I’m still me.

I’m just not sure which one.

Having a complex and differently-wired brain can be a blessing and a curse.

I’ve always seen the world slightly differently. I often “get the wrong end of the stick” because I usually see it from a slightly-off, skewed angle. I ask my husband, a lot, to confirm what just happened in a situation or conversation with others from moments before to “check” I understood it correctly. On the flip side, I can sometimes see more deeply below the surface of social scenarios. I can see when someone is hurting but hiding it. I’m more attuned to nuanced and almost imperceivable interactions between people but I’m not so good at the broader strokes.

You can see the blessings and curses element. I either see too much or not enough.

With OCD, it can become problematic for me when I zoom in on a “problem” aka obsession and I’m so close to it, I can’t see the woods for the trees. When I’m better and more in control, I feel a delicious distance. A wonderful objectivity. I’m looking at the whole picture. I can see how that one, tiny part I obsessively looked at, fits into the whole.

The more OCD has control over my brain, the less I can feel the presence of myself. I’m in the wings, peaking from behind a thick, velvet curtain whilst OCD is centre stage, fully in the limelight doing encore after encore. Sometimes I’m able to strut out and grab the mic, take back my own performance whilst OCD scuttles off backstage toward the green room. Other times, the intense stage-fright is too much and I freeze.

As an actor, this analogy may only make sense to me. My obsessive compulsive tendencies have helped and hindered me all the way through my career. It certainly makes me more focussed, determined and diligent to get things just right. My recall helps with on-set continuity and line-learning. On the other hand, I can obsess over off-hand comments about my looks, my ability or my worth. There’s a strange contrariness to the notion that I can become so debilitated by someone’s opinion of me but easily walk into a room full of casting directors, producers and writers to perform quite vulnerable and exposing scenes, without breaking a sweat.

I’m trying to look for less rhyme or reason in things. Sometimes, things are just the way they are.

As OCD is constantly trying to make you question your values, it becomes very important to have a strong sense of who you are.

When I was pregnant, after gruelling IVF and years of disappointment, I was 35, in a happy long-term relationship with a steady-ish career under my belt. I had a pretty good sense of the real me. What I was made of. Then the severe hormone drop, birth trauma and early on-set of postnatal depression and extreme anxiety pushed me into the worst and longest-lasting OCD episode of my life. I didn’t know who I was, suddenly. I was now a mother and I know what you’re thinking, well “yeah, duh, genius” but you can never be fully prepared for the all-encompassing intensity that role requires.

I didn’t know how to be a mum and Kim. I didn’t know how to be a mum and wife. I didn’t know how to be Kim, a mum, a wife, a professional actor and happy all at the same time. Of course, in truth, I knew exactly how to be all of those things as all of those things are a part of me and who I am. But I worried, I obsessed, I made myself sick over the possibility of not doing them all perfectly. I thought my biggest problem after my son was born would be getting rid of that soft, afterbirth paunch within the first 6 weeks like everyone on Instagram, and maybe some stretch marks. It never occurred to me I’d be locked in a battle for my own mind for nearly two years. A battle that almost killed me.

Just over 22 months on, do I know who I am now?

Yes.

And no.

But that’s the whole point of life, isn’t it? To keep asking questions and chasing possibilities but to someone with OCD the very concept of that contains far too much risk and puts so much on the line, it feels unbearable.

Why some intrusive thoughts don’t bother me at all whilst others have the potential to end my world, makes no sense, especially as they’re all as nonsensical as each other.

Why, becoming a mother - the one thing I’d most wanted to achieve - was the one thing that made me free-fall into an existential crisis, is a mystery.

My job, on the whole, is to pretend to be other people. (Actually my job feels like it’s to get the next job!) To walk a mile in their shoes. Sometimes that’s with a character you play for a day or a role that you live with for years. My ability to see all the ‘what ifs’ helps me to do that. It fuels my curiosity, my empathy and my “art”, for want of a better word.

But as Uncle Ben said, or was it Marisa Tomei? I forget which incarnation we’re on at the moment, “with great power comes great responsibility”. My great power is that I feel things very acutely. The responsibility that comes with that is to be more understanding and compassionate. I just need to find a better way of directing those intentions at myself.

Maybe I don’t need to know EXACTLY who I am all the time. Maybe I don’t have to have all the answers to being the perfect woman, wife, mother, actress, daughter, sister, friend, ad nauseum.

Maybe I need to remember that maybe is ok for now.

Kim x