Jack is a clown. Jack is fun. Jack worries he’ll kill someone on a weekly basis. Jack isn’t one hundred percent sure he hasn’t and will ask you about it a million times. It’s all fun and games until my OCD flares up. Then people decide it’s too much. The whole time my ex was breaking up with me, I wanted to say, If you think it’s too much for you, imagine being me! But I didn’t say it. There was no point.
This seems like a pretty good representation of OCD (though I can't say for super sure because I don't have it but) and what I am about to say doesn't negate that fact:
-when mental health is approached this way in books it is borderline exhausting. I understand as someone who is neurodivergent and steadily mentally ill that it is not something you can just turn off. But sometimes books go so fucking ham on it. Like I don't go through every single day thinking "ugh not me doing this again, this is because of my depression. My depression makes me so morose sometimes. Sometimes i just ignore my friends and lay in bed and this is because of my depression." or "I wish I didn't have my ADHD because it's so annoying to myself and others. My ADHD is so quirky to people until it isn't because my ADHD is a prison I will never escape from and everybody I`ve ever been attracted to has hated me for my ADHD." This isn't to say this line of thinking is unrealistic. It's just kind of odd.
-There's this thing to telling vs showing- when the character or authour is TELLING me "This is because of my _. I act like this and say & do _ because of my _." it's kind of removing any nuance to be gained. And there is no room for a reader to flex their literary competence, lliteracy, and inference skills. You can say point blank this character has OCD- but sometimes it's better to SHOW how they struggle rather than just telling me every third paragraph.
-As for the other part of this, it sucks to read characters that are so internally-abelist to themselves. Again, not saying that this is something that doesn't exist, or can't be helped by an amazing support system. But this is a romance book. The book is for the most part- going to be about these two people sharing a romance, not about them going through their respective mental health journeys of healing and acceptance. These people are seemingly at such low points- so clearly not doing well mentally, that I find it alarming that I'm meant to root for them to bang and not go to a therapists office. I feel bad for them. I'm not saying people can't heal one another, and I'm not saying that mentally ill people don't deserve to be in loving romantic relationships when they are struggling. It just all feels like three seperate journeys. And usually in books like these, "healing" and "acceptance" comes from the fact that someone they find hot is like "I love you AND your mental illness/disability" and nobody has EVER said that to them so they're like gunning to jump into bed together.
