What Anne of Green Gables, OCD, and Anxiety Taught Me About Living

Anaïs Nin once said, “Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you.”

I used to take this quote to heart in the way I lived my life. Throughout my childhood my seemingly incessant fears put others on edge. I didn’t take elevators. They could plummet underneath the earth and kill us all. Instead, I’d walk up the stairs and meet my parents at the floor they were on.

When I’d drink water out of the tap I’d imagine cockroaches and tiny rats pouring out of the faucet and start choking on the water. Eventually, I had the same fear when drinking out of a cup.

I had a prayer, about five minutes long, that I compulsively repeated to myself dozens of times throughout the day. It went something like,

“Dear God, help me not to die in a car accident. Help my parents not to die in a car accident. Help me not to get pregnant. Help me not to bite my own tongue off in my sleep. Help me not to be kidnapped. Help me not to be in a nightmare but thinking I’m awake. Help the tribulation not to start…” and on and on.

This went on for years, from the ages of 8 to 11 or so. As you can imagine, it made it hard to make friends. When I thought of the prayer, I had to whisper it to myself, or I believed whole-heartedly that one of those disasters would befall me. No matter how embarrassing it was or how awkward I felt or how much shyness I was already dealing with, the prayer, I believed, would keep me safe. I’d be getting ten minutes into, what I hoped, was a “normal” interaction with another child when suddenly the feeling I had to pray would come on and I’d know that would be the kiss of death to my budding friendship.

The Worlds I Escaped To

During this time, I obsessively read books like Anne of Green Gables or A Little Princess. I felt kinship with characters who were outcasts but who dreamed of a better world. Nowhere was I happier than laying on the floor in my room, listening to oldies on the radio (it was the ‘90s so no Apple Music), and dreaming up stories or reading about new characters.

I’d imagine my future life in great detail; I would be competent, strong, and loved; but I wouldn’t need love. I’d have security, safety, and independence. I’d outrun all my fears by becoming totally self-sufficient and proving to myself that I was totally okay on my own and didn’t need anyone else to approve of me. All those kids who thought I was weird, all the adults who found my fears troublesome, I’d prove to them all that I could get by on my own. I didn’t “need” them.

Fast forward to 2025.

The realization that my OCD might actually be hindering my life even as a “high-functioning” adult came to me as I was driving back from dropping my daughter off at college in Colorado last November. It was a 24 hour drive home and at 1 AM I needed to stop for some rest. After getting my room key at the Holiday Inn I realized I might not have locked my car (I had). I checked the car, came back into the hotel, then realized, maybe I hadn’t “really” locked the car. I checked again. I found myself repeatedly finding reasons to “check” that the car was actually locked and that I’d shut all the doors. I was so tired and wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed and sleep, but fear kept tugging at me. I’m convinced the receptionist at the hotel was getting suspicious.

I don’t have some of the typical habits I associated with OCD: I don’t wash my hands till my skin bleeds or obsessively clean my room, rooting out germs. In fact, my room is usually the messiest place in the house. I’m working there now and as I look around I see notebooks full of half-written stories, poems, or work strategies. I see at least four cups on my side of the room, along with a pile of dirty laundry, some random craft supplies my kids brought in here, and always the stacks of books piled up on nearly every surface.

My therapist years ago suggested I might have OCD, but I hadn’t thought much of it. Now it’s becoming clearer to me as I sift through my memories. Times I counted things just so my mom wouldn’t die (even though one was not at all linked to the other). Times I’d adjust the way I was driving/walking/dressing so some absolutely unrelated disaster wouldn’t befall me. Turns out all of this had been an ongoing pattern in my life but I’d refused to really stare it in the face.

As a child, my weirdness felt like a death sentence. I felt sick to my stomach and would usually vomit before going to social events. Sometimes at social events I would suddenly break down crying and have to run off, because I’d become suddenly, painfully aware of how inadequate and “other” I felt around my peers. I still feel this way sometimes. Unfortunately, the world isn’t filled with red heads who want to tell you scary stories in the woods and be your “bosom friend.”

Learning How to Be Acceptable

Around the age of 15 I realized that if I could “look the part” some of my weirdness would be overlooked. I obsessively dieted, if you can call not eating at all dieting. I obsessed over every inch of my body, every hair on my head, and wouldn’t leave the house unless everything was perfectly in place.

I also learned that being acceptable as a teenager in 2000 meant acting like you didn’t give a damn about anything. Even though I most certainly did.

I was going to be “cool,” “aloof,” “disinterested”, and “beautiful.” I would act like I needed no one, even though inwardly I desperately felt like I needed someone. Anyone. But I would act unflappable and impossible to offend, kind but distant. Totally independent and autonomous.

I was not going to be the person in the Anaïs Nin quote. I wasn’t going to let my anxiety and OCD become “love’s greatest killer.” Maybe if people felt like I needed nothing from them, like there was no way in which they had to “hold me while I drowned” then it would all be okay. Maybe they would actually make space for me or…I don’t know…invite me to a sleepover or a movie.

My thoughts went along the lines of:

If I make myself desirable enough, I won’t be rejected.

If I pretend I don’t need anyone, I can’t drown them.

When Coping Just Changed Costumes

There have been many iterations of that thinking throughout my life that have shown up in different ways. Prayer turned into starvation which turned into workaholism which turned into…I don’t know what now.

The truth is, I’ve reached a moment where all those coping habits have stopped working for me. I deconstructed from my religious beliefs four years ago and am now an agnostic; not sure about any of it. Now, instead of starving myself I have to force myself not to eat indefinitely. Now instead of workaholism that yields results, my workaholism is crashing under the weight of increasing challenges.

