I Spent My Whole Life Trying to Pass a Test That Never Existed

on perfectionism and prophecies

I remember lying in bed as a kid replaying the day like I was on trial, trying to figure out which parts of me had committed crimes. I came to the same verdict every time: it wasn’t what I did—it was me. My ego was a greasy rat scurrying around in my brain—selfishness incarnate—and I was forced to listen to it all day.

I didn’t have language for what I was doing. But it was very obvious that no one around me lived like I did. No one else acted like there was a tiger in every room. Everyone seemed so much more comfortable inside themselves, and I worried I was born without something they had been given. Meanwhile, I was constantly drowning in shame over my thoughts, which—spoiler alert—were just regular human thoughts.

I didn’t know I was autistic. But I knew the world felt wrong—too loud, too sharp, too disharmonious and ungodly. I knew most people and environments felt overwhelming and evil. I knew I was different in a way I couldn’t explain. And I believed with all my might that there was something shameful about my composition, like God had felt the need to test me.

As if that weren’t confusing enough, my family became Mormon when I was 6. If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you give a perfectionist child a religion that treats thought crimes like actual crimes, I can tell you: nothing good. I already had a mind built for spotting danger everywhere, and I absorbed everything I could about the church’s values and tried to execute them flawlessly. I began believing I had to outsmart my body at every turn, that I had to analyze every single one of my physical impulses.

I thought thoughts mattered just as much as my actions—that God had access to my brain and was taking notes. As a hyperempathetic human being, all I wanted was to be in service to people. I thought the path of erasing myself in the service of others was the only way I’d ever be allowed to enjoy anything without punishment. Of course I was watching myself. Of course I was trying to catch the bad parts before they could surface. Of course I believed that the ego I couldn’t get rid of would disqualify me from love.

I only recently learned that this has a name.

Scrupulosity OCD is what happens when a brain that’s wired to spot danger starts treating thoughts and moral mistakes as threats. In environments that emphasize purity and constant self-monitoring, that alarm system turns inward. Your own mind becomes something you have to police in order to stay safe. You become both the prisoner and the guard, and somehow you’re still getting written up for crimes.

Reading about it was a life-altering moment. It felt so fucking good to be

seen.

* * *

When I was sixteen, I fell in love at first sight. It was the only time the fascist in my head was overpowered, and it was the first time I felt happy. My partner became my everything in an instant, and I stayed addicted. He was my only connection to peace.

He was the first human I wanted to be affectionate with. With him I could soften completely. I didn’t have to be the perfect person I thought I had to be in front of everyone else. My body learned what it felt like to be held without being evaluated.

Looking back, I think this is part of why spirituality later became so magnetic to me. (By the way, I guess what I’m into is often referred to as New Age spirituality.) I was looking for that same feeling—some presence that would hold me without judging me. Because my constant inner monitor kept me absolutely miserable, and I was desperate for an off switch.

My boyfriend and I centered our lives around each other for the next decade.

When I was twenty, everything cracked open during a cacao ceremony a friend hosted at our house. I didn’t know at the time, but I experienced a kundalini awakening. From that day, I’ve been way more aware of all the energies surrounding me. Everything became more vivid. For the first time, I felt plugged into something vast and alive, something that didn’t seem to be measuring me.

I was on a high for a couple days. Then I started feeling sick. And kept getting sicker and sicker.

Looking back, I think my body was already on the edge—chronically stressed, undiagnosed, barely holding it together. The awakening wasn’t the cause; it was the final stressor that pushed everything over the cliff.

There are many probable causes. There are all these comorbidities that come with being autistic—turns out the brain difference comes with a whole constellation of bonus health issues. I also have the MTHFR gene, which makes me more vulnerable to things like mold (and we definitely had mold in the basement, because of course we did). The kundalini awakening had stirred up a lifetime of trauma. And my nervous system, after twenty years of trying to erase itself, finally just... couldn’t do it anymore.

It felt like whatever had been holding everything together finally let go. My organs started doing wacky shit—and that’s the technical term LOL. I felt so weak that I lived mostly in bed for a couple years. My brain felt poisoned. I was beyond terrified.It was some kind of autoimmune condition—I was in bad pain all day, every day, and I never did get it diagnosed. But I didn't know that this was happening because my nervous system was overwhelmed.

But I didn’t know that this was happening because my nervous system was overwhelmed.

The story my brain told me? I fucked up in the most vile, foolish way. I was given something precious and I wasn’t innocent enough with it. I hadn’t been careful enough. I hadn’t eaten right, meditated enough, protected myself enough. I believed my disease was the consequence for not doing life the right way—like I’d failed the test.

