Before this whole “Covid-19” outbreak, I stayed at my two twin best friend houses. My mom only let me stay for one night because I started a new medicine and she also didn’t want me going anywhere because of Covid. I wish I could have stayed longer but covid has decided to take everyone’s lives and just put them all over the place or in one place.
The day I was leaving the girls house I told them my dad would be on his way from work at 4 and was most likely going to get me at 4:30. They kept asking why I had to leave and so I told them. I told the girls that my mom has been pretty worried about me lately and that she is scared that I’ll be gone one day because I got so mad at this disease. My mom is scared because most kids with this disease do attempt hurting themselves. Finally, I told them that some of these thoughts have crossed my mind when I get upset and my intrusive thoughts and OCD are really getting to me.
The girls were shocked to find out that their best friend had a thought about hurting herself. One of them said was joking around and didn’t think I was serious because people say all the time that they have these thoughts but the kids who say this are mad because their parents didn’t get them something they wanted. So when I told my friend she was just like “guess we better hide the knives from Egypt,” LOL! I wasn’t mad at her at all but I had to explain to her that it wasn’t like that and they got upset that this was going on and I didn’t say anything. I told the girls I wasn’t going to do anything like this and they were still begging me to talk to them and to not let it get that bad.
Many people think that when people say that these are thoughts in their head, that person is just having a rough day and it will get better. They make a joke just to make you feel better but, in all honesty, you are wishing that they would understand and that if only people didn’t use self-harm as an exaggeration and a joke, people wouldn’t think that the person being serious is just telling a joke. To all the people who make jokes about hurting themselves because they had a bad day or someone said something stupid, don’t make this joke. These jokes make it harder for people like me to tell their friends and family that these are things that go on in my head.
This experience lets me know that “Pans and Pandas” is not yet recognized. Sure, my friends knew I had this disease and that I had intrusive thoughts, but they didn’t know what some of them were. And when I did tell them they didn’t know how to react. Either with a joke or they got emotional. Either way, this lets me know I need spread more awareness about this disease and some of the thoughts that occur. You can spread the word too. Make this a recognized disease and let people know what happens to the people battling this disease.
I still love these girls to death, but now I need to spread the word.
– The serious person