my disorder is not an adjective

Mental illness is defined by the excessive, 

by the oppressive, by a regressive state of regret and self hate. 

my disorder is not an adjective.

OCD is not another way to say 

"I like to keep my room in order"

Pop culture promised me a magic key cure, told me anxiety could make me

somebodies manic depressive pixie dream girl. 

I started considering suicide before I understood the concept of death.

Pop culture sells you my disorder in pretty little boxes, cuts compulsion down to a

caricature, cultivates the idea of

anxiety as the punch line to a joke that I never got.

Nobody told me harm OCD was alive and strong in my family

Nobody bothered to explain I wasn't a freak, I wasn't insane.

I am not a suffering artist, I am not your plot twist, not your punch line, not a way to describe how you

feel on any given day, loving me is not an adventure, please remember, you are only a tourist to the war zone I call home. 

At six I started seeing suicide in every sharp object never told my mother

that when the other kids dreamed about disney land all I daydreamed about was 

dying. 

Never liked being alone because when my mind wasn't occupied I fixated on 

finding ways to bury myself alive.

My third grade teacher introduced me to the idea that its whats on the inside that counts but

I know that on the inside I am bad, see myself in the sunken eyes of the homeless and my mother says

don't look at them but I see crazy every time I look in the mirror.

I avoid horror movies, because to me, it always seemed like I would be the villian. 

Spent years obsessed over the best way to prevent myself from making it to 13, because 13 is a bad number

and I am a bad person, with bad thoughts, and a bad brain, and a bad body, and all I ever do is get worse.

My brain is a convulsion of compulsion, says "if you don't move the stapler

You'll staple your hand,"

says, "staple your hand", says,

"Do it. Do it now."

says "bring the knife down on your fingers" says 

 says "push them" says

 

"end it."

OCD is not synonymous with cleanliness, because all I ever felt was

dirty.

The kind of dirt I knew no one could love me for if they knew, so, 

silence becomes golden, and 

they tell me I seem so

mature and put together, 

and I smile and nod and 

try my best to remember to feed myself.

We live in a culture that likes to call itself crazy but doesn't want to

hear any answer other than "fine" when they ask you how you're doing. 

I am fourteen and I am naked in the bathroom with a knife

and my

brain says, 

"dissect yourself" 

says, 

"Your chest is filled with bugs and you gotta get them out" 

says

"Your skin is dirty and you gotta get it off,"

says anything to turn obsession into compulsion.

I breath deep and go back to bed and keep quiet.

My dad asks me how I slept and I say

"fine.

This disorder makes me a liar and I'm getting tired of

lying by omission so here is the closest I can come to 

confession.

I am not your plot twist, your damsel in distress, your description in your tumblr, your

facebook post about kitchenware, your charity case, or your suffering artist. 

I am just a girl with a disorder. 

I am just a girl with

an ache in her chest and a sense of emptiness but I'm

trying my best.

I'm just a girl sick of being somebody elses adjective. 

 

This poem is about: 
Me

Comments

aom

Thank you for writing this. I've searched for a long long time, but I've never found anything that describes my brain and processes as well as this does.  It perfectly describes my experience, now I know that I'm not alone in this.

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