I read one of the greatest books of all time my freshman year by accident. I say “by accident” because I wasn’t voluntarily trying to look for it. I was just trying to find myself in literature before I had to grow up. Anyways, the book was titled “Turtles All the Way Down” by John Green. I had never felt so understood before as I did while reading that book. Especially by a complete stranger. Aza Holmes is the star of this book — A teenage girl dealing with grief, anxiety, and most importantly — obsessive compulsive disorder.
People often joke about OCD, so it gets watered down dramatically. Society doesn’t realize that it’s so much more than a feeling of slight discomfort from something being out of order. This condition can range from the obsession with arrangement, harmful ideation, germs, timing, or even texture. The best way to explain OCD to those that don’t suffer from it is — a phobia that someone tries to get rid of completely. For me and Aza, it is germs. This would mean wasting an entire can of Lysol, washing our hands fifteen times in less than half an hour, spiraling thoughts, or even complete meltdowns. This mental illness took complete control over Aza’s life and so many other people’s lives. Real people.
I’m not using obsessive compulsive disorder as a way to bash those that are ignorant enough to joke about it or the folks that have to suffer from it. Whether they’re diagnosed or not. I reflect on “Turtles All the Way Down” at least once a week and live with OCD daily, so I thought, ‘why not just yap about it for a few paragraphs?”
Any who, earlier in my blog I mentioned “arrangement, harmful ideation, timing and texture”. I know at least one person reading this has no clue what I meant. Arrangement is the most common form of OCD. Biggest to smallest or vice versa, colors, or numbers being in a specific order, etc. You get the gist of it. Harmful ideation probably threw off a lot of people and maybe even concerned some. What I mean by this is someone being afraid of hurting someone else or themselves. They usually hide sharp objects behind locks, pills or anything else that can be used to do damage. Also, I just wanted to state my opinion that this may be one of the worst forms of this disorder. I am so thankful I don’t struggle with it and for those that do, I hope they can get efficient help.
The timing part of OCD is probably a little confusing to some, so an example would be, “If I don’t do this in time, something really bad will happen”. Spoiler: NOTHING IS EVER GOING TO HAPPEN!!!!!!!!!! Shocker, I know.
The last kind of OCD (that I listed; there’s many more variations) would be touching something that feels “wrong”. Technically it isn’t wrong, but you can’t reason with the mental. This may result in touching whatever it was exactly like before to “undo” the feeling, rubbing something else aggressively or getting agitated. If none of this makes sense to you, then congratulations, you probably don’t have obsessive compulsive disorder! But if it did make sense, I totally understand. I don’t have any words of encouragement or advice for you but keep going. You’ve made it this far and have had a lot of ups in your life, so keep moving forward. And thank you to anybody who’s read this — my first ever blog. I hope you enjoyed it more than you might’ve cringed at it.
Ahhh, girl I loved reading this book!! It was so odd but real ,like you said.
Thank you for bringing attention to the realness of OCD and how people, real people struggle with it every day instead of acting like it’s an overexaggeration.
FINALLLY SOMEONE ELSE HAS READ TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN
I looooveee this book. I don’t personally have OCD but this book helped me understand those who do so much better.
I loved reading through this blog ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡ I share similar thoughts about OCD being watered down to a ‘silly’ or ‘quirky’ thing, but it regards mental conditions as a whole 😭 I feel that many people, especially on social media, romanticize disorders (Most common being OCD, depression, etc) and water it down. It’s much more complex than the idealized image (｡ᵕ ◞ _◟) I’m glad that you’ve found a book that you connect with (ㅅ´ ˘ `)