So I couldn’t help but correct myself even more obsessively. Every flare meant I had failed again. I lived inside this loop of shame and hypervigilance, convinced that if I could just figure out the right combination of discipline and purity, I would start to heal. If I could just

be good enough, my body would stop punishing me.

It’s almost funny now how backwards I had it. The more I tried to control everything, the sicker I got. The perfectionism wasn’t the cure—it was gasoline on the fire.

But it was not very funny then.

* * *

I was so sick and hopeless for so long that I wished I could die. I was desperate for relief from the absolute insanity inside me that wasn’t actually chaos at all. It was a structure. A pattern I picked up in my youth that I didn’t realize I should question.

In that wreckage, spirituality was my only source of hope. Reiki, plant medicine, energy work—they spoke in a language that said my body wasn’t the enemy, that maybe something beautiful was moving through me. Obviously I yearned for a God who didn’t punish, and a universe that didn’t treat my suffering like a test.

Then quarantine hit and our lives imploded. My partner started drinking heavily. When he drank, he became a different person, and life turned into pure hell. It felt like the end of the world. Even though I’d planned to be with him forever since I was sixteen, things got so bad that I broke up with him and moved out.

He begged me to stay and promised to change. I took him back after three weeks. Things got a little better for a while. Then the drinking came back, and I fell apart all over again.

Though we were living together again, I felt as isolated as I’d always been before him. My autistic brain doesn’t instinctively reach out to people, and I didn’t have a community. Mostly I spent my days alone with my own thoughts—which, if you’ve been paying attention, is a dangerous neighborhood for me to hang out in unsupervised.

I started bingeing on spiritual creators online, trying to find something to hold onto, a framework to understand my life, a story that didn’t hinge on “my body is failing and I don’t know why.”

At my lowest point, I dropped hundreds of dollars on a tarot reading. The moment I saw the cute blonde psychic on that Zoom call, I felt like I was interfacing with my destiny. Her energy was intoxicating. When she started to speak, I felt a tingling at the crown of my head. I’d heard someone say once that your crown chakra tingles when truth hits, so I was convinced that was what I was experiencing. I guess that’s what you do when you’re desperate—you reach for any framework that makes the random feel meaningful.

I didn’t share anything about myself, and the reading blew my mind. How could she describe my life with such depth? How could she reference the dreams I’d never told anyone about? She genuinely knew things—I’m not sure how, and it doesn’t really matter now. What matters is that those accurate details made everything else she said feel equally true, even the parts that were pure speculation.

She told me to leave my partner. She told me my twin flame was coming. She told me I’d soon live the life I’d secretly dreamed of—serving plant medicine, doing Reiki, being guided by a mentor who would finally show me how to live.

My biggest wish has always been to have a guide—someone who’s infinitely patient, someone who could see me and tell me what to do. The fact she somehow “knew” those dreams I’d never voiced felt like proof that someone could be psychic, and that it must come from God.

It felt like everything finally clicked. The pain wasn’t random, and I wasn’t broken or corrupted. I was

chosen.

So I ended things with my partner again. I gave the psychic all my money. I rearranged my life around this promise. Looking back, so much of what I did was wild. Objectively unhinged. And the destiny she sold me never happened. The man she said was my soulmate was never going to be mine.

I spent a year deeply sick and utterly alone, without the only person who ever made life feel survivable.

What I see now is how airtight that whole world was. Every outcome confirmed the system:

When I was failing, it meant I hadn’t surrendered enough. If nothing happened, it meant I needed more faith. If I doubted, it meant my ego was blocking destiny. There was no exit that didn’t look like moral failure. It was an immaculately designed, perfect trap.

* * *

I spent a year and a half on my own. I even moved to Peru to do ayahuasca ceremonies, desperately hoping plant medicine would heal my body. And I stayed there pursuing the twin flame prophecy—chasing someone who was never meant to be mine. When none of it materialized, I finally gave up.

A few months later, I got it in my gut to call my ex. I felt such shame—like it meant I was weak, like I was reaching for something poisonous, like I was failing the spiritual test.

He told me he was sober.

THANK GOD.

We reunited. And once I had a real person to love again, I had no need for prophecies. Having someone to sleep beside, and someone who really knew me made all that psychic shit seem silly. My body was like, ‘Oh right, this is what I actually needed.’

We’ve been together since. We’re mostly very happy. A couple years after reuniting, we had a daughter.

