By the age of thirteen, Lily Bailey was convinced she was bad. Her thoughts alone had caused unimaginable harm. To make up for it, she created intricate, exhausting rituals—checking, counting, confessing—desperate to keep disaster at bay.
But no matter how many compulsions she performed, the guilt never left. Inside her mind, “I” became “we,” an internal battle waged against obsessive compulsive disorder that dictated every moment of her young life. Because We Are Bad is her astonishingly intimate memoir of living with OCD—of struggling to appear “normal,” of fighting against the voices that ordered her forward, and of finally, painstakingly, breaking free.
Raw, harrowing, and ultimately redemptive, this Washington Post Best Book of the Year is an unforgettable journey into the depths of OCD—and the resilience it takes to heal.