A few years ago I made six figures as a writer. I thought I’d had it made. I’d worked decades as a writer for other people’s businesses, and now I was finally doing what I loved: writing about what I was actually interested in (personality types). I was finally secure. My family would eat and sleep comfortably until they were old I thought.

Fast forward to 2026 and now I make about as much as a fast food employee and I’m trying to make my family like rice and beans because groceries are so damn expensive.

I thought work would keep me safe, but hard work can’t control the future past a certain point. There is no safety in being productive enough. There is no safety in never needing anyone. There is no possibility of never failing.

But here’s the thing, even with all that, I still have moments every day where I feel this raw, ridiculous exhilaration at the beauty and magic of life itself. Sure, maybe I have to count the spoons as I’m putting them away now and then because I don’t want the apocalypse to arrive. But how lucky am I that I have spoons?!

Learning to Listen Without Obeying

What I’m slowly learning — and I mean slowly, with a lot of backsliding — is that safety was never something I could manufacture. I just got very good at pretending I could. OCD convinced me that if I stayed vigilant enough, disciplined enough, impressive enough, I could prevent the worst outcomes. That if I stayed one step ahead of fear, it would eventually leave me alone. But fear doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t retire because you’ve been responsible. It doesn’t get quieter because you’ve suffered enough. It just waits for the next opening.

For most of my life, I treated anxiety like a problem to be solved rather than a condition of my version of being human. And every time one strategy stopped working, I found another. I mistook adaptability for healing. I mistook endurance for growth.

The hard truth is that OCD doesn’t actually care what form your compulsions take. It will happily trade prayer for perfectionism, starvation for productivity, devotion for discipline. All it asks is that you keep believing one thing: that it’s your job to make sure nothing goes wrong.

But if there’s one thing we’ve learned since the pandemic, it’s that we can’t really control all of that. And that feels simultaneously horrible and freeing.

Right now I’m in the process of seeing my OCD, my anxiety, as a part of myself that has one of my perspectives. But I have multitudes of perspectives.

My anxiety says, “You won’t be able to pay your bills in two months! Your children will starve! You’ll wind up homeless”

I pause, let myself hear that fear, then I say (in my head) to my anxiety, “Thanks. I know you’re trying to protect me. I’m noticing that there’s a thought telling me that everything is going to fall apart.”

I definitely don’t tell that part of me:

• “That won’t happen.”
• “We’ll be okay.”
• “Everything works out.”
• “I’ve handled worse.”

I don’t see my anxiety as the enemy or something to debate with and “win.” I let it exist alongside me, but I also am trying to let other parts of me exist too. Turns out, reading a lot of Anne of Green Gables didn’t really hurt me growing up. Yes, she once said, “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.” And I’ve certainly felt that before. But she also said, “Dear old world, you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”

Both of these realities can co-exist together. I can be devastated that I had to leave my old home because I could no longer afford it. I can have moments of feeling like a total failure because of my weight, my awkwardness, or my career struggles. But I can also hold another reality in hand: That my heart is still beating and the January air in Georgia still smells crisp and delicious and tinged with autumn.

As Anne Shirley said, “There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I’m such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn’t be half so interesting.”

I love that. And maybe I love being “troublesome.”

When I was younger I thought “weird” defined me. When I was in my ‘30s I thought my ability to work myself into perpetual exhaustion defined me. Made me worthy. Safe. Good enough.

I have an anxious part. I have a part that wants guarantees and backup plans and certainty before it takes a step. But I also have a part that still wants to tell stories, still believes meaning can exist even when outcomes are unclear. A part of me that can put down the fear for a while and sit by the creek, being in complete rapture at the beauty of life itself. A part of me that can comfort my own kids anxieties because I’ve had decades of practice dealing with my own.

None of those parts need to be eliminated for me to live a good life. A lucky life. A life where I’m loved, in spite of still being “weird.”

Last year I watched a Korean show, Weak Hero, where the protagonist (an INTJ) is fighting with every inch of his energy to protect the people he loves. People think he’s “weird,” “unusual,” and a loner. There are many times he wants to give up, times he wants to stay away from people and avoid relationships because they could cause pain. But in the end, even with the risk of failure, loss, grief, and abandonment, he still gives everything he has to the struggle of life.

Stories like this exist to remind us that the struggle and pain and anxiety (and, sometimes, the OCD-ness) of life don’t mean we should give up. They also exist to show us that even quirky, weird, or unusual people who don’t fit in are not “bad” or “lost.”

I keep coming back to another line from Anne of Green Gables:

“We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self denial, anxiety and discouragement.”

Anxiety shows up whether we invite it or not. The real price is living anyway. Choosing to keep moving toward what matters without guarantees. Letting hope, love, creativity, and connection exist alongside uncertainty instead of waiting for certainty to arrive first.

Maybe this is what growth looks like for me now: not kicking anxiety out (that’s impossible), but refusing to let it collect interest. Not feeling like I have to control a hundred things that I absolutely cannot control.

I don’t know how everything will turn out. I don’t know what I’ll have to give up or take on in the years ahead. I only know that I don’t want to keep paying with my aliveness.

If there’s a price to be paid — and there is — I want it to be the honest one. The one that comes from staying present, staying open, and staying in relationship with a world that is beautiful, precarious, and unfinished.

Dear old world, you are very lovely.
And for now, I am still glad to be alive in you.

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