ocd.
okay. will be talking about this in the singular just to make it easier.
ive had intrusive thoughts my whole life. its horrifying to think only in the last year i finally came to terms with the fact i had ocd. as a kid i would be utterly horrified of being racist, if i looked at someone the wrong way, i was racist, so i tried not to look, but if i dont look, then thats rude, which is racist, which is AAAHH!!! i used to just go around thinking "hm maybe im a little racist... maybe im internally racist... maybe its just in my white blood!" and in 2020 with all the shit happening and i was so mad about the racism in the world yet i still felt racist, it doesnt help, those stupid little comments about white guilt and curing your whiteness (which, they are a bit funny sometimes, when im not in the wrong mood.) . to people with racism-oriented intrusive thoughts like me i was fortunate enough not to fall for the idea entirely, but avoiding it also made me feel bad. i knew inside it took more than white guilt to stop racism, but white action against racism, so white guilt annoyed me, but if i didnt agree with it i mustve been racist.
i would, in great fear, try and find the correct opinions on race so that i would not be racist. i would also have great fears of being politically correct, which i was not that radical as i am now. i would try and have all my friends validate my political opinions at the time and i would be obsessed with politics, and would spend hours of my day researching politics and political ideologies so i could figure out how to be "the best person" or the "right person". i had no clue what was wrong with me, i mightve thought of ocd once or twice, but i decided at the time it was probably just something else, because i thought i wasnt bad enough.
soon after this though, would come the greatest, most terrible obsession that would lead me to figure out what is wrong with me, but it would take me a long time to come to terms with it.
it just struck me, like it came so suddenly, i thought i mustve been faking it, because it was so sudden. for a long time i thought this was my first and only obsession for a long time, and didnt know id had ocd symptoms since i was in elementary school.
it hit me: i was afraid of my voice becoming a different pitch, mainly a higher one, and if it was like, one decibel above 'normal' i would freak out. they were pounding and constant, i could hardly breathe, i could hardly speak, i could hardly eat, and i gained a phobia of a chemical which considering the topic is probably already obvious.
if my voice became different, people would not take me seriously anymore, i deserved to rot because no one likes people who sound different and i would never open my mouth again.
i would get paranoid if the air was slightly colder/hotter "it must be in the air somewhere" and the idea of one bit of it being inside of me was mortifying, i couldnt even see or say or hear the word without feeling like it changed, like the words themselves held its properties. as someone who was also just interested into chemistry in general, i already knew many of its strange and terrifying properties, which made me believe it was evil, all powerful or the worst thing in the entire world.
the only thing that made me feel seen at all was the single wikipedia page. "transformation obssession". but soon i would forget about reading it.
i hated anything that was associated with them, and began to fear those things too. i stopped going to places i liked, i stopped accepting invitations to go anywhere. i was at home more, i felt mean for not wanting to go anywhere, i would always get asked "why why why?" and i wouldnt be able to say why, because i was so humiliated that i was "as stupid and weird as i was".
my ocd and the ways i would avoid contamination turned into my specific phobia, and for the longest time, i had then decided i had just specific phobia. but then i began to wonder why i was so different from all the other people with phobias. everyone would tell me it was maybe a phobia and anxiety together, but i wish, i wish someone just told me to think about my thoughts i had that made me this way in the first place. (which i guess, my transformation ocd was also contamination ocd at times, and magical thinking ocd, too)
i then finally came to the conclusion that i had transformation ocd, years after the obsession came, and it still haunts me, it and its phobias it gave me, i still have to live with them, and ive been trying very hard to get diagnosed, but its hard.
awhile ago, i looked "transformation obsession" on tumblr. nothing. i see all this mad pride, all this ocd pride flags, representation and words for experiences, but yet somehow im left out, and i was upset. but my friend did bring up a good point. if i feel so left out, then i make myself right in! i hope i can bring more attention to transformation ocd and make people realize they arent alone, like i thought i was for the longest time.
whether its a part of yourself, your identity, a person, animal, thing, or anything, you are not defined by your thoughts, you are loved, and you are not alone, you can do this.