Don’t feel guilty for enjoying a graphic novel about a medical condition. Exposures: A Story About Life with OCD and the Power of Facing Your Fears is an unlikely graphic novel about life. Its protagonist is Peyton, who has a sister, Taylor, with the two living with their parents in the mountains. Peyton is growing older and realizes she’s not like other girls. She obsesses over things that keep her from living a more normal life. She has to touch things a certain number of times. She has a constant fear that her sister or family are going to die in the near future. Peyton realistically thinks her food is poisoned, doesn’t like change and has anxiety that is crippling at times. If you’re in high school, the preceding sentences describe you or someone you know. Exposures is a semi-autobiographical graphic novel by Lily Williams.
Williams has OCD, but Exposures isn’t specifically about her life. The only aspect of a narrator is on the first page when readers see Peyton in her bedroom. The narrator tells readers that the period in question is when she had to face all of her fears.
Peyton has many fears that have plagued her since she was a young girl. She avoids cracks, washes her hands at inopportune times, a compulsion to touch corners or things in a pattern of three with her fingers and more. Most times Peyton is able to deal with these things internally, but getting older presents new challenges. The anxiety increases to panic attacks, and the urges or voices telling her that she must do certain things are getting louder. She thinks nobody else feels this way and it comes to a head when her sister, whom she idolizes (and worries about), gets moved up a level in ballet.
This means Taylor will have more practices and recitals, which will mean less time for them together. Taylor is ecstatic, and Peyton wants to be happy for her sister, but suddenly feels all of these worries come to a climax with a major panic attack at home. Peyton’s parents didn’t suspect any of these feelings were festering within her. She retches in an attempt to vomit, but very little came out because she didn’t eat anything that day. The world around her becomes red, and she feels like her organs are all flexing at the same time.
The next day Petyton and her mother go to counseling. Peyton doesn’t want to be there. Her stomach hurts, but she wonders if telling this lady her fears will make them go away. The counselor tells her about CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, a method that helps people recognize patterns and thoughts that aren’t helpful. At this point in Exposures, it’s approximately 20% into the graphic novel. It’s important to mention this because the counseling aspect of the book plays a big part in the book and doesn’t slow its enjoyment. Readers might expect scenes that are 100% reliant on dialogue to drag and become an albatross on the story.
What makes Exposures so easy to understand and utterly relatable is its colors and presentation. When Peyton is having a panic attack or experiencing OCD thoughts, every aspect of the art changes. Sometimes they’re subtle changes; other times they’re big, glaring and scream at you. The background color of the pages changes from white to black or red. The black background, paired with the oversized red, pulsing heart, the “thump” “thump” getting bigger and more repetitive, like a raven at the chamber door. It makes Peyton think that she shouldn’t throw up, which makes her worry about it more. A neon green splash of vomit appears on the black page, spilling over multiple panels, dripping down, splashing and ruining her favorite t-shirt. The circle of paranoia makes her question things more, which makes her vomit over the culmination of her thoughts. Pages like these have manic accent lines, doodles, massive text on both pages or other disjointed things to help invoke how she’s feeling.
With the counselor’s help, she creates a numerical system that gives her situations and triggers something quantifiable. By giving it something tangible, she’s able to visualize it decreasing. This allows Peyton to experience more pink pages in the final quarter of the book, than the attention-grabbing red pages in the front.
You don’t care about OCD. You don’t want to read a graphic novel that’s not based in something comedic. You don’t want to read. Much like the first paragraph where the symptoms of OCD, or OCD itself are present in you or a high school student you know, you probably think that you fall in one of those three sentences.
That’s a bummer that you think that. Exposures is a great, entertaining graphic novel about a serious topic that impacts somebody you know. I was speaking with a college counselor recently. They were dealing with a freshman who was having a hard time because of a touching pattern. As part of this student’s treatment, they were asked to bring their parents into the daily struggles they’re dealing with. The parents had no idea their child had wrestled with this since childhood.
That student is a couple of years older than Peyton. In my high school classes I see at least 20% of them displaying some symptoms, of some degree, of OCD. We tried to pay our ninth-grade student to read Exposures because the main character in the book acts identical to her. He goes to counseling in an effort to deal with some of his symptoms and is making progress. It’s a frustrating process for everyone involved.
The youth might not realize that others think like this. They’re embarked to not do things on the same level as others. The parents just want their kid to be happy and will do anything to make that happen, but can’t do anything if they don’t know. It’s confusing for those who don’t have it because the process of simply dismissing illogical mental requests doesn’t work. However, the student needs to function in a world that’s not exclusively built for them. This is despite the fact that others don’t understand the real, irresistible actions their body’s are manifesting.
Exposures does a great job in seeing OCD from every angle. You see the frustration and paranoia from the person who has it. You see how if impacts loved ones who have someone with it. There’s an angle of the book that sees it from the counselor’s perspective too.
This is a very readable graphic novel that’s fun to do so, without trivializing the content matter. Someone wrestling with OCD can read the graphic novel and realize they’re not alone. It might allow them to realistically open up their patterns, habits or thoughts. The graphic novel also reminds parents or educators that young people dealing with OCD aren’t doing it to ‘act out’.
If the above paragraph describes anyone in your sphere of influence, read Exposures. The third category is those who just want a good, creative and thought-provoking graphic novel. Exposures isn’t as dour as that crowd might think it is and offers a peek behind the curtain of empathy we all can be reminded of. It’s on par with Maus or El Deafo as an unexpected treat of a graphic novel about a topic you wouldn’t expect from the medium.
Exposures: A Story About Life with OCD and the Power of Facing Your Fears is by Lily Williams and available on :01 First Second, an imprint of Roaring Brook Press.
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