We're Not Supposed to Worry

About two weeks ago, I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Shortly before this took place, I was talking with one of my best friends and roommate, Nadia, about various things that worry me. My career, my relationship, my family, what God would have me do. What if this, what if that, what if I mess everything up because I worry so much. I started worrying about worrying. “Nadia, I won’t be able to go to sleep because I’m so worried,” I said, to which she made the reply, “we’re not supposed to worry.”
Although this statement is one that I should know very well, it seems that this is the easiest of all things to forget. There it was, momentarily putting a stop to my circular thought process: “we are not supposed to worry.” How could it be so simple? Somehow, (even though people do lots of things they are not supposed to do), I thought, “well, if I’m not supposed to, then I won’t. How bad could my life be if I’m not even supposed to worry about it?”
I was able to sleep, but the next day my anxieties started all over again. Thereafter I was told that I have OCD, a form of which my compulsions ranged from getting affirmations from people on whether or not I was insane to checking my alarm clock seven times before sleeping. Naturally, I started obsessing about whether or not I actually had this disorder. No one had ever suggested this to me before, not after years of counseling, not after years of constantly checking with people to make sure that I am, in fact, not ugly. It perhaps makes sense that I had never been told that I had this disorder before, seeing that I had many more external issues to deal with; life events that were shaping and breaking who I was; I needed help coping, that was certain, but no one really bothered to put a label on what was going on in my mind.
As with any mental disorder, you cannot point do it like a tumor and say, “yes, you have cancer.” However I have decided that in order to get effective help for a type of torment that might be happening within one’s own mind, labels can be helpful. Get as second opinion as I might, the sentence, “we’re not supposed to worry,” is a simple statement that will always stick with me. From Nadia’s words of wisdom we must remember that no one can benefit from worry. It does not change a single thing about one’s life. OCD, as far as I see, is just a corruption of concern: doing something that we are not supposed to do; blown out of proportion like lots of gifts/neutralities we are given that are molded into sin. It doesn’t matter what chemical imbalance a person may or may not have; whether or not we believe in such labels. We are not supposed to worry.

Luke 12:25 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

Anyway, here’s a poem from project that I’ve been working on, as humbly as I can offer it for a growing poet who’s not quite there yet:



People Think Way Too Much of Poetry

The pretentious flower wears glasses

thick framed, heavy.

His neck bends,

his stem close to breaking.

The pretentious flower has a hat,

baggy, knitted;

his petals hidden.

He wonders why he's a boy,

why he's a flower.

All the bees flock to him,

making food,

making poetry.

They don't care he's not a girl


like most flowers,

or that he's actually ugly, for that matter.