My name is Scott, and I don’t quite know who I am. Not in the literal sense of course, I know what I look like, who my parents are, where I live and where I work.
However beyond that it feels like I truly don’t know anything about myself. You see one day in my early teens I started to have these unwanted thoughts. Thoughts of how I could do something better, improve it so next time would be perfect, well maybe not next time but surely the time after that…
The thing I didn’t realise however at the moment the first thoughts appeared was that this would be the beginning of something that would rob me of everything, piece by piece. As the days turned into weeks, the weeks into months, the months into years I turned inward on myself. Never quite enjoying anything, simply doing it knowing I would have to start over in a few moments time. I spent what would in total be over a decade trapped in my own head, cleaning my room again and again, throwing out everything other than the absolute basics in the impossible pursuit of some perfect restart to my life. Along the way I lost my friends, my hobbies, my goals for the future, things that made me enjoy my life. Then in the end I lost myself entirely. The thoughts eventually becoming my inner monologue, the line between my sense of “Me” and what I would later learn was Obsessive Compulsive Disorder seemed to disappear altogether.
On September 15th 2021 I decided that this was the last time, no more “resets”. I went through the entire process of cleaning and throwing away everything I didn’t need the night before and when I woke up in the morning I went through my regular process of starting again, but as soon as the thoughts started up about maybe doing it again tomorrow I knew if I gave up this time I would be doing this for the rest of my life.
Today marks three weeks since I did that final reset, and for the first time in my adult life I am looking forward to the future. Yet I quite simply have no idea who I am or what I should do now.
What the rest of my journey through life has in store for me I do not know, but to that one person who stayed by my side and believed in me, thank you.
It meant everything to me.
Unknown Eye 