Work Text:
Bedtime, and you’re wired. Strung out. Stressed. You’re really tired and all you want is to settle down and sleep, but instead you’re in the bathroom and you’re lifting the toilet seat up and down repeatedly. It’s coming loose on its hinges so it creaks a bit. This bothers you. You aren’t exactly afraid that something is going to crawl out of the toilet in the middle of the night while you sleep and maybe you’ll wake up with it in your mouth. That is ridiculous. You can’t even remember how the lid-lifting ritual began, truth be told, but now it has become part of your routine.
Eventually, everything feels alright, so you can step away. You check that the tap is off and not dripping. Then that the little ‘on’ light in the shower is dark. Then you look back at the toilet for reasons you cannot explain to yourself. Back to the tap. Back to the shower. Back to the toilet. It’s not that you have to look a certain number of times (let’s face it, you’ve never been a big fan of numbers), it’s just that you can’t stop until you feel strong enough to walk away.
Kitchen now. Getting tired and more irritable. Push the fridge door. Make sure it is definitely closed. Same with the freezer. Repeat. You usually don’t have to do this too many times and that comforts you. There was a time when you had to look at the contents of the fridge in a certain order, but you got over that one. That was too strange even for you.
“Is it that you think something bad will happen if you don’t?”
“No. It’s...It’s more that I DON’T know. I don’t want to risk it.”
Still in the kitchen. The oven if definitely off. You know this because you’ve looked at all the knobs and said ‘off’ in your head several times. The window is locked and the microwave is unplugged. You stand in the middle of the kitchen and look into the bathroom. You have to stand where you can see sink, shower and toilet in one frame, nothing obscured. You don’t know why. You check behind the door. You look at the microwave, then at the sink. Microwave. Sink. Microwave. Sink. Microwave. Sink. Sometimes you get stuck in a loop doing this and the frustration makes you cry.
“She’s not...Don’t try to reason with her, OK? It’s a compulsion. It can’t be reasoned with.”
Tonight is, thankfully, an OK night. You didn’t think anyone was talking behind your back at work today and you haven’t found a way to turn innocuous social media postings into malevolent personal attacks. You’re doing well and you’ve made it into the bedroom. You look in the cupboards; left, right, centre, repeat. You stick your arms in amongst the clothes and feel down the back of the wardrobe. You don’t honestly believe that there’s a person back there (how would they fit?), but it’s nice to be sure. Cupboards are an issue for you and have been for awhile. You used to hide it from him by making jokes at your own expense (and aren’t you just so very, very good at that?). “Nope, no serial killers in there today. No-one’s gonna ambush and kill you while I’m out.” Ha ha ha.
“Chuck, have you considered actually, y’know, talking to someone about this? Professionally? Other than me and your mom?”
“...I prefer to deal with stuff on my own.”
The bedroom windows are shut and locked. Shut and locked. Shut and locked. You’ve looked from the ironing board to the wall and back enough times to feel comfortable. You check all the sockets are off. Off, off, off. You take the key out of the lock slowly and put it back in again, twisting as far as it’ll go and keeping the pressure on your thumb. You look around the room as you do so. Off, off, off.
Finally, you’re in bed and it’s dark and time to sleep.
“Some people with OCD experience sexual obsessions that may involve intrusive thoughts or images... the doubt that accompanies OCD leads to uncertainty regarding whether one might act on the troubling thoughts, resulting in self-criticism or self-loathing.”
You set the alarm on your phone and check it. 5:30am. 5...30...am...on. You need to get some rest because in the morning you’re going to have to repeat most of this. You say you get up early so that you ‘don’t have to rush.’
***
You’re at work and you’re touching the lids of all your pens because it relaxes you. You take the paper out of the envelope and then look inside it to make sure it’s empty. You drop it on a pile with the others, look at it, pick it up again and feel around inside, just to be sure. You can hear voices behind and to the left. One in particular is louder than the rest. It doesn’t care who hears it because it wants to be listened to.
“My mom is so OCD.”
The hairs on the back of your neck bristle.
“Yeah, she can’t stand people coming into the house with muddy shoes.”