An Unlikely Friend

I know I will get electric shock therapy (ECT) one day. I think. I think I can trust myself on this. After all, my intuition told me in the eighth grade that I was developing a mental illness, and here I am. I knew because I was reading a book about a girl who had bipolar disorder, and though I didn’t know what that meant, and I am no psychic. knew I had something similar.

Writing | Laura Sánchez

The character in the book I was reading experienced extreme chang Wes in mood and behavior, throughout the story, and – almost in sync – I was starting to change too. I was becoming depressed, reserved, and starkly different from the happy- go-lucky kid I had been. Admittedly, the thought of getting electric pulses sent through my brain and getting a mini- is scary; but I’m not one to discriminate. The thought of having ECT may be scary, but so many other things in life are scary, too... and I somehow manage with all of those. ECT and they are so will treat my. Depression, but there is you go first. Heard (from viewing an Internet video by a

Against eccentric treatment for yourself (or for eccentric anything).

brave sufferer of schizophrenia) that it can help with obsessive-compulsive disorder, too. Hopefully, if I do need it, the ECT will alleviate my mind’s fierce gnawing at itself, softening its pain at walking away from the stove or the car. Parts of me wish I could just stand by my kitchen stove and by my car for hours, checking to make sure the stove-top is turned off, and the car doors are locked. And hopefully, ECT will help with the feelings of being contaminated by dirt. When I wash my hands, I go over-board, scratching the bar of soap with my fingernails to get one- hundred per cent clean, washing and rinsing up to 6 or 7 times. I know I have a little own and feel a little skewed perception of cleanliness home, because I have an important fantasize about soap, for Pete’s own sake. This may seem wholly and extremely inappropriate so, but when I was living in a dorm, my sophomore year of college, I was in love with my suitemate’s hand- soap. I used to pump a few dollops of soap onto my eager hands when