What the outside world calls a ‘disorder’ or a passing trend, I call the architecture of my survival. It is the difference between a flaw and a weapon.
This isn’t a plea for sympathy, it’s a declaration of strength.
Tag Archives: OCD
A Day Inside My Mind..
Inside my brain is a relentless operating system running millions of lines of code just to keep the floor from giving way. No pause button. No safety net. Just code, compulsions, and the heavy machinery of a mind working overtime to hold it all together.
*This is just a glimpse, if I genuinely added every OCD ritual I do daily, this poem would be ten pages long.
You Can’t Understand Me…
Some people are handed a script for how to exist. I had to write my own survival manual in the dark. This is the raw mechanics of living inside a mind that doesn’t know how to rest.
My Family…
Some maps aren’t drawn on paper. They’re etched into the wiring of a child who learned early on that safety is a performance, survival has a cost, and the mind has to shatter just to hold the weight.
OCD Rules…
Living with two disorders that pull in opposite directions is a constant clash. They are polar opposites in every way, yet they meet at the exact same point: dissociation. This poem is about the one that takes the wheel—the absolute ruler, OCD.
The Girl I Should Have Been…
Two parallel lives carved out of the same years—one consumed by the brutal work of survival, resulting in BPD and OCD, the other unfolding in the effortless grace of safety. This is a look at the ghost of a childhood stolen, and the stranger who got to live it instead. In my dreams this girl was me. She got the life I would have killed for once upon a time.
The Ghost In The Glass…
When trauma shuts the system down, survival comes at a heavy cost. Derealisation strips the emotion from my past, turning even my happiest memories into fake, distant echoes. I am left living entirely in a hollow present, reaching for a life that feels like it belongs to someone else. My memories are all there, boxed and stacked. I can look at them but I can’t ever feel them. This is how it all began, with the one memory that stays awfully real.
What You Can’t See…
It always gets me how invisible disabilities and disorders are not believed because they can’t be seen. If people can’t see it then they don’t believe it, and if they don’t believe it, how can they try to understand it?
Dear Me…
My childhood was hard—I’m not going to lie. My OCD began around the age of four, which shows how traumatic those years were. I was reaching for anything to help me survive, and my brain settled on counting, prayers and rules. It brought me through, but those compulsions never let go and remain with me to this day. My BPD didn’t surface until I was around eleven. So this piece is for my OCD.
Part Three: The Fourth Revealed…
I have always called my OCD The Professor—rules, logic, and calculating. My BPD, The Aggressor—intense, raw, and protective. The “me” is The Passenger, dissociated and watching from afar. But as I’ve written my poetry and dug down deep, I’ve realised there was a fourth all along: The Architect. The child who put all of this into motion as she fought to survive, creating who I am today.
Am I Real?…
Dissociation and emotional amnesia make my life feel like a movie playing for an empty room. I wrote this while sitting on the other side of the glass, viewing a life I’m supposed to live but mostly just watch pass me by.
Part Two: The Beginning of The Three…
From childhood trauma and the birth of ritualised protection, through the blur of addiction, erasing the traumatic memories, to their devastating return brought on by motherhood—where fragmented pieces must finally gather to guard the whole.
Part One: The Three; OCD, BPD & Me…
I do not have split personalities but my mind has three distinct forces. There is Me, my OCD-who I call the Professor, and my BPD-who I call the Aggressor. I’d love to say we’ve learned to live in harmony but that’s not how this story goes.
Different…
I joined BPD groups for like minded people but soon realised that although they were so very similar, in other ways they were worlds apart. Also having OCD makes me different. For them triggers and splits pass, for me, my whole life is dictated that way. We share symptoms but where theirs are temporary storms, mine form the entire foundation of how I exist day to day. They have a moment of black or white. I live that way 24/7. We share the same label but not the same reality.
The Blueprint…
You have to respect the one thing that made your survival through an awful childhood possible. That one thing was my clever brain. Having OCD and BPD have made my life hard, I won’t ever say they haven’t, but they also helped me to survive and I have to be grateful for that.
OCD meet BPD…
I’ve lived with OCD for as long as I can remember. When BPD joined forces, the two found a chaotic way to coexist in my brain. They sometimes work together but often don’t. This poem is about how they meet: one setting the fire, and the other desperately trying to clean up the mess.
