I’m a bit of a hypochondriac. I seriously am. Ever since I got diagnosed with dyslexia, I couldn’t stop diagnosing myself with stuff. Hypochondria including. Not in a negative way, though.

Diagnosis provides me with a sense of relief. I love having a name for that which I go through. There’s a consolation in it: “it’s ok to be such, there’s other people in the world who have such condition” this is the message I seek for in diagnosis. Not a medication, not a cure, but a sort of a “permission” to act in odd ways or to feel certain things that ‘normal’ people don’t seem to be feeling. A permission to be a bit of a weirdo. A permission to be myself, really.

Compulsive Obsessive Writing Disorder appeared in my head out of nowhere. I thought of it as of a bit of a joke which appropriately describes my relationship with writing. I write. For no cause and no reason. I don’t even enjoy it much, to be totally honest. I always thought that writing is such a cowardly way to deal with the world. When, instead of properly living, you just gaze and wonder. You ponder upon things until those thoughts that appear in your head become overwhelming and they need to be placed somewhere. Normally, on a piece of paper at hand which sometimes happens to be a box of cereals or a piece of kitchen roll.

For a very long time I was trying to escape writing. I full-heartedly despised it – and yet I couldn’t help being drawn to it. Obsessively drawn to it. I don’t think that people who haven’t got this ‘condition’ (and, it turns out, there is such a condition) will be able to fully understand what it really means. When, instead of taking an active part in the world around, you spend a good chunk of time in your head. Wandering off to places in your mind. Analysing the world around, making mental notes, observing tedious details and coming up with terms, phrases and taglines that would constantly revolve in your head. Which makes me never quite properly present in whatever I do. So I write in a hope that one day I will write everything out and there’ll be nothing left in my head which will enable me to simply just ‘be’. Writing was supposed to be a sort of a cure, but it’s become more like an addiction – the more I write, the more I seem to be coming up with stuff to write about. I can never quite quit.

So I googled it. I googled my most recent diagnosis ‘coz who could know the answers better than the almighty google. It appears, there is such a condition. There’s a name for that too. Hypergraphia they call it –  a behavioral condition characterized by the intense desire to write. Another condition to add to the list which puts me at peace. It’s legit to be posting this piece.