My Brain Wants to Kill Me

The Catalyst

The first time I imagined myself dying I was twenty-two years old, walking home from a bar, tipsy enough to make the mile walk seem not half-bad but not drunk enough for the tension between my shoulders to be fully relieved. It was a fleeting image, like a crab scurrying across sand. I was in Washington, D.C’s Capitol Hill, walking toward bustling H Street, where my apartment at the time was nestled, the front of the building facing one of the busiest streets in the city, and the back side flanked by cherry trees, an elementary school, and brick townhouses.

The thought seemed to come out of nowhere, as if plucked like an apple from some tree of horrors. It felt so wrong, so innately out of place. My body was prone, lying on the ground, impaled by one of the sharp Gothic points that jutted from the tops of the unsuspecting fence I had just passed. It was unwanted, unnatural. Like someone had pushed a button and inserted this image into the fabric of my mind. 

It felt like an intruder. And then, I began to obsess. Did I want to do this? Was it some kind of premonition for a less than lucky fate I would meet? Was I losing my mind? It passed and I continued to walk, but it would prick the back of my mind for days to come, making me wonder what my mind was capable of, what I was capable of. 

The answer was and still is, “I don’t know.”

A Thought is Just a Thought

“I feel like I’m losing my mind.” I crossed my arms over my chest, sitting back in the plush lounger in my psychiatrist’s office. The chestnut-colored piece of furniture was supposed to be calming, muted, inoffensive. 

“What do you mean by that?” Dr. McMann tapped her pen twice against her clipboard and I swore I could smack her. 

We’ve had this conversation about fifty different times in fifty different ways. She knew exactly what I meant. That I was spiraling—that my intrusive thoughts had come back full force. 

“That I can’t control my own thoughts,” I huffed, losing patience. 

“A thought is just a thought. It can’t harm you unless you let it,” she assured me for about the three hundredth time. 

“But it feels so real, and I feel like I need to act on it.” 

This drew her attention, and she clicked her pen, ready to scribble down my innermost demons, to put them on paper like they were some note to self about remembering to take the dog out or buy toilet paper. 

“Have you…made a plan to act on any of these thoughts?” She raised her brows, trying out a look of concern. 

“No, but sometimes the physical discomfort that comes with these thoughts makes it so…so unbearable. I just want to—"

Her brows hit her hairline, like I had just told her I was going to off myself right there in the office.

No one seemed to understand. Even the people who claimed to specialize in mental illness. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is its own beast. So much so, that it requires its own kind of therapy, its own ongoing narrative, its own home, its own zip code, its own city, its own country, its own continent. And it wouldn’t be another year until I realized that was the beast I was dealing with.

Do You Want to Die?

The date was October 26, 2020, and I walked along the side of the road, listening to the latest soundtrack from the movie Words on Bathroom Walls. I felt calm for once—my heart wasn’t racing, I wasn’t scared for my life. Then, with all the gusto of a football coach shouting for his team to do better, a thought entered my mind. What if I just moved a few feet to the left and let a passing car hit me?

Did I want to die? The last few months had surely been hell and the fiery pit of death itself sounded a bit better than what I was dealing with above ground. But the thought disturbed me so much, I found myself inching away from the road.

As soon as I got home, I called Dr. McMann. “I need to go off my medication. I just thought about throwing myself into oncoming traffic. It must be some kind of side effect.”

“Do you have any want to do that now?”

“No.”

“That’s still concerning. Let’s taper you off and put you on xyz.”

“Okay.”

Machinations of My Mind

I lived near a bridge in 2021, and I would incessantly imagine throwing myself off it to my own displeasure. I avoided looking at the bridge, which was very hard since it took up most of the view from my apartment. I heard cars driving over it all day and night long.

At this same time, I lived alone, and I spent a lot of time by myself. This resulted in my overactive imagination and mental instability to making love and producing a baby that was something out of a Mary Shelley novel.

I would spend hours lying on the carpet, staring at the ceiling fan as it slowly circled overhead like a vulture. I pictured it somehow dislodging from its place and maiming me until I could no longer breathe.

I never spoke these thoughts out loud, for fear that I would come across as some kind of psychopathic murderer. But the only person that my mind wanted to kill was myself.

Conversations with Friends

“Have you heard of anyone having thoughts like this?” I asked my best friend from seven states away.

“Yeah, actually. My friend who has OCD didn’t have obvious compulsions. He more so had these kinds of intrusive thoughts you’re experiencing.”

I thought, Well, oh fuck.

Checklist

I decided to purchase the book Turtles All the Way Down by John Green. As I read, I did something I had never done before. I underlined and highlighted and dog-eared.

Obsessing over minor details, especially in an uncertain situation. Check.

Feeling like I can’t control my own thoughts. Check.

Disturbing thoughts that lead to a cycle of obsessing over said thoughts. Check.

By the end of the book, the number of things I had underlined could have been a book on its own.

The Finale

I sat in the same chair I had started to hate and asked the question that had been on the tip of my tongue for months now, that was creating acid in my stomach, making me sick. But I needed to know.

“So, doc, do you think I have obsessive-compulsive disorder?”

“Yes, yes I do.”

Caroline J. Trussell is a queer, neurodivergent writer who, in addition to personal essays and flash fiction, writes horror and fantasy stories. She is a former journalist with work in Folio Weekly and Her Campus and will soon be published in Bright Flash Literary Review. The first book in her YA sci-fi fantasy duology, Enhanced, recently published with Fire & Ice YA Books in August.