Having OCD makes life difficult sometimes. When things change in my life, I struggle. The OCD feeling of wrongness gets stronger. Feeling that way gives me panic attacks and it can distort everything in my life. Fear can make life seem like a haunted dark forest that doesn’t have an exit. I was feeling like that today. Knowing that change was coming gave me anxiety. I found myself crying and feeling angry. I felt trapped in my job and in my life. At one point, I even felt my hand shaking because I felt so lost.
I often feel like I just don’t fit in at all with life. The way I see the world isn’t like the way anyone else sees it. I feel really alone when I am faced with that experience. I try to think about the philosophy of the mind. Everything that I sense, all my thoughts, everything I see, smell, touch, hear, and feel could just be a chemical reaction in the brain. This could all be some virtual reality experience or someone’s dream. Whatever reality is there’s only one thing that I can hold onto: that some entity created some type of reality. It is the only thing I can know. For me, I choose to believe that entity is God. I have faith in God and know that whatever happens I can hold onto my belief in God. It is the one thing that no one can change of take away from me.
When the world starts to seem like this horrible, haunted forest with no escape and I start to feel like an outcast, I turn to God not knowing the answers. I just know that if I keep holding on to my belief and I don’t give in to the fear and anger that somehow that OCD wrongness won’t overwhelm me and take control. The last few days, it has been very apparent that I don’t have answers and that I don’t know where my path goes, but I have faith that God has a plan for me. I don’t need answers or to know where my path leads. I just need to believe even though I struggle with that.
Faith isn’t about always having believe without doubt. Faith is about having believe with doubt but believing anyway. Faith is about struggling with life and continuing on the difficult path without reason. It is unreasonable. It is mystical. It can be miraculous.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
