Swipe through carousel for full essay ♥️ — My OCD therapist is on parental leave (again) so I have until July to bring in some really good material. Whenever I think about her being a Mom I cry because I think she’s the most wonderful person in the world, so please don’t think I’m mad that she’s on parental leave, if anyone should be having babies (and a lot of people should not be having babies) it’s her. In between exposure therapy exercises – google searching genitalia together, writing newspaper articles about my inevitable cancellation for lying about being gay, listening to a “meditation” she’s recorded for me detailing how exactly i’ll blow up my life by running from the altar mid-vows at my own wedding (I listen to said meditation on my hot girl walks, which I recommend because it gives me heart palpitations and really ups the cardio) – we talk about shame. For five years we’ve talked about how shame has stolen my favorite things about myself. Namely, sharing in excruciating detail observations on my sex life, other people’s sex lives, my body, other people’s bodies (in a nice way), my deepest worries, my deepest dreams and fantasies (relational, sexual, spiritual, professional), my fears, my triumphs, my ugly, my beautiful, my vices, my silly, my soft. I like to say there was a before and after, that pre-diagnosis I was a full cup and easy pour. And yes, there were great big swaths of time where this kind of sharing was unceremonious for me, instinctual, unremarkable. When my obsessions were at bay, low tide, docile current. But revisionist history has me bury the riptide of despair, the thoughts that choked and the wet fear that sputtered in my lungs. I want to only remember a loose and supple me, topless at the beach, sun soaked and gossip spilling. She was hot and free and didn’t even put sunscreen on her nipples (she should have). But she wasn’t really free, and she wasn’t really sharing, and the shame was there and it would catch up and it would find her and when it did she would drown, every day, every single day, in a torrent of her brain’s making. — #ocd #obsessivecompulsivedisorder #mentalillness #therapy #ERP #shame #writersofinstagram #queer