Here I Come-pulsively Struggle!
I'm pressed up against the door with my eyes fixed on the clock on the wall. The classroom of children is suddenly grateful for a third hand on a clock, and giddy with anticipation as the seconds tick closer to our goal. We hold our breaths in those last few moments, and then a collective sigh. The bell for recess.
We prisoners had been released to savour a few moments in the clean, fresh air before returning to our cells, where we’d scratch tallies into our desks with the butt-end of pencils, counting the days until summer would free us for good. The warden would lay her pointer to rest under the blackboard, the “click” of it onto the ledge like a key twisting open a lock. We’d shift in our seats and wait for the word, then leap up and get ready by the door.
It was important to have your objective in mind before entering the yard, and mine was always the swings. I ran so fast, legs flailing, heart racing, so that I could have first “dibs”, which meant I had the power to dole out swing time to others at my leisure (when the teacher-on-duty wasn’t looking and tracking turn lengths). This was high currency out on the field, but meant even more to me since I had absolutely no athletic abilities to engage in other activities.
The bell sounded and we burst through the classroom door like bats from a cave. This was our time, where we thrived. We trampled down the hall to the door leading outside and pushed our hands on the bar with the force of our whole bodies.
Unfortunately, my warden was different from the rest: a strict voice inside my head. She operated on another schedule. It wasn’t a bell that would signal my release, but an ease of tension after I had completed my task to her liking. I seemed like one of the pack, but my limits were far more rigid and harder to understand.
My friends would laugh, “You’re so weird!”, but then instantly forget about it once we moved on to another subject. It’s good to be weird, right? I thought. All the books we read in school encouraged us to be different. “Be a purple elephant or a rainbow fish with a limp fin!” But I felt like a green flamingo with four heads. No, six. I worked in multiples of three. That’s important.
I reached the door leading outside and pushed my hands against the horizontal, metal bar to open it. I was halfway out when–stop. It wasn’t right. Go back. I had pressed it slightly harder with my left hand than my right. Now, I had to even out the pressure. I touched my right hand on the door, but now I’ve touched the bar twice. That won’t do, three and six are my numbers. It’s unfortunate if I have to go above them, but I will work in any multiple of three if necessary. Okay, my friends are looking at me now. I’ll touch one time with my left hand, once with my right, and then together. One. Two. Three… Okay. I think I’m fine, and run outside before I can change my mind.
OCD was a regular household term in my childhood. It felt like this cool club for only really smart people that I belonged to, and my friends just wouldn’t understand. In retrospect, I realize this was a very clever tactic devised by my mother to simplify something that was so confusing to a kid. My brother had it as well so it didn’t feel that weird to me. It was normal to walk past my brother’s room and see him meticulously lining up his bottle collection on the windowsill, or positioning his slippers next to his bed at the same angle every night (they were guaranteed to be perfect because he wouldn’t go to sleep until they were). I think his OCD may have gone a bit deeper than mine, which required more one-on-one time with my mom to ask questions about why all these things were going on in his head. I later found out that she had read him a passage from David Sedaris’ memoir Naked, in which he describes his anxious youth of licking light switches in class and performing a ritual on the way home from school that, if erred, sent him back to the beginning. It helps knowing you’re not alone, and Sam exclaimed, “Wow, he has it so much worse than I do!”
I can't remember when my obsessive, compulsive behaviour started. Maybe I saw my brother doing it and thought it was only fair if I developed it, too. I did get the chicken pox the day after he did, but I think my parents just rubbed me up against him so that they could get it over with in one go. The more severe behaviours didn’t last for too many years, but there was a definitive stretch in elementary school where my days were riddled with numbers and routines that I had to carry out perfectly, garnering odd looks from my peers. I think I scratched my outer nostrils 30 times once (15 on each side) in the middle of a conversation. These looks were nothing compared to the crawling sensation I would get all over my skin if I didn’t carry out an action to the extent that my OCD felt was needed.
Hold on, how could I forget! My signature, my trademark, my piece de resistance, throughout most of my single-digit years: a rough throat-clearing. It was a truly horrendous noise emitting from a little cherub-faced girl who enjoyed hair clips. It was a forceful, dry clearing of my throat–not necessarily gross, no phlegm was involved, but it was at the very least annoying. Not to mention that I had to do it three or six times at every instance. Like most things, people stopped noticing or caring as much. “Oh, Cara and her little throat tick!” my friends’ parents would say. Frankly, I think my esophagus was becoming raw. Even now, talking about it, my throat is tingling, beckoning me to gratify this urge… It’s a tough one to explain if you haven’t experienced it, and I wish I was just as confused as you are.
As relieved as I am that I no longer have to count the amount of times I chew while switching the morsel of food to either side of my mouth, or clench my teeth together until the pressure was so great that it caused a small chip in my front tooth that can still be detected today, or let go of both hands from my bike when I was absolutely certain I would fall off (and did, receiving a cut that ran down my thigh), I still have my bouts of OCD. It certainly contributed to my eating disorder and exacerbates my anxiety. It manifests differently than my childhood tendencies, though. It’s not as noticeable, not as distinctively wacky, but definitely emerges when I make any sort of decision or am required to focus. I may not swallow nine times in a row or scratch each of my earlobes until my hands shake in frustration, but I do have thoughts that consume me and from which I am unable to escape. I agonize over the smallest details and have trouble committing to a decision if I’m not certain it is the "perfect" option. That’s the thing about OCD, it constantly tricks you into believing there is a perfect thing to do. What I try to remind myself is that perfect doesn’t exist–especially when it comes to scratching earlobes. Especially then.