Week 9 – Girlfriends You Can’t Talk To

Oh Chaotic Dust,

Remember that peaceful moment? Waking up beside a girl you were crazy about. The relationship didn’t fall apart after that, but you weren’t in it anymore. You knew, as sure as you’d ever been, that you couldn’t tell her about the awful, twisted images and thoughts that plagued your mind. Her breaking up with you would be the least of it: she’d tell others and then you’d lose your friends, your acquaintances: everyone.

But everything else with her was great, and you couldn’t break up for no reason, so you stayed, continuing with your tactic of doing nothing, praying you’d weather the storm.

A relationship with one person with severe OCD is tricky enough. When the other person doesn’t know, it becomes something else altogether. Six years on, that girl still doesn’t know. Mental illness makes secret-keepers of us all.

You had a lot of fun during those months together. You went on walks and holidays, had picnics and parties. You laughed and hugged and supported each other. But, as ever, there was other stuff going on in your head. You never thought about it from her side – there wasn’t time for that. Time, when you have a mental illness, is for surviving. But what was it like for her? Most people aren’t as good at acting as they think they are. In your moments together, did she wonder why you weren’t fully present? Did she ask your friends if they had noticed anything off about you?

Mental illness isolates. Or, rather, the shame and the stigma of talking about mental illness isolates. But isolation isn’t exile. Mental illness isolation means kissing your girlfriend and smiling as she smiles back at you. It means going for a run with your mate and chatting away. It means sitting, taking notes in a lecture. It means that life on the outside goes on just the same, but inside you’re terrified, ashamed and cursed to silence. It means living in one world externally and another internally.

Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” There’s a certain defiant resolve in that statement; one that all people need. But what lies implicit in those words is, and has been, death to so many: keep going by yourself. That’s what you did, for years and years, and it never helped.

You had a beautiful relationship, but you couldn’t fully submerge yourself in it. You kept going in that relationship by yourself. That wasn’t fair on her. Many people with mental illnesses do it though: they keep their mental health secret for their own sake. Maybe for some, they get treatment, or get better some other way, and the relationship continues with the other partner none the wiser. That didn’t happen for you though, and after an explosive conversation, OCD would dash that particular hope for happiness.

You’ll learn a very important truth after that. Not straight away, but years later you’ll see how different things could have been, that if you’re going through hell just keeping on going isn’t always enough. No, if you’re going through hell then tell someone.