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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

The puppet master that mercilessly tugs at the strings of dread, guilt, and worry to contort me into unwilling worship.

I’ll sum it up in a sentence: it is the powerful urge to perform certain rituals — called ‘compulsions’ — to quell the stress that arises from uncontrollable, intrusive thoughts — called ‘obsessions.’

I must admit, that sounds much more dramatic than it actually is. While I’m not taunted by cackling voices or haunted by visions of faceless entities ridiculing me, the thought process associated with the condition sucks more energy out of me than anything else — and I’ve only now started to realize that. In my case, the obsessions are very straightforward. For instance, when I’m washing my hands, I avoid touching any part of the sink. If I do, well, I need to wash my hands again — with soap. Liquid soap from the dispenser to my right. I don’t want to contaminate the bar of soap to my left. I also consider my feet dirty, unless I’ve showered earlier… something about ‘cross-contamination.’ Just this little scenario, however, can illustrate how the simple act of using the washroom can become a daunting, stressful procedure. There are nights I’m actually “too tired to urinate” — the rituals associated with a simple trip to the washroom are complicated and exhausting. I’m simply too tired to wash my hands 11 times. Did I check the door? Did I unplug my laptop? I don’t want to burn the house down. I love my pets. The thoughts just… pop up. They don’t even seem malicious, just informative. I urinate only twice a day: once in the morning, once right before I sleep. While I don’t ‘hold it’, I adjust my water intake to make sure I only have to go twice a day. I drink very little water. I’m always next to a bottle of Coca Cola, which, while a diuretic, doesn’t make me want to urinate; the placebo effect definitely plays a role here. Outside, I’m usually sipping on an iced cappuccino — courtesy of the ubiquitous presence of Tim Hortons in my city — another diuretic. I’ve not used ANY washrooms outside my house in almost 10 years — not counting vacations, of course. I can just… time it.

In the media, OCD is almost always portrayed as ‘perfectionism’ or a cleanliness fetish — think Monica from Friends — while they’re often co-morbid, I feel like the compulsion has to do with keeping things a certain way rather than adhering to perfection or cleanliness. The logic is entirely internal; however, it’s often aligned with common standards of cleanliness and perfection, which explains why the two can be portrayed so similarly. I have a messy closet, in fact. It’s just a certain type of messy.

I’ll go back to the oldest personal ritual I can remember: as a child, I remember washing the belt-line of my trousers and the part around it with soap every morning. “The boxers I’m wearing are inherently dirty and since the belt-line is the only external part that comes in contact with them, it needs to be washed with soap to be as clean as the rest of my trousers.” I later accommodated for this thought process by showering every single time I have to step out, save for emergencies — something I do to this day. And don’t get me started on the shower! An hour-long cleansing ritual: it starts with me brushing my teeth — hunched over so my body doesn’t come in contact with the sink at all, due to which I have back problems now — and ends with me washing each one of my toes multiple times… I feel like a maniac sometimes, and that’s probably what you would feel too. Step right into the slippers after you’re done showering… don’t let your feet touch the rug.

The main feature of OCD is a phenomenon known as ‘intrusive thoughts’: from the panicky, paranoid internal monologue that tells me to wash my hands a certain way to interrogative questions about my identity, I have had to deal with them for almost 2 decades now. I lived the first half of my life in a country where religion plays a massive role, at least in the public sphere. While I’m not particularly religious now, I’ve struggled with blasphemous thoughts ever since I was a child. Images flashing across my mind that probably belong in The Omen. The more you try to avoid these thoughts, the more they occur. Don’t think of a green elephant — but you just did, right? Sort of like that. I grew up with a lot of shame and guilt, thinking I’d be flung straight into hell after death. I’d plea for forgiveness. I was a sinner. The less religious I got growing up, the less I seemed to blaspheme. I recently read that the influential Puritan preacher John Bunyan, whose body of work includes the Christian allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress, suffered from blasphemous intrusive thoughts that resulted in tormentous religious anguish. “When this temptation comes, it takes away my girdle from me, and removeth the foundations from under me,” he wrote in his autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. Today, I have intrusive thoughts about the deaths of my loved ones. Or a situation at a bar turning into a shootout. Or the woman I love in bed with another man. Or some idiot giving me ‘daps’ without washing his hands. Or some unholy nexus of the aforementioned scenarios. The accumulation of stress makes me grind my teeth in my sleep. My thoughts creep into my dreams. There are parts of my own body that I have apprehensions about touching. I need to wash my hands.

In spite of the fact that these intrusions don’t stop me from actually going out there and enjoying my life, they are like malware to my state of mind. My reluctance to seek help stems from one main reason: while the condition has taken control of a portion of my life, I don’t have a reference point for how my life would be WITHOUT it. This is all I know. It has become a part of my identity. I obsess, therefore I am. Could I lobotomize this part of me like that? I didn’t know any better growing up, so I unwittingly empowered it. Second, I feel like I’m set in my ways, so much that the rituals are just how I go about my day. I’ve found comfort in some of them. I’ve also managed to contain much of it: I have different ‘protocols’ for different scenarios. Besides, some of it DOES manifest in the form of perfectionism, which I milk when it comes to my work. Everything has to be a certain way — and sometimes, it IS the right way. If it wasn’t all based around anxiety or utterly exhausting, it’d be my superpower — especially if I was able to direct it. I must also acknowledge my fortune for not having a more debilitating form of the condition: in times of severe stress, I get a glimpse of how bad it can get. OCD is very easy to mock too, as it usually isn’t portrayed with the same gravitas as, say, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s just a quirk! He avoids touching surfaces in the washroom! Despite that, it helps to focus on the fact that I’m not alone. YOU’RE not alone. These days, I find comfort in mindfulness. CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) are both effective in dismantling the patterns of thought that are characteristic of OCD — both of which I am now seriously considering. Yes, most of us obsess silently in the corridors of our minds, but we can try to find solace in the solidarity of our suffering. We have the right to.