When I was a small kid I started to have fears that my family was going to die. I'm not sure what triggered this because I think I remember having to count things pretty much as far back as I can remember anything at all, but I know that everything intensified a lot when my family moved. The move made me feel like I had no control over what was going around me because I wanted desperately to stay in my city, which I felt very much to be my home. Shortly after the move I began to say my prayers at night hundreds of times over because I thought God was going to take my family away if I didn't enunciate clearly enough and I could never enunciate quite clearly enough to be sure that "He" would hear me. Also shortly after the move, I started to have to check all my toys and arrange them in a certain way, and do everything in 5's (the reason for that number is pretty clear – there were 5 people in my immediate family).

A year or so later, I stopped having compulsions altogether. However, probably in part because of the OCD and also because of other factors, I fell into a depression that I have still not recovered from and that frequently resulted in my desperation to end the suffering through suicide. Now, I have confronted my depression with everything I've got. I'm asking myself all the difficult questions and have let all my love ones in on what I'm going through, I've identified unhealthy habits and changed them, I have been on and stayed on medication, and I've even moved to a different country for a while to have a new and rewarding experience. Most of all I, and this part is just luck, I've found a girl who I've fallen in love with. She supports me so much and we have so much fun together, I love the person that she is and I very much want the relationship that we have.

However, things have started to take a turn for the worst. My girlfriend is studying in a different country, and the separation, combined with my own recent drastic change in environment (which I should have known would have been difficult from past experiences), has resulted in a resurfacing of OCD. I now obsess over my girlfriend's past partners, and even though I love her and don't care about her past, the images of her with other guys have begun to constitute a constant slidewhow running through my head. Some days, I literally see these images every minute that I am awake, and feel like vomitting the entire time. It is truly horrible. I can't eat, or sleep, and am seeing a new psychiatrist soon (number 10 for me). The images disturb me so much that I become desperate and begin to ask my girlfriend for details about her sexual history, which only make things worse of course. I have also resorted to isolating myself from her, and have started to feel things that I know are only the result of the continuous obsessions, like disgust and anger.

Does anybody understand what I'm going through? Are there any helpful words that anyone can offer? I'm grateful for the attention in advance. Shit sucks so damn bad right now. I finally thought I was able to start seeing a happiness that I felt I had been permanently restriced from but I'm being dragged back into misery.