exists. So, please, think before you make that joke. Think before you tell someone that they are stupid for something they need to do, because sometimes they just can’t control what they do. OCD matters. It can be hidden, it can be subtle, but OCD will always be there and it will influence how I live.