Sharing a personal experience from a book I am writing

Recently I have working on writing a fiction book based partially on my own personal experiences. While writing this book, I tried to incorporate scenes that played a key role in my development as a person in an authentic manner. This scene is of particular importance to me, and I'll admit I struggled writing this one, partly due to trying to balance my own story with that of the character's- and I wanted to share it and get some feedback.

Here, you can see Ana (the main character) talk about some unique struggles she had in childhood:

It was around the time Ana was 9 that she started really thinking she was different from the other students around her. You see, magical beings are not plagued by the typical maladies that human populations usually have to carry around with them. Magical researchers are not quite clear why this is. Some hypothesized that it was because of the especially high selective pressures in populations of magical beings to any malady at all because of the extremely sensitive and finicky nature of kwant. According to this hypothesis, any change in mental condition or physical condition of the person performing magic could cause the magic to backfire, resulting in potentially fatal consequences for the magical being. Another hypothesis was that the same genetic mutations that gave magical beings the ability to control kwant also resulted in abnormally precise genetic mechanisms when it came to replicating DNA such that mutations never occurred in the first place or DNA repair molecules that were especially effective such that whenever mutations did occur, they would be immediately fixed. Either way, the end result was the same, magical beings did not suffer from any mental or physical conditions.

But this wasn’t the case for Ana. Starting at the age of 6, she started having strange “urges” she would come to call them to do things she absolutely did not want to do. And if she didn’t, an irrational voice in her head told her something bad would happen. This started as an urge to jump off a balcony in a house she was staying at temporarily for vacation. Now obviously she didn’t do it, since she was still alive but she came close enough times before forcing herself away from it that she for the remainder of the vacation she had been taking, stayed far away from the balcony, not even daring to look at it should she have the mind to do something irreparable to herself. 

Little did she know however, these “urges” would come in full force just a few years later in different forms and torment her mind for 5 more years before slowly dying out and giving her a good 4 years of respite before starting again. When it started in full force at the young age of 9, she had the urge to yell out a “bad word” over and over again. Luckily, at such a young age, and living fairly sheltered, this “bad word” was not all that bad. But bad enough to some people she supposes. Anyway, this particular urge to do so was not constant throughout Ana’s day. It only occurred when she was most anxious to not say the word. This was because in hoping really hard she wouldn't, she would inevitably start thinking about it, and the urge would come, telling her if she didn’t something bad would happen (you will notice this particular pattern occurring rather often). Unfortunately for Ana, this was during school, because obviously, you can’t shout bad words in school or you would get in trouble. It was especially bad during times when students were expected to stay quiet (such as during movies) and lessened during louder times when her voice could be masked by the sound of an entire classroom. It was practically unnoticeable at home, when she had no anxiety whatsoever about whether anyone heard her- because they were her family and they wouldn’t care. Though it still did happen, the urges were considerably less frequent. So Ana abided by the urges, even though they knew they were irrational. Except, she tried to hide it as best she could. For one, she would not actually shout it, but make her brain think she shouted it by constricting her throat a bit so that when she did, the volume in actuality would be tempered. For another, she would do her best to make it sound like she was clearing her throat or coughing by saying it as fast as she could and extremely suddenly, with the shifts in amplitudes being similar to one that would naturally occur in a cough. For the most part, her teachers ignored her as well as her classmates. Except for one fateful (or not so much in the end) day when a teacher asked if she was all right. Ana was so scared that she would get in trouble that she couldn’t open her mouth to speak for a second. She was about to lie to the teacher and tell her that her throat was sore, but then the student next to her stepped in for her and told the teacher “Ana’s just clearing her throat”. At the time, Ana had felt an intense gratitude towards the girls for defending her on her behalf. Though the girl did not know at the time, this particular urge would last for at least another year, stopping right before her transition into middle school. During this time, Ana felt extreme anxiety about going to school for this very reason- she didn’t want anyone to know or for her to get in trouble. 

Unfortunately for Ana, these urges did not come alone and were always paired with others. This pattern would go on for another three years until high school when it began to die down enough so that she was fully present during classes. It didn’t disappear entirely at this time, but it did not affect her quality of life as much as it had in her formative years. Throughout all these years and out of the many urges she has had, she noticed one pattern- that it seemed as if “something” knew the thing she least wanted to do and forced her to do it. Eventually she came to realize that these “things” were called intrusive thoughts by normal people. And that it was fairly normal to have them from time to time. But what separated normal people from her was the repetitiveness of these thoughts, the impact it has on one’s quality of life, and ability to control themselves in deciding to perform or not perform this intrusive thought. For normal people, they occur less frequently and they are easily able to brush the thought away. Though unfortunately for Ana, this was not the case for her. If she were separate these urges into categories it would be category 1: urges that caused her to physically harm herself or make her physically uncomfortable, category 2: urges that made her embarrass herself in front of peers or get in trouble- this falls into breaking societal rules, and category 3: the type of urges one typically thinks about such as having highly specific routines. Unfortunately (again), for Ana, her urges usually occurred in category 1 and 2 and with her later life being plagued by category 3 (though that she could easily handle). Specific examples for category 1 include the urge to touch fire from a stove. This particular case started when she first moved houses, causing her to not use a stove or cook for over two years before it ended when she moved into a different house. Before this, she would typically cook for her family at least once in a while. Another example would be touching the water boiler or other similarly burning hot things. This urge she would typically indulge in, touching it for only a millisecond before pulling away. This was enough to hurt, but not enough to burn herself as she would quickly learn. A more benign example would be the urge to twist her body into uncomfortable positions where she would feel pain. This, she frequently did in her formative years. Examples of category 2 included the example earlier. Another one would be putting her body into weird but not painful poses in front of people. This usually would be rolling her head back extremely dramatically. Another example that could fall into either category 1 or 2 would be scratching the wall with her fingernails. This was one of the least pleasant urges due to the sound and vibrations coursing through her body as a result of the scratching against the drywall. A category 3 example would just be extremely specific night time routines when she was older. Among other less notable examples that she would later confide to an adult. 

This practically ended once she graduated high school, and though there was no cure for this particular malady (as she learned very early on through the web), there are periods of troughs and peaks, and that just happened to be a trough.

I encourage readers to share any meaningful thoughts they might have after reading this excerpt.

Here, I have included some questions that can be used to guide the discussion (but no one is limited to):

• Do you think this is realistic? Why or why not? Feel free to include articles or research studies.

• Has anyone else experienced anything similar?

• Is there anything you feel can be added to the excerpt that would clarify things?

• Are there any points of confusion, inaccuracies, or inconsistencies?

• Assuming this is true, what would be the implications of this, and do you have any solutions to suggest that would benefit everybody?

And because this is my first blog post, I want to make it clear that the comments section on my blog post should reflect a respectful environment (to ALL opinions). Because of this I expect everyone to follow a set of rules laid out here:

1. There will be no hate speech or threats of any kind (If you're starting to feel heated, I suggest closing the blog post and replying when in a calmer state of mind)

2. In the case that I wait too long before deleting an offensive comment, I urge anyone involved in the discussion to not reply to said comment (regardless of whether a good point was made or not) in order to discourage such behavior and maintain a healthy environment. If they want to contribute to the discussion, they can resubmit their comment under a more respectful tone.

Lastly, I want to thank everyone for agreeing to follow the rules I have laid out and for giving your time to either reading this post or engaging meaningfully in the discussion.