Teenage Dilemmas [UNDERGOING MAJOR EDITING]

Chapter Thirteen || Henry does good for Ivory

"Well, if it can be thought, it can be done, a problem can be overcome"

― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

Ann

Saturday.

Saturday is supposed to be a day were you laze around and forget about the ten page essay you have to complete on the following Monday.

Well, not for me. Today was the day that I end up finishing that lurking homework by the time the clock strikes six..... am.

I was awake early in the morning, like really early. Early enough to write a twenty page essay that is due in four weeks time. I got that group assignment one day ago and I've already finished it. Lucas is gonna think that I am the biggest geek that has ever lived, ever. I grab the essay and my sushi shaped stapler and attempt to staple it together without much luck. After going through at least 114 staples trying to get it together, I sink in my office chair with the essay clutched to my chest and start crying.

I don't even care that there is my whole family sleeping soundly, not knowing that my disorder is acting up again. I cry, soiling the essay that has given me hell for the past five hours. I cry because I know I am different and this hell that I have to live with everyday of my life is killing me. If the pens on my desk aren't perfectly straight, pointing away from me I will crack it. If there are an odd number of tabs open on a computer, If I don't save a document exactly fourteen times before closing the computer down...

I remember, a few years ago now, I was working on an assignment with Lucas Castellan and Will. Will came up to me with a portion of the assignment completed and handed it to me. One look at the section and my OCD senses kicked into over-drive. The text wasn't written in 12 point Calibri, the whole thing was at least a 14 sized Times New Roman. I looked at Will, his eyes shining like the sight of a dirt covered gold coin. I knew I didn't want to, but I bit my lip, hard to keep myself from crying. I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood. I grabbed the file and held it up, right in front of his face and ripped it. I ripped it, my eyes watering at his shocked expression.

"I think you want to change the font." I remember whispering to him. I remember grabbing my books and asking Miss Boggs if I could be excused from the class.

I remember having to go to a councillor for these things. His name was Rob. Simply Rob, not Robert or Bob, just Rob. When I was younger, I got frustrated that his name had only three letters. This councillor, Rob taught me how to box away the memories that gave me that grief, the memories were my OCD took over my brain. I remember asking whether my OCD was a bipolar case...

Suddenly, my mind takes me back to the room full of happy quotes and smiling children.

"What do you mean by a 'bipolar case', Ann?" Rob sat in his big red faux leather chair.

"Like," My seventh grade self continues "My 'thing'-" Rob insisted that I didn't call my OCD a disorder, he forced me and my parents to call it a 'thing', he thinks it'll impact on my self-esteem less. In the end it doesn't matter, I still have OCD with or without calling it a 'thing'

"only comes, every second or third day of the week,"

"And?" The twenty year-old councillor questions.

"Whenever it is that second or third day that my OCD occupies my brain, I take on a completely different personality."

"How do you know this?" Rob intervenes.

"One of my friends, Will, told me." My past self takes a major interest in her scuffed school shoes.

"Is he a good friend?"