I’m nervous as I walk to Twilight’s castle today.
My wings are twitching, muscles tensed, and my tail is swishing back and forth in threes.
Focus on all of the threes. Swish, swish, swish, stop. Swish, swish, swish, stop. Swish, swish, swish, stop. Good, good, good.
I’m scanning for more threes as I walk. There’s three cakes in the window of Sugarcube Corner. My muscles loosen at that. There’s three clouds grouped together in the sky too. I relax further. Good. I want to get rid of this ball of nerves that’s in my stomach like some gigantic ticking time bomb of anxiety.
The image that accompanies that, the idea of an actual ticking time bomb inside of me makes me tense again, and I shut my eyes to try and make it go away but all I can see is me exploding all over the town, with a limb here or there, and the horrified shrieks of my friends and the tears of my parents and-
New thought, new thought, new thought!
I open my eyes again.
Focus on threes. Focus on threes. Focus on threes.
A group of three fillies playing jumprope. A triad of animals chasing one another through the street. Three swishes of my tail. Three flicks of my ears.
Good, good, good. This is good.
I’m walking in threes, too. I just now noticed that. Three hoof steps, then a pause. Step, step, step, pause. Step, step, step, pause. Step, step, step, pause. The odd rhythm of it is comforting to me.
I have to find threes as much as I can. Every day, at least one thing has to be in threes. On bad days it’s better if I find more threes. It’s best if I find threes in multiples of three. That’s when I know it’s going to be okay. I tried once to go without finding threes and had an anxiety attack that nearly caused me to pass out, and did make me puke. I learned that day to never do that again. I always have to find the threes. I know that now.
I hate living like this. I hate the bad thoughts that infest my brain like a plague, hate that I need the number three so much, hate that I always have to move to escape my thoughts because there are some days when I really want to nap. Most of all I hate the sad and confused look my friends give me when I have to go suddenly because of the thoughts and they feel like I’m blowing them off or not interested.
If they knew the truth, they wouldn’t think that at all. In fact, I’m almost positive they’d think much worse of me for it.
I’ve made a name for myself as Ponyville’s most awesome flier, a Wonderbolt, and a totally cool, totally chill pony. I worked hard to make that true. I made myself a mask and I hid behind it, because I didn’t want anypony to see what was underneath. If I didn’t like the me underneath, I was sure they wouldn’t either.
I can hear my stomach growling and making odd noises. In this state of constant anxiety, I hear and feel everything more now. I hear my stomach rumbling and making noises because I haven’t eaten yet, and I want to tell it to shut up because it’s not doing any of it in threes, but it just won’t stop. I’m so frustrated I want to fly as fast as I can to get away from the noise, but the image in my head- of me being so distracted by the noise that I fly into Twilight’s Castle and break all my teeth lying there in a bloody heap, is keeping me on the ground, even though I am walking much faster.
Stop thinking, stop thinking, stop thinking.
But I can’t stop thinking. The only time it ever stops is when I sleep, and even then those horrific intrusive thoughts get in there too and make me wake up screaming. And then my thoughts get going again, until I’m falling down the rabbit hole and can never find my way out. I rock back and forth on the bed in threes, and I listen to the squeak of the spring in the mattress as it chimes in to try and cover up my crying. The thoughts are a burden I carry, and I cannot stop them.
The thoughts are part of the reason why I hate ponies touching my hooves. The things I have seen those hooves do in those thoughts… They could strangle a stallion or punch a mare or buck a foal without any remorse at all. I never told anypony this, not even Fluttershy, but part of the reason I loved flying so much as a filly was because my hooves didn’t have to touch the ground and be close to other ponies.
Nopony understands the idea that we don’t control our own thoughts. Cutie Marks are our destiny, what we’re meant to do, so it follows that everything was set up to lead us to that point. Our thoughts, ideas, talents- it’s all in somepony’s plan. I know for sure I don’t control my thoughts- they control me. If I did control my thoughts, I would pick ones way less freaky than the ones I have. Fluttershy has made a point of telling me over and over again that I’m not my thoughts, but honestly, I’m not sure if I believe her, because if I wasn’t my thoughts, why do I even have them? I mean, I had thoughts about joining the Wonderbolts, and here I am, flying with them. I have thoughts about remaining loyal to my friends and I do that, so I don’t know how I’m not my thoughts.
“I think, therefore I am.” I dunno who the hay said that, but it couldn’t be truer. I read it in one of Twilight’s books once. I totally relate to that pony.
The castle of friendship is coming closer now, Shiny and new. I think about the points of the tower, how they rose up from the ground out of that chest we all unlocked with our keys. And then, through a bunch of thoughts that aren’t mine at all, I’m thinking about how if I was flying over that and got stuck by one of those pointy towers, I might die.
New thought, new thought, new thought.
The door is close now, within reach. I just have to raise my hoof and knock on it. Like this is an ordinary day. Like this is a totally insignificant little meeting I’m going to and it’s not going to completely wreck my life. Like I’m normal.
Knock on the door. Don’t be a coward. Knock.
