JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Every week, a guest draws a card from NPR's Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. John Green has written hit young adult novels like "The Fault in Our Stars" and built a YouTube empire with his brother, Hank. Green's latest book is nonfiction - "Everything Is Tuberculosis" - and it looks at why TB remains such a deadly disease. He talked with Rachel Martin about living with a very different illness - obsessive compulsive disorder.
RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Do you spend more time in your head or in the world?
JOHN GREEN: It's not a particularly close competition there, Rachel.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: Somehow I thought you were going to say that. Say your answer.
GREEN: I spend more time in my head by a very wide margin (laughter).
MARTIN: What's it like in there?
GREEN: Pretty intense, to be honest with you (laughter). A little overwhelming sometimes. But I spend a lot of time in my head. And not all of it is healthy, if I'm honest with you. Like, I have...
MARTIN: You've been open about that, about talking about your OCD.
GREEN: Yeah, I have pretty severe OCD. And so it's well-treated, and I work really hard to treat my chronic illness like a chronic illness. But it is a chronic illness, and it is something I live with every day. And there's this great Edna St. Vincent Millay poem I think about all the time where she says - I think she's writing about depression more than obsessive thoughts, but I think it's the perfect summary of obsessive thoughts. She says - she's writing about a snowstorm. And she says, three flakes, then four appear, then many more.
And it's like that with my worries sometimes, where it's like you just have a worry that kind of crosses across your bow, and then another one, and then another one, and then many more. And it becomes like a snowstorm, just absolutely blinding, impossible to see anything other than the fear. And that's a really difficult, really scary experience because then it feels like you're not in control of your own thoughts. Like, you're not the captain of the ship of yourself. You're just along for the ride and somebody else is steering the ship. And that's quite a scary thing to think about your own self.
MARTIN: Is there anything positive about it? Is there anything beneficial about it besides the fact that it is who you are?
GREEN: Yeah, yeah, it is who I am. I mean, I find it to be mostly downsides...
MARTIN: OK (laughter).
GREEN: ...To be honest with you. Mostly bummers. And so it's hard to - of course, I don't know what I would be like without OCD.
MARTIN: Yeah.
GREEN: And so I can't imagine what it would be, but I'm sure I would be different in ways I can't imagine now.
MARTIN: Yeah. It is who you are.
GREEN: Yeah. I like that way of saying about that - that, like, there is an upside, but the upside is that it is who I am.
MARTIN: Yeah.
GREEN: I've never thought of that before.
MARTIN: I have a person dear in my life who suffers from OCD, and it has been instrumental. It has been helpful to learn more about it and to learn how, yes, it is debilitating. It can be debilitating, but it is who this person is.
GREEN: Yeah.
MARTIN: And this person is wonderful.
GREEN: And you're worthy of love.
MARTIN: Yeah.
GREEN: You know, like, it's maybe the only thing we're worthy of, but, like, you're worthy of love as exactly as who you are. And so the fact that this is who you are and this is part of who you are means that this is also worthy of love.
MARTIN: Right. Yeah.
GREEN: Yeah. Oh, that's so beautiful. I've never had that before. That's such a gift to me. Thank you.
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