No more days of walking out the front door without any makeup on.
OCD LIKE A BRUSH FIRE
Artist: Doug Pagacz
High School (Checker Maximus!) OCD: 1980–1984
Then came the first day of high school. I was out the door and on my way there, to this school that was so big it looked and felt like an airport. I was about to spend the next four years of my life there. I was a bundle of nerves when I heard Sergeant say, “Are you sure you locked the door?”
“Oh my God, I didn't. What a stupid idiot I am!” I raced home.
The door was locked. I jiggled the knob again and again and said out loud, “The door is locked, the door is locked,” hoping that saying it would make it stick so I didn't have to be questioned again.
But no sooner had I gotten a step away than Sergeant asked again, “Are you sure it's locked? How do you really know? You have made many mistakes before; you make them constantly. You should really check it one more time. The safety of your family is at stake here! [There's that emotional buy-in.] A man with a sharp knife could hide inside your condo, and the first family member to walk in . . . SLASH! And it would be your fault. Do you want to come home to a BLOOD BATH and a LOVED ONE with a SLASHED THROAT?”
I sure didn't want that; I believed every word Sergeant said to me, even though sometimes what he said went beyond my logical mind. The more I tried to resist him, the more violent his visuals became, like a slide show of blood and horror. I didn't know what else to do but comply.
I checked and relocked the door more than fifty times before I was free to go.
Finally, I was on my way to school. I was wearing my new Gloria Vanderbilt jeans that I had to zip up with a clothes hanger because they were so tight and so foxy. I remember touching my barrette several times in a certain way, making sure it was perfectly straight in my hair. Sergeant had already reminded me that if my barrette looked lopsided and sloppy, it would be a very poor reflection of me.
I needed to be sharp, with it, together, and perfect, so I straightened it again. Then I smoked several cigarettes to get some relief from the anxiety of the newness up ahead and of Sergeant breathing down my neck.
When I got to the entrance, I saw some faces I recognized from grade school. What I would've really liked to do was run up to them and yell, “Can you fuckin' believe how big this place is?” But I knew that would be childish. Excitement is for children.
I couldn't stop judging myself. If Sergeant wasn't doing it, I could fill in like a champ.
I saw a pack of perfect girls together. They apparently didn't have a bad case of “heredity” like I did, with short legs and heavy thighs. My mom always reminded me of this, and I carried it forward. One girl seemed so perfect and untouchable. She seemed to be perched like a beautiful red bird at the top of a tall pine tree, looking down, like a queen looks down at her court. Life looked so easy for her. I knew—at least right then, anyway—I wasn't worthy of her greatness. As I walked by her, pieces of me seemed to be falling off.
For me, high school was no Normal Rockwell painting. No long weekends at the football games, bake sales for special causes, or homecoming floats. I was not playing on the tennis team or working hard on the yearbook council. I spent a great deal of time in my head. What I was working hard at was trying to present a “normal front” to everybody I encountered—and keeping my relationship with Sergeant a secret.
I have heard people say that they loved high school. Clearly, they lived on a different planet than I did. For me, it went by agonizingly slow, and my list of my imperfections was endless, like a bottomless sea. Sergeant was always pointing things out and comparing me to other girls: “She's thinner than you. She's smarter than you. She fits in much better than you.” I just felt wrong both inside and out and severely inadequate.
This was perfect kindling for depression. Sergeant was always in my ear, rattling off the things that made me less than acceptable, and that special place of “wonderfulness and ease” that I dreamed about was always just beyond me. I could get there if I could just be a little bit better.
The promise of heaven is great even if I had to go through hell to get there, it has to be worth it.
—ROB BELL, LOVE WINS
One day Sergeant ordered me to look over at another girl and then said, “Oh, look, she's so tan. Too bad you're so pale white and disgusting! You need a St. Tropez tan [a popular tanning oil at the time]; you need to get some Coppertone tan lines.”
After school that afternoon, I climbed up onto a friend's roof (with her approval). I lay there on a giant piece of tinfoil, dowsed in baby oil. Being fair skinned, I didn't tan. I burned to a crisp like a sizzling piece of bacon. Not quite the perfect bronze picture that I was going for.
Sergeant was quick to say, “Fail!”
Cord Check Time
Then came the cord checking. Before leaving the house, I had to do my cord checks. I would crawl around on the carpet checking the television and lamp cords. I would straighten them with my hands and lay them just the way they had to be laid, straight, from the outlet to the object. I would tug gently on them and smooth out every ripple. If every cord in the house was not lying perfectly straight, I would become unbearably agitated and couldn't leave the house.
This ritual could take me an hour, and there were many, many start-overs. In my Mental Movie, my unforgiveable negligence would result in an electrical fire and the whole condo burning down and innocent people being killed. Let's just say Sergeant had my ear and undivided attention. I wanted to save people from harm.
Cord checking—and doing it right—ensured that I would avoid all potential threats. Sergeant repeated over and over to me that the cords had to be checked perfectly, and nothing else would do. His badgering was monotonous, like a metronome, and I would do just about anything to get it to stop.
Even though [repetition] had no impact on the validity, its cognitive bias is called the illusion-of-truth effect and it's a powerful effect of clever agenda setting. If something is repeated to you often enough you will start believing it's true.
—ADAPTED FROM BEN PARR'S, CAPTIVOLOGY
If I had girlfriends over before school, I would try to do a superfast cord check, hoping they didn't notice. Of course, they'd often bust me doing this and laugh at me. They even nicknamed me “Cord Checker.” They got lots of laughs out of this, and I chuckled with them trying to make light of my strange behavior. They couldn't have known that for me cord checking was a life-or-death matter.
The leaving-the-house ritual became so onerous that I was frequently late to school. The hall pass lady knew my first name and how to spell it correctly.
