Devil in the Details (3 page)

Then suddenly we were in the laundry room and all my belongings
were floating in detergent. Suddenly we were having a crisis.

I imagine there were conferences, hushed discussions between my
parents, consultations with psychologist friends, calls to
relatives. What were they to do with me? There was no precedent.
They couldn’t discipline me by taking away the things I loved; I’d
already taken them away myself. Grounding me was pointless. And I
actually liked being sent to my room.

In the end my parents came up with a plan as pragmatic and
no-nonsense as they are: they drew up a contract. The terms were
clear and simple. I was permitted to wash my hands after bathroom
visits and at no other time. I could pray up to an hour a day, but
not if I was going to do the weird head-patting thing. I could keep
Shabbat, but I would not be allowed to ruin the day for everyone
else. I could not proselytize. I could not supervise my mother’s
cooking. I could not rewash clean dishes, clothes, or body parts.
Furthermore, to reverse the damage I’d done with overzealous
scouring, I was now required to use emollients. I may have been the
only twelve-year-old girl in the world who was contractually
obligated to moisturize and deep condition and wear Lip
Smackers.

If I failed to do any of these things, the contract stipulated
that all my friends would be informed of my idiosyncrasies. The
mouth-scrubbing, the altar-building, the praise-dancing – they
would learn about it all and would be encouraged to share it with
whomever they liked. My sister requested that an amendment be added
providing that she be the one to inform them all, and my parents
granted it as a reward for being so patient with me all these
months.

I don’t know why this worked. The only thing my parents were
threatening was embarrassment, and I’d been embarrassing myself
daily for close to a year. Maybe I’d just had enough, or maybe I
knew that as much as I could torture myself, my classmates were
capable of much worse. Would they ridicule me with a Carrie-style
dousing in 409? I didn’t want to find out.

And so I stopped. I’m sure there must have been months and
months of tapering and adjustment, but I don’t recall any of it. I
don’t remember getting better or struggling with impulses. There
was no counseling and no drugs. This time, this first time, I just
stopped. I still prayed, still avoided pork and stayed in on
Saturdays, but the allure of scrutinizing ingredients and purifying
vessels was gone. Over the next six years, the scrupulosity would
beckon again and again, shiny and exciting, and I would submit to
the inevitable relapses. But this time I just stopped.

In Judaism someone who becomes religious is called a
baal
tshuva
– a master of repentance, or, literally, a master of
returning, of circling back. I liked the name because it seemed so
apt. I circled. I was a master of circling, a pacer, a ruminator,
caught in my neural loops. For the next few years, I would circle
back to scrupulosity, then back to sanity, then back and forth
again. Eventually I ended up sane but religious, baal tshuva in the
ordinary sense.

The continuation of my religious practice was a huge
disappointment to my family, who’d greeted my initial interest in
Judaism with a withering caveat: “You can pray all you want, but
we’re not going to stop eating pork.” They are the family that
bacon built – friends sometimes call us the Traifs – and they could
never comprehend my rejection of their staple food and lifestyle.
They had raised me to express my Jewishness by renting Woody Allen
movies, not by keeping kosher and observing Shabbat.

When I was at my sickest, they painted a dark picture of what my
future as an observant Jew would entail: “You will marry a man who
wears knickers and a fur hat, and when you are out in public
passersby will laugh at you. He will make you shave your head and
wear a wig so unattractive that people will think it was assembled
from squirrel hides. The only restaurants you’ll patronize will be
cheerless establishments where you will be insulted by rude Israeli
waiters and forced to pay exorbitant prices for gray, leathery
brisket. Because all your time will be spent in synagogue, you will
never, ever have a tan. You will wear frumpy skirts, socks with
sandals, and you’ll never enjoy corn dogs, shellfish, or drinkable
wine.” How crushed they were when I got better only to keep up this
ridiculous religious practice. They had hoped I would come to my
senses and join the rest of them at the clambake.

I never did, but things turned out okay anyway. They were wrong
about the fur hats and the bad food. The tan, however – they nailed
that one on the head.

∨
Devil in the Details
∧

E
very mental illness
has its pros and cons, but for all-around appeal, you can’t beat
OCD. It’s not as colorful as multiple personality disorder or as
exhilarating as bipolarity, but for consistent amusement, it’s your
best bet. It’s not a bad one, as mental illnesses go.
Obsessive-compulsives make great party guests. With our droll
little quirks, we provide plenty of conversation material, and
we’re sure to help clean up afterward. In fact, we’ll probably
start washing the glassware halfway through the first round and may
return three hours after the party has ended to bleach down the
floors. Except for the tedium, the time commitment, and the
incessant badgering, we’re a riot.

We are legion, an army of millions. Though most of us will go to
any length to hide our compulsions, we recognize one another. The
guy using a paper towel to turn the restroom doorknob, the child
counting his eyelashes, the old man wearing Kleenex boxes for shoes
– these are my brothers. We are a secret tribe. We’re like
Freemasons, except that our secret handshake is followed by a
vigorous washing session.

