The Witch in the Mirror: Living with OCD in Middle School

“Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! Ooh, I know it!”

I was a regular Hermione Granger in school. Always putting up my hand when the teacher asked a question. I wasn’t trying to show off — I was just that excited to know something. I loved learning and I felt good when I had knowledge. Ever the geek, I always sought more than school offered, reading voraciously and to the point of missing my bus stop or walking into poles.

As I was trying to get the attention of my teacher, who slightly rolled her eyes and looked with desperation around the room for a nonexistent classmate as eager as I, I noticed the boy next to me look over at my outstretched arm.

“Ugh!” he exclaimed, as though he’d been slapped in the face with a fish.

Immediately self-conscious, I took the earliest chance to excuse myself do the bathroom — with permission, of course — and braved the horrific stench of the middle school bathroom.

This bathroom was the epitome of gross school bathrooms. Streaked with mildew and caked with dust, it was barely illuminated by yellow light pouring in through a dirty window too high to escape through. I approached the sink with caution, and tentatively raised my “call on me” arm.