OCD Love Story (28 page)

I have undone the one stable person in the room.

And it hits me, the way Rudy has been looking at me, the way they are all looking at me now, the way realization and understanding is dawning on Beck's beautiful face, the reason I haven't wanted to talk about seeing Jeff attack a guard, my little legal issues with Kurt, or my interest in Austin . . . it's me.
I'm
the crazy one.

Beck and Fawn leap up for the bathroom break. Dr. Pat doesn't tell them to sit and work through the anxiety without compulsively washing. She just heads out the door and before it closes behind her I see her shaking a cigarette from a packet and my insides crash.

Then it's just me, Jenny, and Rudy in the room. They're both crossing their legs and turning their bodies distinctly away from me, because that's what you do when you are alone with someone bat-shit crazy. Rudy looks pissed, but he's not yelling or leaving the room, which surprises me.

After a few minutes Beck and Fawn make their way back into the heavy, heavy silence and Beck sits next to me. I'd be falling just that tiniest bit more for him if my mind weren't racing with terrible thoughts right now. If I cared about him I'd tell him to get the hell away from me because I am the most toxic person I know.
I'm the crazy one, I'm the crazy one,
my brain realizes over and over.

“You have your knife?” I ask Rudy. “The Swiss Army key chain thing? Do you have it?”

“Bea?” Beck says. He can't put his hands on me, so he puts one on the back of my chair, and I'd like to lean into it, to have that one moment of private intimacy, but I don't deserve the smoothing-out calm it would give me.

“It's just a question,” I say. “He's the one carrying a knife around.” I cross my arms over my chest like I used to do when I was two and not getting my way. I just want to know the lay of the land right now. I need to know there's nothing in this room that I could accidentally hurt someone with. I need to know that even if I'm going as crazy as the inside of my head feels, I'm at least not going to turn into a serial killer too.

“I stopped carrying it. Dr. Pat asked me to leave it at
home. For your sake. And I did. It seemed like you needed some help,” Rudy says. For the first time ever, he's not sneering or growling. He's being kind, because I'm so unstable.

Anxiety Man sits on my chest. I should be relieved Rudy doesn't have his knife, but instead I'm worried that someone else has something I could use. My mind and stomach spin in perfect panicked unison and the things I'm realizing about how terrible and destructive and cruel I actually am are making it all even spinnier, dizzier.

When Dr. Pat gets back, it's to a room of chilly downturned faces and the sounds of obsession: Rudy's ticking, Beck's tapping, Jenny rubbing her hands against her jeans to keep them busy enough to not pull her hair. Fawn's chair screeches back and forth against the cheap finish of the floor as she tries to find the perfect position.

I'm dead quiet. My compulsions don't involve noises or movements, they just involve ruining people's lives.

Dr. Pat smells like the cigarette she just smoked, and for the first time I notice the telltale smoker's wrinkles starting to take root around her mouth.

“I have something to say,” Beck says at last. It's funny hearing his voice hit the room. He hasn't spoken much in group, I guess, because the way the low, wrecked tones of his voice fill the space sound new to me. “I was late because I worked out for seven hours today. Seven. I got asked to leave before I could get to eight. They said I was making people
‘uncomfortable.' I have to find a new gym. I keep getting a little better, and then getting worse.” He says it all facing me: eyes right on mine. He's saving me from being the craziest maybe. But he's accusing me too. He's letting me know in front of everyone that I'm making him worse, not better.

It's not a surprise, but a little bit of me shatters anyway.

“I've got to go,” I say.

And for the second time this week, I leave him, stranded.

THIS TIME THE DRIVE TO
austin's isn't helping my anxiety at all.

No shock there. Whatever just happened in group has only cemented my certainty that I am dangerous and violent and not to be trusted. And also, scarily destructive to other people's lives. I mean, just look at all the trouble I've caused. Just look what my thoughts and actions and words have done to everyone else. This whole OCD thing seems like a crock. What if Dr. Pat is wrong? What if I'm not suffering from obsessions and compulsions and anxieties? What if I am exactly as dangerous as I think we all have the potential to be? I've been working all this time to deal with my OCD, but I'm terrified that my problem is much, much worse.

Going to Austin's is a terrible idea. I'm probably getting crazier, but I'm definitely getting stupider.

Dr. Pat asks us all the time to rate our anxiety on a level of one to ten. I've been at a solid seven-point-five for the last twenty-four hours and it's not budging. Dr. Pat would say this
is physically impossible, but I don't buy it. I can feel every shiver on my skin, every breath not taken, every superspeedy beat of my heart. And it's not diminishing as I drive. It's only escalating. Moments after driving too close to a bicyclist and a jogger, I'm at an eight. By the time I have to get on the highway, it's eight-point-five.

I drive in the breakdown lane at twenty miles an hour. My hazard lights stay securely on, and I'm almost wishing for snow or rain so that I won't stick out so ridiculously in the midst of the confident, speedy sports cars taking up the rest of the highway. No such luck. Outside is all blaring sun and smooth driving conditions, so I put on sunglasses and duck my head a little. I don't want to be the person I am anymore.

I have done this before.

I guess I wasn't totally honest when I said I started seeing Dr. Pat because of a breakup. I more started seeing Dr. Pat because of what happened after the breakup.

Here's what I was going to say in group today: After Kurt stopped returning my calls, I couldn't let the whole thing go. It didn't feel safe. Lisha got the brunt of it.

“I think there's more to it,” I'd said to Lisha when she let me cry about Kurt over ice cream. “I need to see him,” I said. And also:

“I think he's in trouble.”