My legs are all stiff inside. They do that sometimes when I’m having a really bad day and I always feel like a puppet those days because of how my movements all feel forced and jerky. My hoof seems to weigh a million pounds today. I can practically hear the air whizzing past it as I bring it up and knock three times on the door, in sets of three. The sound is so loud it hurts my ears, and I’m so dizzy with my worry I want to pass out, but I can’t. I made a promise to Fluttershy that I would do this, and I know she’s in there waiting to help me. I can’t let her down. Bile is coming up the back of my throat and I swallow it, but it leaves a bitter taste on my tongue.
The door opens, and I nearly shoot fifty feet in the air with my nerves. It’s Twilight, smiling at me.
“Rainbow! Come on in!” She says, in a totally normal voice that makes me want to tear my mane out.
“Hey Twi.” I say, trying to seem casual and keep my mask on, even though I am so terrified that I’m pretty sure it isn’t working. I walk in, feeling stiff and tense all the way through.
She leads me to the map room, and I’m sitting in my seat before I know it. I don’t think I know how I actually got here. My brain is in this other place right now, where other ponies’ minds can’t go. I call it the rabbit hole, because it doesn’t have an end. I go down further and further until I can’t get out. My body got me here on autopilot, and my brain is somewhere in the rabbit hole, just barely functional enough to go through small talk.
The throne in the map room, the feeling of cold, lifts me out of the rabbit hole. I’m here, and Fluttershy is here, and Twilight is here too. I have to remind myself that this is real, it’s happening. This isn’t some crazy thought of mine I’m locked into. This is happening.
“Fluttershy said you had something you wanted to talk with me about?” Twilight asks.
It takes me a second to pull out of the rabbit hole completely, and find me again. I start nodding. “That’s right, yeah."
“Well, I’m all ears.”
I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. I practiced a speech a million times in my head. I’ve been practicing it for days. I’ve let it swirl around in my brain, only letting it be stopped by the intrusive thoughts that drown it out. But it resumes, it picks up again. It’s been three days since my breakdown at Fluttershy’s, and I have had nothing but that speech and my bad thoughts in there since, and yet right now, right here, it leaves me. For once, I don’t have any thoughts, and I can’t even enjoy it.
Twilight is cocking her head to the side, like she’s expecting me to say something.
Say something, say something, say something.
It’s the first thought to come into my head. It came in threes. I want to do that, but I don’t know what to say.
Suddenly, there’s a butter yellow hoof on mine. I nearly jump. But it feels familiar so I don’t, and I look up and Fluttershy is there, nodding her encouragements and smiling at me. Something inside me loosens, and then it’s like everything comes back. I know what to say now.
“Twilight, do you ever feel like you have thoughts that aren’t yours?”
Twilight looks thoughtful. “I suppose so. Not often, but sometimes.”
“I know for sure my thoughts aren’t mine, Twilight. I have really bad thoughts sometimes, and they don’t leave, so I try and make them leave by looking at groups of threes or moving faster or swishing my tail. And I want the thoughts to stop, and to just leave me alone, but they don’t leave. I’m always afraid I’m going to act on them, and I feel so awful when they happen. I don’t know what this is, or what to do about it, and I need a hoof to figure it out."
Twilight looks at me for a minute. I’m cringing now, eyes shut, waiting for the total dissolution of our friendship.
I screwed up, I screwed up, I screwed up. She knows, It’s over, I’m ruined.
I’m braced for impact. I know it’s coming. I’m waiting for it. But it’s quiet. So quiet, that I dare to open my eyes.
Twilight is looking at me with a mixture of her thinking face and… Empathy? Slowly, I uncurl, and my spine untwists itself.
“OCD.” She says quietly.
I look up sharply. “What?”
“OCD. It’s an acronym for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It’s where you have bad thoughts and do things to try and stop them. I’ve had it for years. There’s a bunch of different subtypes of it, but you sound like you’re having Purely Obsessional Compulsive Disorder. It’s called Pure-O. And with therapy, it’s totally treatable.”
I want to say something, but the only thought in my head is that it has a name.
“It’s real? It’s not in my head?” I’m asking this without my brain’s permission.
“It’s not in your head.” She promises. “I have a different form of it, so I’ve done a lot of research on it.”
“So you… You feel it too?”
“I do. And you’re not alone, Rainbow Dash.”
My head is never a quiet place to be, and this moment is no exception. My head is swirling with so many thoughts and feelings that for once, I can’t latch onto just one. My feelings are so strong right now I don’t even know what they are. They’re flying past me faster than Spitfire did at the first show she was in that I attended.
Suddenly, I’m jumping across the table and tackling Twilight in a hug, sobbing my eyes out.
“Thank you.” I say. It’s not even in threes. “You gave it a name.”
Twilight hugs me tightly, maybe more for her own reassurance than mine. “You’re welcome. I know you can beat this.”
I’m smiling. I know the rabbit hole will probably consume me again, that it has to because this won’t go away on it’s own. But for a moment, I dared to believe her.