I Will Never Leave You

One, two, three, four, five steps.

Stop.

Think.

Turn around.

One, two, three, four, five steps.

Unlock the door - once, twice, three times.

Go in and check the windows, the light, the water, the gas. Is everything turned off?

Lock the door.

Once, twice, three times.

But wait. Are you really sure? Are you sure the water isn’t running? Did you black out for a second and turned the gas on? What if you come back home and your apartment is burned down? Or worse, what if someone dies because of your mistake?

Situations like these excite me. Sometimes I like to play around a bit and let this circle repeat itself five or six times. Only then you are allowed to go. But when you arrived at your friend’s place, when you are laughing and joking, I come back. Very silently in the back of your mind you will hear my sweet voice “Was the stove really turned off? What if the house is on fire?”. Your laughter dies in your throat. You try to resist me, but you can’t. I gain full control of you. Again, and again.

Touch the floor with the palm of your hands.

Now the back.

Get up and touch your dream catcher.

Turn it around, touch it again, turn it back, don’t touch it again.

Go back to bed.

Touch the floor with the sole of your feet.

First the left.

Then the right.

No, the pressure wasn’t the same.

Repeat.

Sometimes, I might just be a flat balloon, lying somewhere in the corner, like after a party. Still in your eyesight, but also somehow forgotten. But if you try to leave the house, make yourself a nice meal, press the traffic light - I inflate. I grow and grow and grow, and with me the pressure grows. It grows so much that you feel like your head will explode. You can’t do anything but to do what I tell you. Because only then a door opens, and the pressure leaves your head. Only if you follow my orders, do as I want you to, you can finally breath again.

You might think that it helps you to talk about me. To tell your friends about your thoughts or have your friend check if the gas is really turned off. That worked last time, right? He told you everything was fine, and you went to bed. Feeling good, feeling peaceful. But then I started to boil. You could hear the whistling sound of a kettle which took over your whole body until I was so loud that you couldn’t resist me anymore. You had to get up again and check the gas. Because how can you know what he said is the truth? How can you trust him when you can’t even trust yourself? When your own mind is playing tricks on you and all you can feel is annoyed and helpless because you know there is nothing you can do against me.

Cook the chicken.

Cut the chicken.

Bring it to your mouth.

Stop.

Is that part cooked? Looks a bit raw, doesn’t it?

Put it back in the pan.

Try again.

Still raw, right?

Throw it away. 

If you tell someone about me, they laugh at you. They say, “you are crazy, just don’t do what it tells you to do, don’t be so silly”. But they don’t know what it feels like. They don’t know about the endless hours you spend trying to solve a problem that I gave you, that actually doesn’t exist (or does it?). They don’t know that you feel like you are fighting the evil, someone who knows your worst nightmares and your deepest fears and uses them against you. Someone who seems so disconnected from you, the worst thing that could happen to you. But who is also a part of you.

You are me. We are one.

So how can you call me the evil? Doesn’t that also make you evil? If you try to fight me your body will tell you that your thoughts are bad. That you are bad. But if you give in to me all you have is a small moment of silence. A fleeting moment that will never last long. Because don’t worry. In this whole cycle, there is one thing you can truly trust.

I will never leave you.

One, two, three, four, five steps.

Stop.

Are you really sure?

Authors note: OCD is a very diverse illness and can manifest in many ways. Some people might experience a lot worse than what my story shows. While the interviewees experiences were similar, this story does not wish to downplay anyone’s experiences with OCD and may therefore not be representative.