OCD

They'd begun wearing their glasses at night in fifth grade, after the nightmare happened the first time. That's how it started. The glasses. They could never quite articulate why they needed to wear their glasses at night, only knew that they had to in order to keep the nightmares away.

And that worked. For about a month.

Then they had to take their glasses off during the day. Obviously that was the problem. The glasses had to be worn at night, and only at night. They were sacred. Magic. Obviously.

Of course, that made school hard. Even sitting at the front of the room they found themself squinting to see the board. Their handwriting became nearly illegible.

But it worked.

For about a month.

They had to shave their head.

They had to sleep without a pillow.

They could no longer sleep in their bed.

All of these things worked.

For about a month.

And then they had to find some new trick, some new ritual, to keep the nightmares away. The nightmares that reminded them of a past they'd rather forget. They didn't want to think about their birth mom. They didn't want to think about the girl they used to be before they transitioned. They didn't want to remember the violent end to their innocence. They didn't want to remember the year in foster care before they found their permanent guardians. They didn't want to remember the struggle to get their legal name changed, to start HRT as a minor. They didn't want to remember who they were. But the nightmare kept toppling that, kept reminding them, and they needed it to go away.

They went to therapy.

And that worked.

For longer than a month.