The summer my life opened up

The summer of 2025 was a complex one for me. I started intensive three day a week therapy in June for OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), a few days after my baby sister graduated high school. I booked the first appointment the morning of her ceremony. My life revolved around my treatment and facing my fears from June to August. And taking my coping skills into the real world. Learning how to be a person in society. Learning how to use public restrooms and talk to waiters. The waiter part was about social anxiety, because I am a flame to the moths of mental illness. The process of healing is always painful. Like a scab you keep ripping open on accident. I have been through treatment successfully for other struggles before, and I think back fondly on the healing period. Yet for most of it I was severely struggling. The dark times I don’t miss, but the sensation of light starting to reach through my windows for my fingertips. The laugh after the cry. That’s an unforgettable feeling. It’s like waking up in the morning well rested for the first time in your life.

The treatment for OCD is called ERP or exposure and response prevention. It's basically exposing yourself to your fears bit by bit over time, until you are able to face those triggers without panic. So everyday of the week I was working on things like walking on my floor barefoot. This may seem small to others, but to me it was monumental. I was confined to my crocs like a prison for years. They were Lisa Frank crocs, so hey at least they were pretty.

My OCD presents itself by obsessive fears about coming into contact with bodily fluids, and being a bad person. Those fears seem super unrelated, but OCD is very complex. You can worry about anything. At the end of the day it's the obsession and the compulsion you use to ease your fear. But the compulsion only makes you feel better for a short time. It's like micro-dosing poison. It slowly destroys you, but you don't even realize it. Some of my compulsions back then were not touching the floor, or anything that wasn't wiped off. Mostly eating packaged food, and drinking out of plastic water bottles. Ruminating about if I've done something wrong or if I was a bad person. Usually over trivial things, or if I was evil. I would avoid content that was related to morality and politics because I felt guilt flood my veins. I still will feel like "what if this YouTuber would hate that I watch their videos because they like this piece of media and I don't?" It's nonsense.

This summer, as I was going through this intensive therapy, I rewatched the sketch comedy show Portlandia like it was my job. I ate breakfast with it. Lived my day with it. Fell asleep to it. Feel it all around by Washed Out is the shows theme song, and every time I hear that song I am thrown back to the joy that show brought me during such a difficult time. I remember having blue corn chips and pico de gallo for breakfast while watching Portlandia on my vanity. Which at the time was a tv tray. Doing my eyeliner to Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein’s beautiful nonsense. Having to rewind episodes because it played through a whole season while I was asleep. I had some really horrific depressive dips during that time. And those dark times terrify me. Under no circumstances do I want to go back to last summer. Don't mistake me. But the things that comforted me during it all, remain beautiful. Like relics of Pompeii on display in my brain. And how lucky am I to have such wonderful things to soothe me in the darkness? To make me want to continue wading through it, believing I will escape.

I kept a little diary of the summer in my notes app, and I hold it tightly. Actually, I am scared to reopen it because it is a pandoras box of emotions. Who wants to read diary entries from a time they were suicidal? But I am grateful I cataloged such a monumental time in my life.

I had watched Portlandia over and over again SO MUCH that I hadn’t touched it since that summer. And recently I have started rewatching it. With every mouse click of “next episode” I am reminded of the summer that my life started to open up. Life does not open up in a uniform and kind way. It is often ugly and burning to reach for the light. But you do it anyway because the darkness is worse.

So, where am I today? That's a complex answer. I'm doing the best I have ever done in managing may mental health, I am walking barefoot, I don't always feel like the devil himself. But, I still struggle everyday. I still see my therapist to do ERP once a week. I take psychiatric meds. Love meds by the way even though they can be a pain in the ass side effect wise. I hardly function, but the functioning I have now was worth the fight. And I continue to fight every single day. Not to get my life back, because there isn't anything to get back, because I've always bee sick. But there is something forward.

So thank you Portlandia. For the laughs, and the way you sounded like a warm hug when I needed it most.

And yeah, thank you to my therapist as well…