“A person with OCD lives through a pandemic…”

Via our Instagram story, Mind-Map asked the students of the University of Basel to share their experience during the COVID-19 lockdown. We wanted to hear about the challenges the students faced during lockdown and during a semester of remote studying. What coping strategies helped them? How did the situation affect their mental health? We are particularly grateful for the following entry by a student who would like to remain anonymous. Thank you for this very personal text about your experience. 

It reads like the opening to an awful joke, doesn’t it? Mental illness makes an excellent punchline for those left unaffected. Maybe, just maybe, the person in question has found the humor in their situation. Perhaps the person in the joke is laughing too.

A person with OCD lives through a pandemic. She washes her hands a lot, especially if she’s just touched something. Her skin doesn’t crack or bleed anymore even though she scrubs it red raw. It’s gotten used to the abrasive combination of soap, water and fabric. She’s thankful for that. Fewer cuts and cracks mean fewer potential pathways for infection. It means disinfectant doesn’t sting anymore. It means she’s safe, at least for now.

A person with OCD lives through a pandemic. She spends hours on end pacing through her room and driving her mother up the walls. The twelve square meters of bare hardwood floor that make up her bedroom are the only twelve square meters in the world that feel remotely safe. A haven of sorts. After a few weeks of being cooped up indoors, even this safe haven begins to feel like a prison cell. She ruthlessly culls her possessions to kill time. Her thoughts remain cluttered.

A person with OCD lives through a pandemic. She tries her hardest to stay focused in classes, but her mind keeps wandering. Are her friends staying safe? Is her family alive? When was the last time she washed her hands? She says ‘pelican’ five times, so her brothers don’t get sick. The class has long since moved to the next slide. Her handwriting becomes nothing more than a scrawl as she scrambles to catch up. Late at night, she rewrites everything.

A person with OCD lives through a pandemic. She calls her friends almost every evening and reads to them. ‘Life and love are very precious when both are in full bloom,’ she tells them. Words are a currency to her now, and she trades them for some semblance of normality. Her voice grows raspy from reading chapter after chapter, night after night. She isn’t used to talking this much. When she closes the book, the silence that fills the room feels oppressive and suffocating.

A person with OCD lives through a pandemic. She wants nothing more than to go outside, even for a few minutes, but she finds that she cannot. Her heart races as soon as she leaves the house, her throat closes up and her vision swims. She forces herself to go outside anyway. ‘Pelican’, she murmurs to herself as she walks, ‘pelican’. The more often she steps outdoors, the more she learns to anticipate panic. The outside world begins to lose its charm.

A person with OCD lives through a pandemic. She dreads the moment when everyone else will return to their old ways. Already, she sees others do things simply because they can, because it’s no longer forbidden. It fills her with despair. She blames herself for the rising case numbers and thinks about how she’ll cope when she has to go back to class. She wonders silently if the fear will kill her.

But sure, perhaps the person in the joke is laughing too. 

*OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder)