Lily Bailey has lived her entire life under the shadow of OCD. Now 22, the model and former Sheengate journalist reveals why she has written a memoir about her life
I was 20 when my dream came true. I was offered a job at the magazine you’re reading now and my life, finally, took a turn for the better.
I had been suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD); it affected my ability to function normally on countless occasions and had recently spiralled out of control so that I had dropped out of university and spent time in two psychiatric hospitals. But, despite all that, I was going to be a journalist – the only thing I’d ever wanted to be. Someone had seen my writing and decided it was good enough, which meant that I was good enough.
At first, OCD threatened to destroy my fledgling career. I would sit at my desk and be unable to concentrate on anything apart from compulsively making lists about possible things I might have done wrong. Had I looked at one of my colleagues so hard in the eye that they thought me arrogant? Did my laugh come out high-pitched and strange? Did I smell? Getting these thoughts in order took up so much time that I couldn’t actually get anything done. Desperate not to fail, I ended up doing all my work at home in the evening.
But, as time went by, the combination of a regular schedule, a supportive workplace and a boss who allowed me time off for therapy sessions meant that I became increasingly able to manage my condition. The better I became, the more willing I was to talk about OCD and how it affected me.
Most people were kind and tried to understand, but it took a lot of explaining to get past their initial reactions – “Aren’t we all a bit OCD?” and the like. Meanwhile, all over the world people were gleefully squealing, “I’m sooo OCD!” – using the term to mean a cute personality quirk that involved them liking things to be ‘just so’. The thing is, they’re wrong. OCD is in fact a crippling mental disorder that the World Health Organisation has ranked as one of the top 10 most disabling illnesses.
Sufferers experience obsessions which cause them distress, and respond by doing compulsions. There are any number of obsessions that someone could have and compulsions that they may do in response. So the stereotype that says someone with OCD will have a tidy house, where everything is lined up perfectly, is untrue. Only a limited number of people will have a compulsion to tidy.
In my case, I was gripped by a fierce obsession that I was a bad person. It had ruled my life since I was small. I grew up in south west London with parents who loved me; I lived in a pretty house a stone’s throw from a park and attended a local prep school; I had a second home and violin lessons. My life appeared perfect, but the story inside my head was different.
Weird obsessions flooded my brain whenever I was awake. From thinking I smelt, to worrying I had been rude, or even killed someone with a thought. Throughout my life, my compulsions have varied – I’ve performed strange movements with my body and repeated special phrases. But the thing that really stuck was making lists of everything bad I might have done. The lists would have hundreds of items each day, and itwas hard to have time for anything else.
I still don’t know for sure why my OCD developed. I believe that I was predisposed to it and certain things contributed. My parents were always at war which I found distressing. I was convinced they must both be bad to be treating each other as they did. Some of my first compulsions involved constantly repeating phrases such as “they love each other really,” and intently analysing anything bad I might have done, so that I too would not end up bad.
Up until I was 16, I had no idea I was suffering with OCD, largely because I thought OCD was a) someone who liked to line up their CDs or b) a jokey term. Had I known that wasn’t the case, my problems could have been addressed sooner. For this reason, seeing the term OCD bandied about incorrectly infuriated me. So I wrote a blog about what having the condition is really like. After a few weeks, I was contacted by Kingston-based publisher Canbury Press, who asked me to write a book. The result is Because We Are Bad.
Everyone told me that writing the book would be cathartic, but this turned out not to be true. Whilst I enjoyed the experience, it was not a therapy orgy. It was more of a personal mission to keep writing even through the darkest moments, in the hope that I can offer a source of knowledge to those with no experience of OCD, and a comforting friend to anyone living in its icy grip.
Because We Are Bad is available to buy on Amazon or in Waterstones for £14.99
You can follow Lily on Twitter @LilyBaileyUK and you can also follow us for more great articles like this on Twitter @essentialsurrey and Facebook
For further information about OCD go to: ocduk.org
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