Because We Are Bad: OCD and A Girl Lost in Thought

I was given this book by Harper Collins in exchange for an honest review.

Today's post is on Because We Are Bad: OCD and A Girl Lost in Thought by Lily Bailey. It is 272 pages long and is published by Harper Collins. The cover is yellow with XXX's on it with the title in between them. The intended reader is someone who is interested in memoirs and OCD. There is mild foul language, no sex, and no violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back of the book- Written with the indelible power of Girl, Interrupted, Brain on Fire, and Reasons to Stay Alive, a lyrical, poignant memoir by a young woman about her childhood battle with debilitating obsessive compulsive disorder, and her hard-won journey to recovery.
By the age of thirteen, Lily Bailey was convinced she was bad. She had killed someone with a thought, spread untold disease, and ogled the bodies of other children. Only by performing an exhausting series of secret routines could she make up for what she’d done. But no matter how intricate or repetitive, no act of penance was ever enough.
Beautifully written and astonishingly intimate, Because We Are Bad recounts a childhood consumed by obsessive compulsive disorder. As a child, Bailey created a second personality inside herself—"I" became "we"—to help manifest compulsions that drove every minute of every day of her young life. Now she writes about the forces beneath her skin, and how they ordered, organized, and urged her forward. Lily charts her journey, from checking on her younger sister dozens of times a night, to "normalizing" herself at school among new friends as she grew older, and finally to her young adult years, learning—indeed, breaking through—to make a way for herself in a big, wide world that refuses to stay in check.
Charming and raw, harrowing and redemptive, Because We Are Bad is an illuminating and uplifting look into the mind and soul of an extraordinary young woman, and a startling portrait of OCD that allows us to see and understand this condition as never before.

Review- This is a harrowing look into the mind of someone living with OCD. Bailey gives an honest and heartbreaking account of someone in the grips of a often misunderstood mental illness. Bailey started her rituals at a very young age, about three years old. We follow her as her shadow self grows more and more powerful until Bailey can no longer hide what is going on in her mind. Then we are with her has she tries to not deal with her illness but at the same time try to do something to manage it better because she wants to please her therapist. Bailey gives the reader an inside look into her mind and thought process without hiding the things that she feels are shameful. The writing is good, feels very honest, and it ends with some hope that Bailey can have something of a normal life. It does not have a pretty end but when dealing this something like OCD there never is; but there is hope.

I give this memoir a Four out of Five stars.