Nikki Madan writes movingly about her struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
My Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) manifested at what everyone thought was an absurdly young age at the time – thirteen. I was precocious, intelligent and troubled. My parents were at war so much, that when I first learnt English – the language they argued in – I refused to speak for the first six months because I didn’t want to use the angry language. Now that language has become my blessing – writing about the difficulties I experience gives me, at last, at least, release.
OCD has had different effects on me. When I was really young, I tried to starve myself. I wanted to eat myself, to erase myself, to vanish from a world that asked too much. My thoughts would roil in my head, telling me that if only I was skinny then I wouldn’t be such a nerd, laughed at by others, the class clown, but still the person they always turned to in order to help with homework. My parents couldn’t understand where this exhausted, angry and flammable teenager had come from – couldn’t deal with my immense mood swings, the internal grandfather clock that was the storm around which we all danced.
At university I had the blessing of alcohol. I could turn the thoughts off, the endless inner voice that judged and crowed at me. ‘Failure, ugly, impostor.’ Quietened. Then the days after, where my mood would sink at all the stupid things I’d done or said. Not realising that I was the centre of attention because I genuinely was funny and sharp. The only thing about me that I really thought was sharp was my own tongue, turned inwards to cut and slash my fragile self-esteem. I slept and drank my way through my second year, and had to re-take, awake all night buzzing with ideas, then exhausted, unable to face a relentless reality.
As an adult, things did not improve. The voice inside me – disconcertingly my own – told me that if only I didn’t exist, the world would be a better place. I researched suicide, not to know what to do, but to desperately still that voice with the possible side effects of incompletion. The liver damage, the brain fog, the physical disabilities. But the thought was always there. Friends, lovers, parents – none of them could convince me I was good enough. My mind told me to leave anyone I loved, to not bother starting anything because I was bound to fail. But on the outside, I was rising in the world of teaching, encompassing the values of compassion, honesty and self-reflection to the vulnerable teenagers I so desperately wanted to save from my own fate. I was still drinking, but the demands of the job meant it was saved for a Friday night, then the long weekend of shame and darkness.
I finally had a psychologist who reassured me that I really wasn’t insane. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t bad. I wasn’t a failure. I was just struggling. With a monster that was of my crazy, clever, conniving brain’s own creation. First the medication Citalopram, which helped with the depression – the endless fog of darkness that haunted tear-filled nights, hitting myself because I deserved punishment. Then, in order to try to conceive, a move to Sertraline. This was accompanied by weight gain – like a balloon I expanded by 25 kg in six weeks, diet unchanged.
I remember my mother telling me how beautiful I was when I was thin. Asking me if I felt I really needed to take these drugs. Couldn’t I just snap out of it? Pull myself together? The answer was no. I couldn’t. I had tried and tried for years with no success and I needed the extra help the medication gave me.
I saw different therapists, who listened and asked cogent questions. Helped me separate the maelstrom of thoughts from reason, the endless desire and drive for self-destruction – yes, as strong as desire – from the wish to just be. To just exist. To just be okay. That was all I wanted. To be okay. That was good enough. I wanted to be good enough. Not marvellous or exceptional or extraordinary. Just okay.
I stopped the drinking when I felt the uncomfortably brutal comedown of the days that followed, brain stripped of Serotonin, whipped and lashed by the renewed whispers. The susurration of dread, of anxiety, of wanting to disappear. The medication didn’t stop it, but when I didn’t strip my brain with alcohol, it lowered the volume, a blissful turning down of the dial from screeching tornado to the hum of bees outside my window.
Covid has caused an upsurge in my thoughts. I had actually thought that maybe I was kidding myself – maybe I didn’t have OCD, maybe it was all in my mind (hint Nikki, yes it was, OCD really was in my mind) in the years that followed the diagnosis and medication. Now I struggle. The whisper is there – you’re unemployed, you’re never going to get another job, you’ll never be happy again. You’re being punished for wanting to live when you don’t deserve to. So I am back to trying – the yoga, the meditation. I even tried the booze. Surely one night won’t be a bad thing, the escape will make up for the backlash? No. It doesn’t. Two glasses of prosecco and I was crying and sobbing, foetal coiled body in the bed I couldn’t bear to leave. Not able to talk to friends, unable to eat, or sleep or talk. Or, worst of all, to write.
So much as I look at that bottle with longing, I turn away from it. I walk on my own two feet, unsupported by the merry clink of glass that I so desire. I go swimming, counting down backwards from 300 to fill my head. List the things that I love that give my life meaning in my head – books, flowers, music, attraction, and words. Always words. The very thing my body uses against me, I use to tell my story. To tell others, you are not alone. And most importantly, to tell myself, Nikki, you too are not alone. And you are good enough – a messed up, imperfect, confused, sad, beautiful, funny and insightful woman. Yes, I have OCD. But I am not just a diagnosis. I am me – original, creative and a delight.
Nikki Madan
Be the first to comment