Ode to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
A series of poems on fighting, identifying, and accepting mental illness 

Act 1: Guilt Growing 
I tend my garden of guilt
where no weeds are culled 
no chaff to wrought 
for all guilts grow
in silent thought 
and there they fester 
unpicked to rot 
for there’s no reaping 
only keeping 
in guilt gardens 
growing obsessive thoughts. 

Footnote 1: I Deserve to Die (And Other Lies I Told Myself)  
Blood beads like wax on a candle 
from where I pulled the razor; 
Red Pearls more pretty than any jewel I’ve seen.

And I remember the gem room at the Chicago Field Museum 
on the school field trip. I was 14.  
We ate lunch by the water. The class fed the birds. 
They flew like vultures above us. Circling. Swooping. 
Our discarded crust their prey.

I sat away, panicked. Birds carried diseases.
I asked you to stop, tried to make myself small,
but one shit on my shirt anyways, 
splattering like paint, 
a halo for the soccer ball in the corner.
I couldn’t stop washing my hands. 
All day in the museum. Every five minutes I scrubbed. 
Every time my hand brushed my gray T-shirt. 
I couldn’t change. It was misery. 

But I remember the gem room – dark, a spotlight on each piece. 
Such wealth, I forgot my fear. Such beauty in each perfectly crafted stone. 
As the razor pulled and the blood glistened, I remembered. 
I remembered the museum and the fucking bird that shit on me. 
I remembered to forget. 

Act 2: Guilt Gathering
Gather guilt
in bundles 
like blouses in a bag.

Gather guilt
in baskets
like berries on a bush.

Gather guilt
in bunches
like blooms of a bouquet.

Gather guilt
to make brittle 
the soul of a man.

Gather guilt
to bereave
a brain yet untouched
by guilt gatherings
collector of wrongs
to feed and to punish
for the greatest guilt gatherer of them all.
Footnote 2: The Only Footnote 
Living with mental illness is like fighting off a colonizer, 
like striving against the tidal wave of Evangelical Christianity 
seeking to claim every inch of every being into its will and its will only – 

Dictator of all thoughts and actions, 
it feels so useless to fight.

And then I remember why I’m here and I’m angry: scrupulosity.
From the root of all evils – Institutions.
You made me in more ways than one.

Born of your constructs, 
slave to your precepts,
religion planted the seed.
Pope, Priest, Bishop, King
all control through fear – 
fear of sin
born of woman 
I’m so fucked.

Act 3: Guilt Grasping 
Grasp to guilt.
Pull it near.Massage those worries
to strengthen and lengthen
to devour us whole.
Grasp to guilt
to make it yours.
Grasp to guilt
to absorb.
Footnote 3: When You Told Me Identifying With OCD Was A Problem 
At the time it was a relief – to know my weirdness had a name. 
To know it was something separate from me. 
But then I came to own it
because owning it became easier than hoping it would go away. 
Because owning it became an identity. 
I grasp to guilt, for it's all I know.
Without it, I am nothing at all. 
I am normal. I am no one, I am just a girl. 

Act 4: It’s More Than Guilt
It’s more than guilt.
It’s blame.
Blame for what is wrong around me.
My fault.
Mine.
Owned, absorbed, held close.
A crippling blame,
it paralyzes,
prevents action,
prevents speech.

Nurtured in the pit of my stomach,
fed by noxious bile and anxiety. 
I feel it squirming through me,
taking over my body,
toxic tendrils rushing through my veins.

This blame is poison, 
I worry it will kill me – 
that or the medicine I can’t live without,
since I was 15,
feeding my brain with chemicals
to erase the blame, 
to stop the guilt that paralyzes.

But it doesn’t.
But it helps. 
And I still feel broken. 

Footnote 4: Taking Stock 
I’m still here,
but so are you,
we’ve learned to live together. 
Hand-in-hand we’ll never be,
not co-conspirators.

Just one lost soul,
and her constant enemy.
But with any foe,
there is a strange empathy.
I’ve lived with you since I was young,
grown strong in your embrace.
Without your twisted gift of guilt,
I wouldn’t know resiliency. 

Act 5: Backslide  
I’m so fucking tired
that this well of creativity is only found in darkness.

I’m so fucking sick
of pulling poetry through pain. 

I’m so tired of my own existence
which each episode threatens to crumble.
I’m so sick in shame
I’ll burn my own body at the stake. 

The sins will melt with my flesh
and I’ll finally be free. 

Footnote 5: Why I can’t smoke weed 
When I get high, I regret every life decision I’ve ever made. 
I remember my mistakes and fuckups, fuckoffs in shame. 
Too high to feel pity, I curse my name. 

Footnote 6: Pumpkins
I remember you left me at the party. 
I’d just been diagnosed. 
You told another mom to watch me. 
At 12, no one else needed constant supervision. 
No one else a ticking bomb. 
At Halloween, we let children play with knives. 
Always from the kitchen cabinet you pulled them, 
so we could carve pumpkins. 
Stabbing through orange flesh, 
I marveled at the blade that also chopped onions and sliced pickles. 
And then one day, you hid them from me. 
I always loved October. 
The violence of fall storms and settling chill.
The death of summer’s bounty, the pungent air ripe with rot.
The earth, readying for winter’s cleanse.
As I bopped for apples, I also hoped for cleansing;
baptism in the saliva of 12-year-old girls
to absorb in my skin and become one too,
not this unrecognizable thing I was becoming.  

All parties end and you took me home,
a bit of me left behind. 
Winter came and then another, the cycle of life and death continued, 
but it was just the beginning of mine. 
Eventually you took the knifes from wherever you hid them.  



Act 6: A Path To Healing 
Each diagnosis 
I hold close,
nurtured like a small child.
For with each 
comes forgiveness,
an absolution of guilt,
an explanation for behavior
I can’t help but hate.
This diagnosis
I carry
as something separate from me,
an illness that doesn’t define 
any aspect of my personality.
This understanding
allows hope to arise
​as beautiful as a butterfly.