OBSESSIONS AND MONSTERS
By: Sandra Marilyn
The pile of homemade quilts made by southern mamaws, some of whom were just bones now blanketed in dirt, spread their comfortable weight over my eight-year-old arms and legs. All was as it should be in my family, in my house, in my world. But around the corner, just coming into the room next to mine, the monster growled, bared his hideous fiery teeth, and shook his flaming head at my innocence. Bite by greedy bite the fire was making a dinner of the beautiful old house that was wailing its grief as each room submitted to devastation.
“Sandra, wake up! Put your clothes on now. We have to leave quickly. No, don’t take any toys. Run now. Run.”
We crouched below the smoke and ran dodging the arms of the monster who advanced almost faster than our feet could hit the boards of the floor. But we won the race. As the screen door slammed behind us, the cold night air cheered for our victory.
Then my dreams were no longer those of a child going to the teddy bear’s picnic. Instead, my nights were invaded by the monster who was always a few steps behind me, breathing his foul breath of destruction, and stomping his huge feet on the insubstantial bones of my house.
“Sandra, wake up! It’s just a dream.”
The house was rebuilt. The nightmares faded to blurry, but I became more vigilant, less trusting of safety and promised permanence. And my father came home less often. He had been captured by the night, by honky-tonks, by women on the other side of town, by racetracks, and card games, and by his cowboy’s search for entertainment that answered to no one’s moral judgements. When he walked out the door, whether it was to buy cigarettes, or to go to Mexico to buy cattle, I never knew if he would walk back in. And often he was gone for a suspiciously long time.
Then one day I said, “My mother and I would like you to leave.” And he was simply gone, lost to the whiskey night. It was easy to forget he had been at home to save my life in the fire. It was easy to forget I had ever loved him.
One day some answers sneaked up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder, and offered me a way to gain some control. I began to organize my tiny room meticulously. I measured the folds in the curtains. I polished surfaces until they shone like they had just arrived from the furniture store. I made my bed with perfectly tucked corners, perfectly plumped pillows, and then slept on the sofa in the living room. My mother seemed concerned but was never moved to ask questions, so I asked no questions. I just knew the new obsessions worked to push the fears and insecurities back into the closet.
The books were carefully lined up standing at military attention. A photo moved just a quarter of an inch to the left on the shelf could convince me that the world was a picturesque, charming, and predictable place. I could create the world I needed. It was a beautiful, calm, magazine world where people always did the right thing, where monsters did not know my address.
As I grew older and the compulsions welded themselves into my daily life, I developed personal codes, groups of words or numbers, to help me leave my house without having to go back several times to make sure everything was turned off, every door was locked. If someone accidentally heard me whispering the code, a new one would have to be invented. I knew there was a name for this behavior but as long as it worked I did not care that some professional might label it and put me in a box full of erudite explanations. Remembering the incredulous looks on my mother’s face when I slept on the sofa, I learned to hide my compulsions from the laughter of those who lived outside the walls of my personal perceptions and fears, those who had no desire to breach those walls.
One day a brilliant advisor said, “Why not think of this so-called disability as your superpower?” And so, I cultivated that viewpoint and, indeed, grew taller and could often stand stronger in the face of obstacles. I was lauded at work for my extraordinary ability to organize, my program won an award. I began to see compulsions as not just a slightly crazy escape from reality, but a capacity that made me distinctive, and maybe even a bit extraordinary.
These days the monster hides around the corners of my carefully constructed order. He is waiting to spring out at me screaming that I can’t possibly be prepared for whatever trauma comes next, can’t possibly cope with the next surprise, the next collapse of certainty.
“I can defeat you”, he hisses.
“Maybe not”, I reply.
Sandra lives with her wife and a tiny dog in an old house on the side of a hill in San Francisco. She has written all her life but only recently written about OCD, where it came from and how it affects her life now. She works daily to make it an asset instead of a disability.