Teen OCD

Please hold on.

Posted By: Bethany
Date: Wednesday, 26 September 2007, at 5:20 p.m.

Hi, My name is Bethany and today is my 18th birthday. I have had severe obsessive-compulsive disorder since right around my 14th birthday. I have posted on this site before, because i was so sick i could not go to school and i was severely depressed. i was washing my hands almost 100 times a day, and showering about 3 times. i could barely leave my house for a few months, and i couldn't even touch my family. for a while i jumped around on the furniture because the floor was too dirty. when i had to go with my parents to the ER because my sister got hurt, i hallucinated and thought there was blood all over. i was really sick. it was even so bad that i lysol-ed my cat! (i don't recommend it by the way!) i attended high school the public library in my town, because i could never get myself to go to that school again, it was just too dirty.
on to the point of this message though. i made it through high school, in the library with a tutor. i graduated in january of my senior year with honors, and acceptance to the college i wanted to go to. i am now a freshman in college, living on campus with two roommates and showering in a public shower (with flip-flops of course!) but the point is, YOU CAN HAVE THIS TOO! no matter how bad it seems right now, you can do what i'm doing. i am on medication for the ocd, and i worked really hard in therapy for four years, but i got there! i want you all to know that there is hope for the future, and i am not an extraordinary case. i am just like you, only a few years farther in my treatment. please hold on, no matter how hard it seems, because the light at the end of that tunnel is more worth it than you can ever dream. please, just try. don't ever think it's not worth it, because i'm doing it and i'm here to tell you that it really is. you can have it too, just keep getting treatment and working at it.

you can all do it, if you just hold onto hope.
-bethany