OCD’s Intrusive Thoughts: My Unreal Reality

I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a family.

I have to prove to myself that I know this is my reality as a 19-year-old.

I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a family.

I don’t know when it began, when I needed to start proving this to myself. No doubt, it’s a byproduct of the anxiety that’s grown through my teens, and recently exploded.

I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a family.

I want these things. I want to be rich and famous. I believe I will be. I want marriage and a family. I want to realize the dream of the nice house, the verdant lawn, the happy dog. These are things I strive for, and I believe writing can get me there.

I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a family.

But I’m not there yet. Right now I’m these things in my mantra.

I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a family.

Yet I worry that I’ll lose touch with reality, and that I’ll start believing that my dreams are my realities. I know what a lost mind looks like. I have a friend who hears voices and believes he is the reincarnation of Jesus, and that he saved western civilisation in the Gulf War and stockpiled all the Iraqi missiles in his little flat. This is his reality. It’s impenetrable.

I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a family.

So I worry I’m at risk of this happening, although I might’ve already lost touch with reality, and everything I’m imagining now is part of some self-sustaining delusion. It’s like looking in opposing mirrors to see endless reflections. At some point, you lose the ability to discern you’re the one casting them.

I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a family.

My mantra is something I must hold onto, so I say it and there’s temporary relief. With the relief, the anxiety ebbs, and the tide recedes. But then it comes back more insistently.

I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a family.

And, sometimes, it gets so bad that I have to write it over and over and over to prove to myself that I’m literally in touch with my reality.

I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a family.

I’m satisfied when I see the mantra in ink, like I have written my way back into reality, like I’ve irrefutably redefined just who I am, so I scrunch up the paper, thinking I’m done, that I can just bask in relief, but the relief never lasts.

I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a family.

Frustrated, I try to detach. Try to charge through the fear. Try to just be.

…

But it’s wrong not to address it – like I’m validating it because I’m not disputing it. I need to dispute it because the anxiety surges, and the tenuousness of my composure stretches in my head, thins, and then it strains so that I can see it’s going to snap.

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I’m terrified what’s on the other side of this – will I become like my friend? Will I be so lost that I’ll only imagine delusions? That delusions stop being delusions and become something else – they become my reality. What happens to me then?

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Am I institutionalised? Medicated further? Shocked into a stupor?

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Do I lose the ability to pursue the future I want?

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Do I lose even the capacity to return from that place?

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And, the scariest thought, is maybe a tiny element of my cognizance remains, but it’s trapped in some inaccessible niche of my mind, witness to the anarchy but incapable of impacting it, and impotent to return.

…

I’ll say it just once more. Just to prove to myself. I’ll say it once more aloud to prove I know what my reality is.

“I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a family.”

There. Done. I’m relieved. I haven’t lost touch at all. Here I am. I know myself. I haven’t slipped into some gibbering delusion. I don’t need to do anything more. I’ve proved the point once and for all.

I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a family.

But just to be safe …