By Jaslyn Maan

My Superpower: First Place Winner 

A voice has been guiding me for as long as I can remember. I called him The Watchman, named after the stories my mom used to tell me to help me fall asleep. 

“He strolls the neighborhood at night and looks out for any kids that might be lost. But you need to go to sleep now, or he won’t be on your side.” 

I thought The Watchman was the universe’s gift to me, a superpower I was born with. Unfortunately, it was something else entirely. 

When I was seven years old, I had a strict night routine that would allow me to talk to The Watchman. I made sure to follow all his rules to make sure he was on my side. So, I brushed my teeth exactly four times on each corner of my mouth. Then, I drank ice-cold water out of a glass cup with a little red angel on it. Next, I took exactly three shoulder-wide steps to my bedroom. I blinked fifty times before getting into bed. I did exactly what he wanted me to do. I would ask him to keep my mom, dad, baby brother, neighbors, friends, classmates, grandmas— everyone— safe through the night. And he did. All thanks to my excellent ability to follow rules. 

The Watchman told me to close my fists tight, enough for my fingernails to leave dents in my palms, so my parents would stop fighting in the car. He told me to hold my breath until I saw stars, so we could pay our rent on time. It told me to twist my doorknob to the left nine times before I entered the house, wash my hands with scalding water, run up and down the stairs until my legs gave out, so my mom could recover from cancer. 

The voice of The Watchman felt magical. Like something out of a fairytale. It miraculously solved problems — if I followed the rules. It had chosen me. That had to be it. Otherwise, all the pain I had gone through would have been for nothing.

When I was a kid, I believed my OCD made me strong. The rituals, the obsessions, the voices. Each one was a spell I cast to keep the world from falling apart. The Watchman was my fairy godmother, my Prince Charming. 

I was not one to believe in therapy. But after spending all my senior year of high school in bed instead of in school, the social workers would not leave me alone. Emails. Meetings. Concerned teachers calling my parents, wondering why I could not leave the house. How was I supposed to explain that it was my own head working against me? 

I finally went. I told the therapist how terrified I was. Of school, of people, of my family, of myself. I told her I could not stop the rituals. That if I did not do them, everything would fall apart. She looked at me gently and asked, “Well. Have they ever actually worked?” 

Of course! I wanted to shout. That’s why I had to do them! This is why I did not want to go to therapy. I knew she wouldn’t understand…

“No,” I said. “They never worked.”

Because my parents still fought. We were still broke. And my mom still had cancer. 

She looked at me and said, “And yet, you kept living, didn’t you? You kept moving forward.”

 Yes. I did. Every single time.

All those years, I spent in panic, with burnt hands, sleepless nights, hair pulled off, bruises on my thighs. And still— I rose. I moved through the day with my scars, and I laughed with a heart full of weight.

That was my real superpower all along. It was not the kind of strength that lifts cars or saves civilians. It wasn’t the kind that wins awards. But it was the kind that quietly survives. Because the truth is, even though this disease has brought me so much suffering, my mind was never the enemy. It was just a survival instinct — a natural reaction in an outdated system. Maybe strength is not found in the silence of our minds, but in the way we live with the volume. 

Obviously, the OCD never left, and I stopped going to therapy by the fifth session. But now I am aware of my real superpower, my mind that wakes up each day. Choosing to live. Loving. Hoping. Still thanking the world for letting it exist.