OCD & Impractical Thinking

Originally published March 22nd 2023

It’s been 11 months since I left I life I knew in London and moved back in with my parents. It’s been 6 months since I moved back to America to live with my sister. It’s been 11 months since I’ve seen any of my friends in person. It has been 3 years and 10 months since I graduated university. 3 years since the pandemic started. Nearly 29 years alive, I’ve been thinking a lot about loss. Loss of friends, family, jobs, time. Mostly time.

I’m simultaneously very good and bad with time. I’m always early for appointments, always factoring in time for traffic. But if my appointment is at 3pm I am incapable of doing anything before that. I wait and let time pass. I’m afraid if I do anything I will lose track of time and be late, because for some reason, if I am late I am in trouble. Always. Even by 2 minutes, 30s seconds, right on time. I remember running late for work because my usual train wasn’t running and called to say I would be 20 minutes late. I ended up being 20 minutes early, so I grabbed a coffee and sauntered into work, like a reward for beating the odds.

There is never enough time for anything these days, so I end up doing nothing. I look at a half done painting and think “This will take too long to dry, to layer” so I don’t touch it. The manuscript partly edited needs to be finished, I wonder if I should just abandon it and start again, that the story isn’t original enough, that everything I’m saying has already been said and better. So much time would be wasted trying to complete something that wont benefit me in the long run. The pile of books, hours and hours of time I have to dedicate. New albums to contemplate, gallery openings, news outlets thumping out the next horror. Instead I sit on the floor in my sitting room, trying to drown everything out. I think about the past, conversations that should have gone this way or that, friends I should have been better to, people I should call, wondering if I had done something differently I wouldn’t be here, an agoraphobe stuck in their head and every hour thinking they’re about to have a heart attack. Everyday there is a moment where I think I’m about to die, the muscle in my chest, a strain I’ve developed over the past few months from neglecting my poor shoulder for too long, it’s stabs and I think “this is it”. But then nothing happens. I’m just panicking. I’m always in a state of anticipation, like California waiting for “The Big One”. An earthquake that’ll destroy the state. I’m waiting for my chest to split open and I will be dead. So there’s no time for anything. I’m incapable of enjoying things that once brought me relief. Anytime I feel alright feels like a trick, that I’m not allowed be okay and that I’ll be punished for it. “Sike! Now you’re in pain! Now you’re dead!”

My therapist advises me write about my death, to imagine myself dying then the aftermath, all the horrible, embarrassing ways I could go and imagining people being really mean about it. 15 minutes a day I’m meant to let my obsessions run loose, it’s a part of exposure therapy. It’s funny dedicating 15 minutes because my obsessions get boring very quickly. When I’m not in panic mode the things that paralyse me most of the time seems rather quaint. The fear of throwing up in public, the fear of being in such immense unable pain then dying, that people will say how awful it was for me to die but what did I expect. OCD is a strange condition because it’s very ego based really. Thinking I’m the worst person in the world is still thinking of myself as rather important, isn’t it? Thinking that everything I do has such intense repercussions means the world revolves around me, that my actions of so very important. That if I throw up in public, it is because I am a disgusting slob, not that I’m clearly sick. I know from being a city dweller for most of my life, that people really don’t care and if they do, they usually want to help. They’ll offer a bottle of water or if they should call someone, generally, not to berate you.

My OCD/agoraphobia takes up most of my day, thinking about it or trying not to think about it. It’s rarely neutral, floating off doing it’s own thing. I’m always waiting for it to come back. The muscles begin to tighten and the worry bubbles back up, I think if I do die suddenly, the cause of death will be stress. The stress of dying would be my inevitable demise. But even that is too poetic to be likely. People don’t die like they do in stories with an arc or message. We die at random, some stories finished, some not. If I died today and had time to reflect on my deathbed, I’d think how I wasted my time being so worried. It’s cliché but I know it. It’s terribly annoying.

It’s very tiring fighting against something that feels like instinct. There are days where I wonder if this will ever end, if I will ever be able to go out without feeling like my body wants to jump out of itself. But I’m working on being better with my time. I take my time doing the dishes, I put on a local radio station before slipping on the pink rubber gloves and starting the hot water. The warmth on my hands is comforting. Everyday there are dishes, they never go away. I think that can easily be a negative thought but I’m trying to see it as comforting. I don’t know when I will die but there will always be dishes. The kitchen will always need some cleaning here and there. The rug in the sitting room probably could use a hoover, the hallways a sweep. Everyday I’ve got to brush my teeth, put on some moisturiser, figure out what to eat, look in the fridge and plan dinner, make a cup of tea. I’m trying not to see things as set times. Rather than set aside an hour to read, I’ll just read a chapter. Listen to the music I want to rather than the ones I feel like I should (I’m not a music critic, I don’t need to be so concerned). Add a single layer to the painting. It’s a little task, a moment, rather than an all or nothing attitude. Fighting against this internal clock that’s constantly ringing. Maybe one day it’ll stop. Maybe one day I just wont hear it any more.

I want to spend my time more silly. I want to waste it doing things that are pointless and joyful rather than wasteful death drones. On Sunday my sister and I went grocery shopping, got chai lattes then went to the local market in the park. An Irish woman from Lancaster with a heavy New York accent sold us an overpriced brie that tastes of smoke. At home we had an unintentional alien themed movie marathon: Predator, Alien, Aliens and The Thing. My sister worried this would constitute as a “lame weekend”, I objected to this logic. That even if it might seem a bit silly, we were having fun. She hadn’t seen any of the movies and was excited whenever something iconic happened. We weren’t worried about death or cycles of anxiety, we were more concerned with MacReady’s hat in The Thing.

I’ve been thinking about Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running a lot recently. About the responsibility you have to yourself to take care. That it can be difficult to be disciplined, whether that be physical or mental health. Perhaps it is difficult, but is there not value in that? That the everyday care is the point? That perhaps I have all this now for later, that in time, it will get easier. That I must learn how to handle time, not control it, but like wind and sails, use it as a tool. I want to be unconcerned with time and give myself the freedom from self imposed rules to really care for myself. There is little use to my hopelessness, it is only safe and expected. And to be honest, I’m terribly bored. Now I’m going to get up, do the dishes from breakfast, and do a bit of reading.

Thank you for reading

-Enya xx