Have obsessive-compulsive disorder

IDON’T remember ever not having obsessive-compulsive disorder. As a child I would be checking under the bed and in drawers to make sure there were no monsters. Obviously, lots of kids check under the bed, but with me it would be going on all night.

When my sister was born I developed this sense of responsibility for her. I would constantly be running upstairs and checking her heartbeat, making sure she was breathing. As a child and a teenager I was so overwhelmed by my OCD that I had no conception of how poor my quality of life was.

It’s weird how able I was to continue the appearance of being normal. My obsession was so much to do with being liked and appearing normal, so if anyone had noticed then that would have been a failure of my OCD. People with OCD often have intrusive thoughts such as “I could kill that person” or “I want that person to die” or often awful sexual intrusive thoughts about doing something inappropriate.

Everyone has intrusive thoughts, but not everyone responds to them the way people with OCD do. You’ve probably had the thought: “Oh, what if I jumped on that train track?” But you don’t then have to start pushing yourself against the wall to make sure it doesn’t happen.

The average time taken for people with OCD to get help is 12 years and a lot of that is because there is so much shame. “Why am I having these thoughts? Why am I this awful person?”

OCD is a massive, unrelenting slog. There came this moment where I just felt fundamentally incompatible with life and everyone – myself included – would be better off if this whole thing was ended. I know this will sound difficult for people to believe but before I had that moment where I did try to take my life I didn’t realise that anyone cared. Seeing how much that devastated my family and my friends was a real incentive to get better. I’m quite proud of myself for how things did turn out. I did manage to turn things around. That wasn’t just down to me. I had great family support and support from my doctor. But some of it was down to me.

Modelling wasn’t something I intended to get into. I had been scouted in the past but I wasn’t really interested. But I thought: “Why don’t I do this?” Staying better from OCD