True Colours

Or How to Dye on the Inside.

What’s the best part of living in Switzerland?

I have no idea but the flag’s a big plus.

I thought things had been pretty heavy on Kimfluencing My Brain lately, so would look on the brighter side and open with a joke. It’s a good joke.

Now that I’ve reeled you in, I actually have some devastating news… I am NOT going to be part of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing line-up. I know, it’s thrown me too. Maybe my numerous hints on Instagram were too subtle? Maybe they don’t think it’s fair to the other contestants to have someone with such a sense of rhythm in the running? For whatever reason, my Autumn has suddenly become wide open and I should probably get an actual job. I also had visions of me and Claudia Winkleman becoming best friends and writing a book together but alas it’s not to be, so this blog will have to suffice. For now.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve shared a lot with you, knowing many of you are new to the world of Kimfluencing (never has, never will be a thing). Bearing this in mind, I also wanted to share with you that I’m in a great place. I’m content. I’m me again. The joy of sharing your pain and constant setbacks is the complete lack of embarrassment in boasting about my triumphs!

I never thought I would recover from my Postnatal OCD experience. It seemed to strip everything from me. My sense of who I was, my joy, my hope, my future, my sanity, my belief in myself. Yet, in that total shedding of everything except plain old survival, I discovered that silly, insignificant things that have plagued me my whole life, don’t actually hold any meaning for me anymore. The multitudinous worries I would have - “Have I upset someone? Does someone not like me? What will people say about my looks?” - just doesn’t hold much water with me any longer. I didn’t have the mental capacity for that nonsense when I was ill, so now when I get those trivial jitters - that would have sent me spiralling in the past - I simply smile.

I’m so grateful that my mind is finally in a place where that crap can whizz around freely. I don’t care and for such a long time, I cared TOO MUCH. Through it all, I’ve learned it doesn’t deserve my attention or stress. For what seemed like an ice age, I’m talking every minute of the day and night for almost 2.5 years, my mind was stuck on the worst possible scenarios involving my baby son. And whether I could be a danger. That’s it. Just those nightmares. Over and over and over, in a never-ending loop, increasing in intensity and giving me no reprieve WHATSOEVER.

I remember my husband asking me what colour we should paint a room in our house during that time. I looked at him like he had two heads. What the hell was he talking about? Colours? I can’t think of colours! I wasn’t allowed. I couldn’t. My time was assigned to my OCD obsessions and compulsions and concepts like “colours” were for normal people who had a future.

Now, my mind is my own again. So when I have a minor wobble like “why hasn’t my friend text me back?” or “why did that person send me that kind of message on Instagram?“, I actually beam with the biggest smile because it means I’m better. And not only am I better but I’m better than before. That stuff just can’t touch me now. It’s bum-fluff. It’s a mental dust-bunny. It’s the cerebral equivalent to that stringy stuff on a banana you have to peel off but then just carry on munching away, forgetting it instantly. Unpleasant but ultimately inconsequential.

For me and others like me, this is the Promised Land. This is the oasis in the desert. A horrible thought or image popping into your mind, making your heart sink for a moment and then just letting it go? Fuck. It’s practically a miracle.

According to the NHS, 12 in every 1000 people in the UK suffer with OCD. That’s 750,000 minds that are battling the invisible but living with the reality. 1.2% of the British population. Maybe that’s a small number to you but I feel connected to every single one of those souls because unless you’ve lived in that darkness, you can’t possibly begin to imagine a life where light doesn’t exist. At least, you think it doesn’t.

And that’s how it gets you.

So, if you’re one of those three quarters of a million people living in the UK with an OCD brain, please know it’s not forever. That’s the trick it wants to play. That it can’t be stopped unless you give it what it wants, which is to feed a beast that will never, EVER be satisfied. It can stop and you can make it stop but it will be the hardest, scariest, most freeing thing you’ll ever do. Taking on your own mind in a weird game of mental Street Fighter is exhausting. Stepping back and not fighting feels impossible and dangerous. Seeing and believing that it’s only a fight if you engage with it is mind-blowing.

For a long time, my world was dampened by a thick, impenetrable fog where I fumbled around feeling terrified and alone. The colour is rushing back in and I can see the world again for what it is. And more importantly, what it isn’t.

Speaking of colour, my husband chose an Art Deco, teal shade for that room. I don’t hate it, I guess.

Before you go…

I swallowed some food colouring. My doctor says I’m fine but I feel like I’ve dyed a little on the inside.

That’s a colour and depression joke in one bringing this whole thing to a neat conclusion.

You’re welcome and stay classy.