It happened in 2007, which is a shame, because in all other respects that was a pretty good year. I'd just moved in with my boyfriend, we were in this large but spider-filled house off Narborough Road. My dad called me up one day and sounded very upset. I freaked out. No-one likes to hear their parents upset. Turned out one of my schoolfriends, whose parents knew my parents, had hung herself, commited suicide, was dead. I'd known people who'd died before- my grandad died when I was very young, a classmate died of leukemia - but I'd never known anyone to kill themselves. That was probably where it started, although I don't know why.



I mean, it had started before as well. When I was at school, even at high school, I did things to make sure me and my brothers survived the day. Stupid things like standing by the cafeteria, smelling the gorgeous smell of hot chocolate cookies- and not buying one, even though I loved them. This is obsessive-complusive disorder, by the way. Mine seemed to be mostly about denying myself things I wanted.



Anyway, throughout the closing months of 2007 I got steadily worse. Have you ever heard of Howard Hughes, poster boy for really serious OCD? He used to hoard his urine in jars. I didn't do that, but I did hoard my hair. If any of it fell out I would keep it on the side and not throw it out. Scary, isn't it? Sort of. D'ya want to hear my very lowest points? One of them was reaching about on the floor of a public bathroom for a hair that floated down from my head, fearing that if I didn't find it and take it home to hoard awful things would happen. The other one was when my classmates opened my pencilcase and found hair in there. (Hey, I had to keep it somewhere if I wasn't at home). Terrible, embarassing stuff.



It was not a fun time and most of it was spent crying. It was literally a total mental breakdown, or it felt like it, and I was too afraid to do anything except cry and sleep and sometimes eat, because if I strayed from my misery just for a second my family might die, I was the only reason they were safe, my rituals of not doing anything (sometimes spending long periods not even speaking) were saving them from the world's bad things. I am astonished I didn't get sectioned, actually. If my boyfriend had been less awesome that might have happened.



I would have conversations with people and come away thinking they might be the devil trying to tempt me into giving up my rituals. (This despite having no religious beliefs.) I would panic if I ate food out of order or trod on a drain or slept wrong or drank wrong or coughed wrong. I once spent an entire Wednesday morning thinking my cat might be a demon. And so on.

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It was a disorder, all right. My mind felt like the most disordered thing in the world, it would scream at me and call me names whenever I even thought about giving it all up and trying to actually live. Because how could I when it was my family, my loved ones, in terrible danger? Or so I thought. After a very very long while, after going home for Christmas in a mess and seeing that they were all okay, I started to wonder if maybe they weren't. And then there would be other long stretches of fear. And then everyone would still be okay. And so on.

I started improving eventually. I have a wonderful fiance (the previously mentioned boyfriend) who stood by me no matter what, and I went to therapy and eventually to CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and when 2010 drew to a close I felt almost normal again. Almost. I still have work to do.