The mystery is how one becomes a member. No one knows precisely
what causes the disease. In the past it was blamed variously on
demon possession, bad parenting, fluid retention and – my favorite
– constipation. The theory, I suppose, is that your head might
clear once you’ve crapped your brains out. The invention of
psychoanalysis brought an end to the stake burnings and enemas but
did not lend the disorder any new dignity. Freud held that
sufferers were stunted in the anal-sadistic phase. Nice.

This was the prevailing theory when my OCD first surfaced. I was
three; I probably
was
stuck in the anal-sadistic phase. But
I didn’t know anything about that, or care. I was too busy
satisfying the compulsive urges that sprang out of my nervous
system and commanded me to do things like poke the tomato plant
with a stick and sit on the baby. These activities didn’t seem to
arouse much concern from my parents. Soft and plump and cosseted in
double knit, my sister could easily be mistaken for a beanbag. As
for the tomato plant, it probably deserved a good poking. “That’s
right, honey, you show that plant who’s boss,” my mother
encouraged. “Say, sweetheart, is that your sister under your
backside? If you’re going to sit on her face, just make sure that
either her nose or mouth is clear. Okay?”

These compulsions seemed to pass for normal. My compulsion to
swat furniture, less so. This was impossible to ignore or explain.
It drove everyone crazy, but I couldn’t stop. Twenty or thirty
times during the course of a meal, I would hop out of my seat, spin
around, smack the bookshelf behind my chair, then spin back. It was
not an activity I particularly enjoyed. While I was spanking the
furniture, my cereal was getting soggy, my sister was eating my
bacon, and my parents were expanding my vocabulary with a series of
increasingly profane threats. “Sweet mother of crap, Jennifer. What
did the bookcase ever do to you? If you’re going to smack anything,
smack your sister. She’s the one who’s eating all your bacon.”

A good idea, but it was like scratching your left leg when your
right one itches; only the bookcase would do. Next came threats.
“You jump up one more time and you’ll be taking the rest of the
meal with your hands taped to that damn bookcase,” my parents
warned. “We’ll give you a straw and you can drink your Cheerios.” I
scowled, sulked, spun around some more. Didn’t they know this
wasn’t any fun for me, either? Didn’t they understand I didn’t want
to do these things? Couldn’t they see?

Maybe it’s best they didn’t. Had I been diagnosed, I could have
been treated with high colonics and Valium, things that, though
fun, are really wasted on a child. OCD was just so poorly
understood at the time. It’s only in the last fifteen years that
there’s been a shift toward biology. Now we know OCD is a brain
disorder, related to Tourette’s syndrome, that originates in the
basal ganglia, the gray clump of cells in the center of the brain.
I imagine them as a rat-shaped cluster, its tail tickling my
nervous system. The analogy seems fitting given the rodentlike
characteristics of the disorder. OCD sufferers are like hamsters on
treadmills, all industrious activity with nothing to show for it.
If we were compelled to turn windmills or crank generators rather
than alphabetize the canned goods, we could solve the energy
crisis.

Instead our major contribution to society is that, like rodents,
we are pests. No surprise that Freud named his famous
obsessive-compulsive subject the Rat Man. Unlike the Rat Man, I was
never plagued by obsessions of rats biting my backside (anal
sadism, indeed), but I did, in a sense, have rats on my mind. When
my OCD was flaring, it truly felt like a rodent had burrowed its
way into my brain, my basal ganglia like a scrabbling animal, each
movement of its tiny claws compelling me to do things against my
will. A flick here made me inspect the juice glasses; a flick
there, and I was sterilizing all the flatware.

Basal ganglia injuries can bring the condition on almost
instantly. The rest of us have to work at it. It’s a thousand tiny
impulses, building on one another. First you decide it’s a good
idea to check the oatmeal bin for bugs. Next you’re going through
all the canisters, and before you know it, you’re wearing a hazmat
suit and examining the frosted flakes for ground-up glass. Each
action further enforces the obsessive-compulsive circuit. When the
disease is full-blown, sufferers are firmly entrenched in neural
loops that make them repeat thoughts and actions over and over. In
other words, your brain keeps getting back in line for the same
carnival ride it didn’t enjoy in the first place. You lose your
sunglasses, you throw up on your shirt, and two minutes later
you’re back on the Whizzer. Wheeeee.

In spite of all this, obsessive-compulsives aren’t delusional.
OCD is not a psychosis. Sufferers never lose touch with reality.
Sure, we do crazy things, but we
know
they’re crazy. We
don’t want to do them at all, but we can’t help ourselves. I’ve
done plenty of things that truly
were
deluded – dyeing my
hair magenta, working at a summer camp, using a home
tooth-bleaching kit – but the difference is that I thought these
were good ideas at the time. I never thought it was a good idea to
disinfect my binders, but I had to do it anyway. Back on the
Whizzer we go.