A Blessing in Disguise

I never really know how anything I write is going to turn out when I start writing it. I may have a goal in mind that I wind up sticking to, but there are times when the finished product is nothing like what I expected it to be at the beginning. Nevertheless, while there are some times it comes more easily than others, I do enjoy writing as a form of self-expression.

Growing up hiding my OCD from just about everybody, somewhere along the way I developed a sense that expressing myself was something that I shouldn’t do because people wouldn’t understand. To be fair, I don’t really remember myself ever being the most outgoing person to begin with. Even when I was very young, well before my diagnosis, I was pretty shy. After my diagnosis, though, I withdrew into myself almost completely.

Looking back now, I can’t exactly say that I would have wanted that much more attention drawn to me. I went through a tremendously awkward period, as I suppose most middle schoolers do, and even the little attention I got was probably more than I would have liked. Still, there was always a part of me that wanted to be able to express myself, though not so much in the way that I wanted to be the main focus of a group of people. More so, I wanted to connect with people by letting them in.

The ability to compartmentalize things is truly a skill, and while it comes naturally to some people, this was not the case for me. Many times the emotion and feeling attached to a particular situation can cloud my mindset, which often leads to some degree of social awkwardness on my part. To this day while I’ve gotten better at it, it’s still not something I’d say I’ve really mastered. Imagine what I must’ve been like as a kid.

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