Opening Up

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/well/mind/how-i-finally-kicked-my-ocd.html

My entire day was an effort to recreate the patterns of the previous one.

So I do the unthinkable. I go nuclear.

I tell everyone everything.

“So wait, what was the shaving-with-no-pants-on one about?” my friend Nate asked.

“So people would like me.”

“I thought that was carrying the broken Garfield watch.”

“No no, that’s what I did so you’d pick up the phone when I called.”

“Oh. Did it work?”

“Did it work? Nate, I think the whole point of this conversation is that I am absolutely ill-equipped to make that assessment.”

In sharing with friends and family the weirdest things about me, I expect humiliation, or at least some solid recoils in horror. Instead, they mull it over, ask a couple of questions, then tell me the weirdest things about themselves.

Over time, I even become a trusted resource for friends newly tackling their own mental health.

I spent a decade lying, secretly rearranging the objects in my bedroom in order to keep friends around. But opening up enough to tell them so brought us closer than ever.

I have not had a single compulsion since.