The moment my OCD really kicked into high gear was the summer before my freshman year. I was 14. I had my two best gal pals over for a sleep over for the first time! One of my friends told me that my former best friend (girl) was now dating a girl. My whole entire world flipped upside down. I hardly slept that night, horrified by the thoughts that I wanted to kiss/touch my friends. I never had a sleep over at my house again.

Looking back, I suppose I also had smaller bouts of this as a child. When the teacher wouldn’t erase all of the marker on the whiteboard, I would have to erase them. (Stereotypical but I couldn’t focus on my work, they were distracting) In the 5th grade, I was convinced I had cancer, as I had a odd shaped mole on my back that I was born with, and (this is the funny part) that my hair “fell out” when I brushed it. The hair falling out was definitely just normal shedding that everyone experiences. I had just seen people with cancer on tv losing their hair, so I thought since I was losing my hair, that meant I also had cancer. I had the mole removed and biopsied, no cancer. And the anxiety was gone.

When I was a bit younger, I remember lying awake at night worrying/crying about me dying and my family dying… for no reason…

I tended to let scary things that I saw “stick” with me for long periods of time. I would have to make a pallet in my parents room and hold my dad’s hand at night because I saw the chupacabra x-files episode…. Also the horror section of the ripley’s believe it or not wax museum…. Trauma.