I don’t have anything ground breaking for you to read today. In fact, I didn’t even want to write. I tried not to. I spent my time this morning (the time I typically spend writing) reading an old journal from a time when I felt happy, and sure, and in love with my life and felt confused about how I could be the same person now while feeling none of those same feelings. Where did they go?

I made a pact with myself to publish something every Sunday and I have kept it for the past three-ish years. The writing isn’t always great. It doesn’t need to be, that’s not part of the deal. It just has to be here. But this week I am drowning in grief and disappointment and I don’t have anything positive to say about either. I have not reached a stage where I can see light and it feels irresponsible to share my darkness, so I tried to skip the blog post. But then the thoughts crept in. Those nagging OCD-coded thoughts that something bad will happen if I don’t write today. I will ruin something somewhere for someone—maybe even me. The thoughts are vague and ambiguous, but they warrant an uncomfortable level of anxiety. I try to put these thoughts into perspective. Logically, I know they are ridiculous. How could typing a few words on the internet change any outcomes for anyone? But they are persistent and are followed by shameful ones—How hard can it be to drum up an essay? It’s no skin off your back to write a paragraph or two? How lazy are you? And I think those thoughts are right. This is why mental illness is so tough to recover from. It’s just me and myself in there. So, I’m giving in to my thoughts which is the exact wrong thing to do when you have OCD. You’re supposed to challenge the thoughts by testing the theory. If there’s an illogical anxiety producing thought like if I don’t write something bad will happen, writing when I don’t want to will reinforce it. It will tell my brain that the anxiety was necessary and it’s a good thing I listened. I stopped the bad thing from happening, and it’ll happen again the same way the next time I don’t feel up to writing. What I should do instead is skip writing today and wake up tomorrow to see that everything is fine.

But you see, if I wake up tomorrow and everything is not fine it will be too late, and it really is no trouble to type up a few words.