"It gets better"

I'll be the first to admit, and not in a self-defeated way, that I am difficult to be in a relationship with.

Now, this is not the first thing I add in my Tinder bio (shoutout to Hinge, that's how my partner of two years and I met) but I do notify romantic interests about my mental health pretty early on.

I'm not trying to stigmatize obsessive-compulsive disorder more than it already is, but I suffer from a subtype of obsessions; relationships. It is fair to say, that if I chose to be single for the rest of my life, my OCD might go away (wishful thinking). It would surely manifest into fixating on something else. When I was a child, it was abandonment. Now, I worry about my partner's infidelity, obsess over her past partners, stress about what she thinks of me, and when every serious conversation begins, I fear the entire courtship is coming to an end.

Experiencing these triggers and intrusive thoughts while in past relationships lead me to believe I was the "crazy jealous type" and that I had a problem. To be fair, I did not express the pain these thoughts caused me in healthy ways. I often accused partners of cheating, wanting to cheat, not loving me, thinking badly of me, etc. I was always waiting for the shoe to drop and no one had the insight to understand that this wasn't a quirk but a disorder.

I was diagnosed with OCD after a few misdiagnoses from psychiatrists who refused to listen. I have finally found what makes the most sense. I'm not huge on labeling, from mental health and restorative justice perspective, but I will say that relief washed over me when I was able to put a name to what was causing me so much distress.

I won't lie. Having OCD sucks, at least that's where I am in relation to my identity in my disorder.

But what I've noticed is that I cannot separate myself from this strange, disordered way my brain works. It makes me, me! As much as I hate to admit it (and I do).

I've had to walk out of party games with the closest of friends, as playing Never Have I Ever with my partner became too much, as details of her past with others may come about. I have walked out of movie theaters during scenes where there is infidelity, crying once I get to the car, often in a full-blown panic attack. I vomit when I get too anxious, but that's a whole other thing.

To relieve the sweaty palms and racing heartbeat that I may find myself having on a daily basis, I have started taking medication. When I lay in bed with my thoughts rushing through my head or the compulsive need to pull at the hair that makes up my eyebrows, I pray for something, anything, to take away the pain and discomfort I feel on a daily basis.

But now that I hold my med script in my hands, I find myself torn.

Why is it so scary to get better?

I find myself terrified of being without my thoughts just as much as I feel the pain of sitting with them. As much as I hate my disorder, I am terrified of how to identify with myself without its symptoms.

It feels silly and hard to understand. I feel selfish. Who doesn't want to get better? Is there something wrong with me? Have I been faking my diagnosis all along?

I am afraid of not being me anymore.

Because in some messed up way, the thoughts that twist the knife in my wounds are an integral part of me.

I am afraid to get better.

It's been less than a month, I'm on a new medication that has received some raving reviews:

"This medication completely erased my compulsions and thoughts"

"I don't feel like I want to give up anymore, I no longer struggle every day"

These sound uplifting and optimistic. Trust me, they were beacons of hope when I first read them. But as I go to take this tiny blue pill every night I wonder if I'm destroying a part of me that is supposed to be there. Will my girlfriend still love me if my symptoms suddenly disappear? What if she loves me more when my compulsions lessen? What if I have to stop taking the meds for reasons unknown and my OCD becomes worse than it ever was?

I attended therapy to talk about my apprehension to take the medication - or, as my therapist called it, my reluctance and fear to heal.

When I took a deep dive into why I might feel that way, I realized that a big part of it had to do with the vulnerability of trusting this substance to aid in subsiding some of my discomforts and I took a lot of pride in wanting to do that on my own.

At this point in my life, being unmedicated is unreasonable. But I have learned a lot about being afraid to get better and it's not that I've realized I don't want to get better at all.

It's that I discovered that healing is something I want to be proud of. I want to say "I did this on my own". Taking a pill doesn't negate from that stubborn goal I have set in my mind. If anything, it's adding to it.

So cheers to everyone that finds it terrifying, when faced with the option to turn things around. I've found that it can be scarier than staying where you're at.