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How I suffered with OCD for years without realising


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So this may get lengthy but I feel it will help me put things into perspective and to tell myself they are just thoughts. 

I would say it began around the time I was 17 and was triggered by an unwanted sexual advance by a friend. It was around this time that I began to discover my own sexuality and coming to terms with the fact I was gay. The way that he treated me and the confusion of what had happened led me to become a bit of a shut-in and reject any requests to out with friends. This left me feeling alone and questioning "Why didn't I enjoy it?", "I am attracted to him and had a crush on him so why did I feel so bad about it?" and other such mental questions which just seemed to go round and round and never ended. Perhaps one of the worse parts was that he was in my class so I had to interact with him regularly so I was also questioning why he did that but didn't like me or want to do anything else sexual. 

I think a few days after or perhaps even less, I distinctly remember walking to college and having the strongest urge to jump into an oncoming car because I just couldn't take the mental strain of, not only why I was thinking and feeling all these things but, having to see him again. I never really got an answer as to why he did what he did but I did come to the conclusion that he was young and experimental and he wasn't trying to cause harm, just one of those dumb things. Through all this pain, I began not going to classes and missing assignments so college really fell down the drain and gave me this sense that I couldn't really do anything or wasn't smart enough to finish college. All the ruminating was incredibly self-destructive and really set my self-esteem on fire and my family could see what was going on but didn't understand why it was happening as I had no idea how to tell them about what had happened and didn't understand why I should do so. I still hadn't come out to them then so it was another hurdle before I could even discuss the trauma I'd been dealt. 

My 18th birthday had come around and what most 18 y/o's would do at that time I also did. The majority of my friends, however, had birthdays way after mine as mines in September which is rather early. I had the desire to go to a gay bar and experience what it was like to be around more gay people and perhaps get to know some of them. With no one to go with, I decided to go by myself which was a rather big mistake. I'd met a guy at the bar and he seemed nice, was buying me drinks which felt great. I'd not felt that warm feeling of being wanted by another gay guy with the possibility of relationship (I was naive.) After more drinks we decided we'd go somewhere to sleep. We couldn't stay at his parents so I suggested we go to mine.

I was excited to be going home with a guy but was getting pretty tired, he had asked for sex but I told him I'd want to get to know him better plus I had no experience whatsoever. Once we get back to mine, I really just wanted to sleep but he still wanted more. With his promises of getting to know each other better and other words to get me to have sex I'd agreed but was still very hesitant. Once again it was something that I really didn't want. I remember during the act just looking at the door hoping someone would hear us to stop us. The feelings of rejection from before influenced my decision making in that moment and led me to a path of disrespect for myself and once again I was traumatised by a sexual experience.

This leads up to a moment that really confused me and set off my ruminations into overdrive as I really didn't know who to talk about with this. I was sitting in the garden just watching my mother tending to the garden and our two dogs running around and playing when the bigger of the two, Coco, came to me to be fussed and went in-between my legs. This gave me a great deal of arousal which I had no idea how to deal with and created so many questions in my head and just how or why I felt that. Over the course of a 3-4 years I would frequently get disturbing thoughts and feelings which I felt I could never discuss which severely hindered any chance of a close relationship, whether it be a friend or lover. 

When going in the process of college to go to uni I got talking with a guy on tinder and really got on well with him. We'd dated for around 6 months which was great but due to the wall I'd created in my mind any sexual or really intimate situations were hindered and cut short. It was after a long thought sessions over a few weeks that I'd try to tell him about what was going on in my mind and why any sex wasn't happening. The pressure I'd placed upon myself and the years long pressure I'd built up in my mind led to a horrible situation where I felt I was a monster with disturbing and disgusting thoughts. This was all blurted out to him in a tirade of crying and sobbing like a dam had just been destroyed with the chance of a relationship being a small town down the river. It didn't end well. 

Over the next 3/4 of a year I tried to understand what was going on in my mind all the while believing all these thoughts that were going through my head and trying to come to terms with the disturbing person that I was. This led to me trying to tell my friends and roommates that I was attracted to dogs and that I may be a P because of the thoughts that I had. They did not take this well either. I will say that this didn't occur over night and was a steady stream of information over those months. I now know that I was trying to 'confess' and that each bit of information I was 'confessing' was in the hope that it would alleviate the doubts and questions, which it obviously didn't. One of my roommates in particular had a mental disorder which I felt i could relate to at the time, though I didn't know why then. We got along great and I would try to 'confess' to him about certain thoughts and feelings that were going on in my mind. Whilst this is fine it was often the way I went about telling him or wanted to tell him that made things worse. 

I would often not want to talk about it after arranging to meetup and talk. The straw that broke the camels back was when I wanted to talk to him to 'confess' and I'd messaged him that I wanted to talk to him about the thoughts and feelings. This wouldn't be until later however and in that time his own thoughts were going round and had gone to pretty bad places which led him to assume the worse, which is something he warned me about in advance and is related to his mental disorder but I'd thrown out that advice as I felt I'd found the right bit of information to tell him. By the time we got to talking he was incredibly agitated and was quite loud and my other roommate had overheard our conversation about the disturbing thoughts. This then led to my other roommates finding out which had freaked them all out. This led them to plan to call the police on me, though I didn't exactly know this their behaviour was hard to miss when they intentionally left the room when I got back. 

Rather than cause a scene and have the police come to the house I had decided to take things into my own hands and walked to the police station myself. I sat outside and under a bus shelter and called my mother and told her what was going on in my mind and that I'm going to the police to confess. I also did this with my friends, the guy I'd been dating, my brother and my father. After this I walked to the police station and told them that I needed to confess to something horrible. I really felt that I had to go to prison to make an example of myself and to save all dogs around the world from people like me. They felt that I hadn't done anything to warrant an arrest which I remember feeling incredibly disappointed by. I still felt like a martyr, somebody that could save the world with this one realisation that I'd had. What actually was going on was I was in the middle of a massive mental breakdown and no amount of talking to me or convincing me could change my mind on what was going to happen. It was one of the oddest feelings I've ever had and hope to never have it again. The days and weeks afterwards were filled with a lot of alcohol and fast food. I'd gained about a stone and a half in a month, I'd spent around £2500 of my student loan in about 3 weeks. Just complete self-destruction. 

Around 3 months after this mental breakdown my father had died in a car crash due to drunk driving on the motorway. I think he was going through some OCD related issues himself that never got resolved. In the 9 weeks that followed my fathers death I had though long and hard about why I was having such thoughts and feelings and realised that they weren't me and that I desperately needed help. I have since gotten OCD therapy and still struggle to this day but I'm in a decent part of my life. I'm back in college and have started a lower level course to help me learn and take time off if I need to without too much stress. 

There's a bit more but my neck is hurting from a tension headache and can't be bothered to write more.

Thank you for reading my lengthy introduction

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