OCD and the Role of Nature in My Life by Olivia Przydzial

OCD and the Role of Nature in My Life

by Olivia Przydzial

When I was 6 years old, I was diagnosed with OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder. As a kid, it was just another part of my daily life, and I honestly didn't think much of it. My OCD was embedded in every single part of my life. Over the years, it's morphed into so many different behaviors and fears. Sometimes, it required minimal effort to just push it off to the side and ignore it. In others, I would experience panic attacks so bad that I would shake and vomit. But it was always just another part of my life. I never hated it. I never really associated the 'OCD' everyone's heard of with my own experiences. Why? I never knew anything different. It was just another part of life, no big deal. I expertly concealed my behaviors in public, and I continued to live on.

- - -

I spent my childhood in a large urban city in southern Jersey. Our backyard was about 30 feet by 100 feet and consisted of yellowing grass, a single large oak tree, a wire fence on its perimeter, and baby pine trees growing our neighbor's side of the fence. Almost two years after my sister was born, my beloved oak tree was cut down. I've counted the rings of that stump so many times. I've sung in my own concerts with the stump as my stage. I've performed surgeries on leaves and frogs with that stump as my surgical table. I've watched the stars from that stump, despite the heavy light pollution. I've sat on that stump and really cried for the first few times in my life. I told my sister stories about what once was the oak tree that I so adored.

I moved to Sparta for fourth grade. With the woods in my backyard, I was beyond overwhelmed with the nature before me. I was inexplicably drawn to the natural world, despite the lack of it in my early childhood. From the years I spent in my tiny backyard, to the years I spent exploring the woods, and to the summers I spent every waking minute of in the ocean, nature of all kinds had a special place in my life.

- - -

Over the years, I've discovered that my OCD compulsions were eased to more manageable behaviors when I spent time with nature. If I didn't spend time in the woods or if I didn't go on a walk, my OCD was so much harder to ignore, the fears bubbling in my brain and nearly impossible to push away. The harmony of the imperfections that characterize nature is therapeutic to me because they prove that something so imperfect can remain so balanced and beautiful.

OCD has been and still is such a significant part of my life, even in times where it was just an underlying theme to everything I do, but nature has played a key role in infusing peace and balance into my life.

One Day, One Day by Liv Przydzial

And sometimes I venture to a special place in my mind, a special place that takes me to where I want to be more than anything. 

* * * 

I'm in a Volkswagen camper van, one covered in tie-dye peace sign stickers and painted in colorful shades of the happy colors. Although the van might be blue, we were anything but that. All the windows were down and the pleasantly warm summer breeze drifted by as we wound our way around the Pacific coast. Music blared from the radio, replaying old songs from our childhoods. Everyone knew all the words, and we all laughed as we attempted to reach a high note. Everyone wore a smile on their face, and the slowly setting sun cast golden glows upon our sunkissed faces. The ocean just a hop, skip, and a jump away reflected the rainbow of colors infecting the sky. 

As we climbed our way to the beach, songs by the Beetles blared. Our hands in the air, our wrists crowded from all of the friendship bracelets from old and new friends, we danced our way down local streets. A blur of people milled up and down the boardwalk. The ocean's salty aroma wafted to us, mixing with the chatter of the people and the seemingly distant crashing of the waves. 

Perhaps the stereotype of the recklessness of teenagers was true, but maybe a part of the story was forgotten. Why didn't anyone talk about how liberating it felt to ditch the heavy burden of material things behind and live for the moment? Why didn't anyone talk about how much more meaningful each day was when you lived in and for every second of it? Why didn't anyone ever talk about life as the new, colorful, make-it-what-you-want-it entity that it was, rather than the monotonous, day-after-day blandness that society made it out to be? 

Regardless, as soon as the van rumbled to a stop, I flung open the door and essentially spilled out. My legs like that of a newborn fawn, I stretched from the long ride down here. Even the pavement was covered in sand carried here by a million people, the thought of which made me happy, because I was now a part of this too. I was already in my bathing suit, as where the rest of my friends. We would race to the end of this world and the next together, all of our steps in synch, our feet creating a dust storm behind us, each footstep resonating within the earth. The sand between my toes was so fresh, so raw. I understood what it now felt like to be in touch with nature, myself, and the people around me - all at once, and it was simply exhilarating. We plunged into the warm water, emerging with salty hair and laughs. 


It was liberating, to be swept off your feet and into the sea. The ocean was such an unimaginably huge entity of unknowns, a seemingly endless expanse of secrets that would never be fully understood. Perhaps some would find this terrifying, but I was actually rather entranced. To me, the ocean was full of contradictions. The waves crashed with vigor and anger, while all the life dependant on it hung in a gentle balance that something as simple as a minor breeze could sway out of control. As unknown and scary the depths of the water below us seemed, I felt nothing less than free, with nothing dragging me down but gravity, which didn't even feel as heavy as it normally did. 

* * * 

With our salty lips and soaked hair, we sat side by side on the beach, watching the sun rest atop the horizon. How big was this earth? What was beyond that line? Perhaps I would never know, but the beauty was not in knowing, but in speculating what wonders one could find in such a mysterious thing such as this. 

It was easy to feel satisfied. Feeling exhilarated, wild, and free, and ultimately falling asleep happy all at the same time was a challenge so simple in nature yet so unattainable and out of reach for those afraid to break the chains of the weights on their shoulders. 

As the sun dipped below the cloudless sky and the first stars unmasked themselves, my fingers strummed the ancient strings of my mother's guitar, the vibrations flowing through each of my veins and into everyone else's. We sang whatever songs came to mind and laughed when we all forgot the lyrics and came up with our own. 


* * *

Although I dream of such a mental, physical, and soul-quenching liberation, I know that the value in such a phenomenon is only understood with a background in the opposite. To be free, you need to be in bondage, an unfortunate cycle that nobody has strayed far enough from to break out of. I hope that maybe one day, maybe just one day, I'll be the one to go far enough into the darkness to find the light switch to happiness in everything I do, but for now, the most I can do is at least attempt to be happy in as much as possible, until I reach far enough into the dark to light up this world.