Imp
The big lie is that you can think yourself into being something different. You need to act your way there. Eve of my marriage. I have a child now. Truthfully, I thought given my manifest mental illness I'd end up jacking off in my parents' basement at age thirty-six, unemployed and alone. Well, I'm unemployed (on paternity leave currently and not signing another contract) but the rest of the prognosis has not proven to be true. Because, I suppose, I've acted in accordance with my values instead of my anxiety, my OCD.
Still, I'm not really sure if I'm steering the ship. I've always felt this divide between my true self and my consciousness (my thoughts). Simply put, my brain has never been my friend. This is not unique, but I contend that if you have OCD or another mental illness that the problem is a bit more pronounced. I feel like I've been at war with myself my entire life. Sure, none of us are synonymous with our thoughts, but my thoughts (and the thoughts of others who struggle with mental illness) are inimical to my being.
Oh boo hoo. So what? We all need to get up in the morning. Trudge along through this life. So what that I have mental illness and someone else has some other shit, some other antagonist in their existence whether that be material or mental? We all have our cross. We all have an archnemesis or two.
But I've been told that this is the wrong way to view my mental illness. I shouldn't view it as an adversary or an opponent to be eliminated because this illness is a part of me. I have a tough time with this analysis. It smacks of a sentiment said by someone who hasn't been wracked by their thoughts for the entirety of their adult existence.
I remember when I was younger reading a book about OCD that depicted the disease as an imp on one's shoulder. The book was called "The Imp of the Perverse," a phrase which I think the book borrowed from an Edgar Allen Poe short story. I keep returning to this metaphor. They have kids draw their "OCD monster" in therapy. Same shit. This disease is a plague. It can't be killed and it grows stronger, larger the more you thrash at it. Maybe I'll learn to live with it, but I certainly can't accept it.
And sometimes for me it feels good to wage war on it even I know that the only battle that can be won is a Pyrrhic one. I'm still propelled forward by this vision of me with tattered rags, bloodied by the constant bludgeoning of my own brain, emerging through the smoke and flames and wreckage wrought by a life with this disease, me smiling through a toothless bloody mouth, laughing in the face of this calvary, so help me God.