* * *

Yesterday, I saw a creator I follow offering a giveaway for a spiritual reading and thought, why not? Then a part of me hesitated—I’ve learned that those can mess with me—but I was drawn by the promise of dopamine, that little hit of “maybe this means something.”

The reading arrived in the form of an email, and I started holding my breath when I saw how long it was. Pages and pages of dense text. As I read, I was hit with nausea, dread, that familiar drop in my stomach.

And in addition to the physical response, something else was happening: I was believing it. It was telling me all the truth about my life I was too scared or in denial to admit.

It spoke of tests, cycles closing, pivotal choices, and a relationship ending. A harsh breakup at the end of the year. Lessons I must pass or repeat. The core message: the romantic relationship I’m in isn’t right for me. I need to learn how to be on my own. It would be painful, but it was the right thing to do. And in a few months, a new romance would come my way. It told me I’m a wounded healer, that I’m meant for Reiki, that if I don’t choose correctly I’ll relive the pattern.

My OCD brain didn’t just latch onto this—it grabbed it with both hands. This was my final test. I was being advised to leave the best support system I’ve ever had in order to reach my destiny. I was crushed. I did not want to leave my partner at all. We’re enjoying life! We’re obsessed with our daughter who makes our lives feel like heaven, even when work is hard and money is tight and everything else is a mess.

Even as I was believing the reading, I was also grieving. The terror of separating again was unbearable—so much deeper this time because it wasn’t just losing him. It was breaking apart the life we’d built, the family that makes everything else worth it. I was simultaneously convinced I had to do it and devastated by the thought of doing it.

Then I got to the end and something clicked.

This was nearly the exact same reading I’d received five years ago. The same predictions. The same warnings. The same promised transformation that never came.

What the actual fuck.

This shit plugged right into something hardwired in me—the part that believes life is a test and pain means I’ve failed. If I choose wrong, I will be punished. Staying where I am is betraying something sacred.

Here’s what I understand now:

I’m finally able to recognize this pattern—it masquerades as intuition, but it’s actually just the familiar voice of my trauma. I didn’t fall for it because I’m naive. I fell for it because I was trained to doubt myself, and because after so many quiet, isolated hours with my own relentless thoughts, a voice that sounded certain felt like someone finally handing me answers.

All that spiritual language hurt because it met my trauma exactly where it lives—in that place that believes I’m always one wrong move away from deserving punishment.

Here’s the thing about being autistic: my nervous system was already running on high alert, already treating the world as threatening, already prone to overwhelm. That same wiring that made me vulnerable to scrupulosity as a Mormon kid—that hair-trigger alarm system constantly scanning for moral danger—made me equally vulnerable to spiritual bypassing as a sick adult. When your nervous system is dysregulated, when you’re chronically overwhelmed and desperate for relief, these systems that promise order and meaning and a way to finally feel safe become irresistible. Different costumes, same underlying belief:

something is wrong with me, and if I can just figure out the right way to be, I’ll finally be safe.

The tarot reader didn’t invent that belief—she was probably operating from the same one herself. And readings like the one I got yesterday? They perpetuate a cycle whether anyone means them to or not: you’re special, you’re chosen, you’re being tested, and if you fail, it’s because you weren’t enlightened enough.

It’s the same perfectionism. Just wearing the irresistible costume of divine purpose.

* * *

I think I’ve arrived at the moment my life will never be the same.

I read that email and I was terrified for maybe five minutes. And then I could see through it. I broke the spell. The loop dissolved because I finally saw it for what it was.

And breaking it changes everything. I don’t have to scan every decision for hidden meaning anymore. I don’t have to ask if I’m choosing the perfect path. I don’t have to live like I’m one wrong move away from the ultimate punishment. I just get to live.

I’m still spiritual. I feel like I understand the concept of “spirit” much better having gone through all that shit. I have learned that spirituality without agency is just another cage. I’m done asking strangers what to do with my life. I’ve been learning what my actual intuition sounds like—not the fear, not the OCD, not the desperate hope that someone else knows better than me.

I am finally hearing the difference between guidance and doom. I can feel whether something opens me up or shuts me down.

I’m no longer on trial! I am embracing presence without trying to fix myself, and with the understanding that there’s no test to pass. It is such a sweet relief to allow myself to just be here with the person I love and our daughter and this messy, beautiful, totally unplanned life.

Love you for listening. Thanks for sticking with me through the chaos. I’m grateful I stuck with myself through it too.