My experience of OCD started when I was eight years old. I had a particular fear of wetting myself. Always paranoid that I needed the toilet, I embarked on a new routine of going on the hour, every hour. On long car journeys, I would beg my parents to stop every half hour so I could find a public bathroom.

A few years passed by and my obsession with my bladder control subsided to a new one: my sexuality. Aged around 14, I became fixated on whether I was gay or not. The questions of identity are all mixed up with the average normal teen anxiety, so I felt this to be a normal motion of adolescence. What was strange was my way of thinking about it. I felt dread, with a compulsive need to painstakingly analyse every single thought that passed me by.

There was no logical reason for my fear; this was the hold of my condition. It is not the subject you are obsessed with that is the problem, it is the way you think about it. I know now that I could live a healthy, fulfilling, happy life with any partner, man or woman. What was crushing my mind was the absolute need to confirm what my sexuality was. Of course, most people are never really sure, but my mind would not rest until I knew. There was a mysterious angst surrounding it, not being able to work out quite why I was so scared and why it even mattered.

“OCD made me obsess over my sexuality and ruined my love life”