Her name is Sam, short for Samantha; you may not tell by looking at her, but she has a mental condition called obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). OCD affects more than 2 million Americans; its symptoms include unwanted recurrent thoughts that compel the sufferer to do things repetitively. For example, some patients may feel the need to clean their spaces many times a day, while others find themselves obsessively arranging things in a particular manner. OCD is a debilitating mental condition, but you have likely heard it from people not suffering from the disorder. Strange as it seems, it has become common for people who are not diagnosed with the disorder to claim they have it to appear quirky.
Samantha was diagnosed with OCD after her scoliosis surgery immediately after she had moved to NYC. She had managed the situation rather well with help from a therapist and a little dancing. Studies have shown that exercises such as aerobics do help in abating OCD symptoms. The scientific rationale is that the activities help reduce depression and anxiety, which are some of the psychological symptoms of the condition. Unfortunately, this period of respite was not to last, as the condition reappeared after she went to college, which was six hours away from her family. She had hoped to enjoy her time in college without a debilitating condition, but her luck had run out.
Sam had met her roommate, Jamie, on an Ithaca Facebook page, and the two had managed to tolerate each other well. Jamie was not a consistent talker and would drive Sam to the brink with her quiet spells. Sam was the exact opposite of Jamie, open and outgoing with a knack for oversharing. She would wake up one day to find Jamie seemingly stressed and on edge. She asked her what the problem was, but Jamie replied that she was okay. When Jamie went to dinner, she would come back to find her box of Oreos gone- worst feeling ever- and she had to confront her roommate about it, who proceeded to have a complete meltdown. She confessed to having eaten the Oreos and that she also suffered from an eating disorder that compels her to overeat when stressed. Sam was not angry about the cookies; she was preoccupied with the fact that this was the first time they had a real connection. Sam opened up about her OCD, and it all seemed to make sense to Jamie how she was a bit too tidy.
The event with her roommate made Sam reminisce about her time upstate studying journalism in a previous college. During this period, she had managed to take control of her condition, thanks to a competent therapist she had found at the wellness center. Her life was indeed a rollercoaster; college life to her was the complete opposite of the rosy portrayal in YouTube channels. During her time in the upstate college, she consulted a second therapist who had helped her immensely transform her attitude about life. Despite this being her best therapist, she was dismissed from the college and had to transfer to her current college, where against all odds, she had become a student senator with honors.
Some say lightning does not strike the same twice but have they met Samantha? She was settling in college with a crushing mental health condition. Away from home, adapting to a new life with a demanding schedule, college really is the worst place to have OCD, but she was trying, moving from one therapist to another. Her new college was challenging; it was not easy getting new therapists, and once you get a new one, you have to give the relationship time to grow; therapists are people, you know, you have to warm up to each other. It was practically impossible to reconnect with old therapists. She wished she could reconnect with the second one from her previous college, but it was a tall order even for someone with OCD.
Samantha has always loved Christmas; the snow, the presents, spending time with family, and incidentally, the red color, which is her favorite. The Christmas of 2019 was particularly special as her OCD was acting up, and she loved a little break from college life. Throughout Christmas, the news seemed to talk about a mysterious new “pneumonia” emerging in China that had killed several people, but she had shrugged it off as “too far to care,” and boy was she in for a surprise. After the Christmas holidays, she went back to school and got preoccupied with routine college stuff that two months went by unnoticed. By this time, strange pneumonia from China had become quite a phenomenon to be ignored, and the US government was starting to act by banning flights from Wuhan; the new disease had been named COVID-19.
A cruel convergence of events had happened that threatened to upend Samantha’s life. By February 2020, COVID-19 was no longer a joke; the CDC issued recommendations for people to social distance and, among other things, wash hands constantly- as if she was not doing enough of that already. By March, lockdowns were all around the world. Learning institutions had adopted online schooling as lockdowns had disrupted everything. Samantha had to go live with her family as her school had closed too. Living with her family was always a safe environment that abated her condition, but with the raging pandemic, she found herself washing her hands every 5 minutes and taking four baths in a day. One cannot blame her, really; she was trying to protect her loved ones; her dad, who was nearly 60, was a little overweight, which put him in the risky group.
Learning online was not easy; spending all day on Zoom classes seemed to exacerbate her condition, and the plain user interface was not helping. There were few options to escape it all; TV was like election night with statistics and numbers of the dead, the infected, the markets collapsing; it was doomsday. One evening after dinner, she could not sleep and could not read either; she walked downstairs to find her brother watching a movie in the living room and decided to join. To her surprise, he was watching Contagion, a film whose plot is eerily similar to the unfolding of the COVID pandemic. She realized people have different ways of coping with issues; she chuckled and went back to her bedroom to try and dance. Nothing seemed to work; she couldn’t dance, had no antidepressants, and could not get a therapist. Somehow, despite the sky seeming like it was falling, she soldiered on.
Samantha’s college senate held a meeting one day in what would become a life-saving moment for her. Other students confessed about not feeling mentally okay with all that was happening due to the pandemic. She grabbed this opportunity to open up about her condition to the other students. She said, “It’s okay not to feel okay, and we should let everyone on our campus know that.’’ She then contacted the Wellness Center in her school and worked with them to create an awareness program for anyone seeking reassurance, safety, and care. The program would turn out to be a huge success, with the wellness center teeming with people of all backgrounds and creeds. The center had become a refuge for people overwhelmed by the pandemic.
A year passed into the pandemic, and Samantha’s program continued to be a sensation. OCD had been a burden for her since that ill-fated scoliosis surgery. For a long time, she had believed the condition to be a monster that she could never escape. While that may have been true since there is really no cure for OCD, she was able to embrace her monster. She may not have desired for the condition to keep coming back, but every time it came back, it left her stronger than before. She had not only saved herself, but by stepping up to share her story, she had made an enormous impression and helped others like her. Samantha’s story is a remarkable tale of triumph; not many people go through the proverbial “gold through fire.” She remembered her more challenging times and decided to call Jamie, who had become a friend now. Jamie gushed about how the wellness center had helped her through counseling. They then laughed about the Oreos situation that had by now become buried deep in memory.
Works Cited
Hirschtritt, Matthew E., et al. “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Advances in Diagnosis and Treatment.” JAMA, vol. 317, no. 13, 2017, p. 1358. DOI.org (Crossref), Web.
Kwok, See, et al. “Obesity: A Critical Risk Factor in the COVID ‐19 Pandemic.” Clinical Obesity, vol. 10, no. 6, 2020. DOI.org (Crossref), Web.
Lio, Chon Fu, et al. “Effectiveness of Personal Protective Health Behaviour against COVID-19.” BMC Public Health, vol. 21, no. 1, 2021, p. 827. DOI.org (Crossref), Web.
Stein, Dan J., et al. “Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder.” Nature Reviews Disease Primers, vol. 5, no. 1, 2019, p. 52. DOI.org (Crossref), Web.
Taylor, Derrick Bryson. “A Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic.” The New York Times, 2021. NYTimes.com, Web.