“I just need to check on him.”

“I have a responsibility.”

“I know it sounds weird, but I'm terrified that if I don't check on him something terrible will happen and it will be my fault.”

“Shouldn't I trust my instincts? Even if my instincts are weird?”

“I'm just going to check on him. Then I'll know and it will be fine.”

Lisha shook her head at all of it. But when I wanted to drive by Kurt's place, she wanted to come along for the ride. And when I created a fake Facebook account to check what he was up to, she helped me make it look real. And when I started stopping by the gym to look for him, she wouldn't stay the whole time that I was camping out there, but she'd come by with coffee and an hour or so to chat.

It only became a problem when I started going to his house every day. Lisha stopped coming along, so I'd bring a pack of saltines and a notebook and I'd stay for as long as I could, taking notes of any movement inside or outside his house. I didn't think they saw me. I thought my boring Volvo blended in enough with the pavement that I could just sit there for as long as I wanted, whenever I wanted. Sometimes in the mornings, before school. Sometimes in the middle of the night, after the Pancake House, when I was fueled by hot chocolate and maple syrup. I noted every flap of the curtains, every flicker of the TV through the windows.

It's almost a zen kind of thing. Awareness. Being in the moment.

Nothing else would make the horrible gut-eating feeling of expecting his demise go away. I had to check on him. Nothing else would stop the chest-tightening anxiety. I just needed to check. Just one more time. And then just one more. And then just one more after that.

Until he reported me to the police.

Crap.

I'm not an idiot. I mean, I'm not in denial or something. I know I am drowning in the middle of the exact same situation right now. And I can't make it stop.

But Christ, it's dangerous to think about these things when I'm in my death-machine Volvo. I wonder if pinching my thigh will distract me from the memory.

Nope.

I slow down even more. I turn my hazard lights off and on to keep guaranteeing they're actually on. They must be on, I hear the
click click click
sound and see the light blinking on the dashboard, but it doesn't matter. Now that it's occurred to me that they
could
be broken, I have to get out and check.

Then my phone's ringing over and over again and it gets so distracting I have to get off the highway before making it all the way to Boston. That takes about fifteen minutes of careful maneuvering, and the whole time I'm trying to focus on the expanse of road and not the twinkling ringtone that
won't shut the hell up, because I can't turn my phone to silent without taking my hands off the wheel.

I'm pretty sure other people's lives have this same level of casual chaos, but somehow they manage to plow through it.

By the time I've finally pulled over into a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot, I'm a shaking, sobbing mess. It's not pretty, when all my different fears start to collide and snowball into one massive monster of anxiety.

I can't get to Austin's. I had to pull off the highway at a dangerous intersection. I couldn't turn off the unsafe cell phone sounds. I need to check on the tiny red smart car that I might have smashed into on my way getting off the highway.

I'm at a nine for my anxiety level and it's building to a nine-point-five and I'm caught listening to the phone ring over and over, what I assume is probably eight times.

But it's not eight times. It's not Beck calling me after all. It's Dr. Pat. And when I answer the phone with a shaky, squeaky, trying-too-hard “Hello?” Dr. Pat pounces.

“What's your level?” she says. And I can't decide between answering honestly and trying to breathe, so I reach into the backseat where I'd flung my notebook. And I start reading, one finger helping me follow along with the words. I read until I start to chill the hell out. But Dr. Pat notices my sudden silence. “Are you compulsing?” she says to the quiet, chilling-out me. “What are you doing? Don't compulse.”

“Don't therapy me right now!” I whine into the phone.

“Where are you?”

“Dunkin' Donuts.”

“Somewhere off the highway? Beck thought maybe you might go to Harvard Square?”

“You can't talk to Beck about me. Doctor-patient confidentiality. If he's so sure of where I am, tell him to come get me.”

“Bea.”

“It's not like you're helping me! It's not like I'm getting better!”

“I'm coming to meet you, you've just got to let me know a little more specifically where you are. You have a sense of what exit I might find you off of?”

It's impossible to read lists and talk to Dr. Pat and pinch my thigh all at the same time so I just keep letting out exasperated sighs that sound like growls. Maybe it's a good thing that Beck's not the one coming to save me this time.

“Is that even allowed?” I say.

“Sure, it's allowed. It's encouraged. We're not doing Freud stuff here. For this kind of therapy to work, I have to be part of your life; you have to let me in. Remember? We talked about this.” I guess I read some of this in a pamphlet Dr. Pat gave me about exposure therapy and how it differs from traditional blah, blah, blah. “I'm along for the ride,” she says. I think we both shudder at the double meaning. “You know what I mean. This isn't traditional boundary time, okay? I'm doing this
with
you, not
at
you.”

And because I can't drive even one foot farther in this compromised state and I can't expect Beck to come pick me up and I can't let Lisha see me like this, I nod my head. Tell her where exactly I am.

“Okay,” I say. “It's not pretty.”

“I know. I'll be right there.”

There is a little bit of hope in all of this. A tiny pocket of possibility that there could be a day when I could do things the way other people do them. I managed to give up the Kurt thing once upon a time. I stopped compulsively following that Reggie kid's story in the newspaper after a while. I have stopped myself before.

My anxiety starts to sink. Eight, seven-point-five, seven.

I'm okay. As long as I can keep Austin and Sylvia safe, I can deal with the rest of it. If I can just keep myself from—

Oh, shit. I let my mind go back to him and it's drowning me again. The Need. I'm desperate to get back on the road. I don't care that Dr. Pat's coming. I have to check.