There may be no greater measure of my OCD recovery than the length of these final comments I’m compelled to share.
Eight years ago when I first set out to turn my stacks of index cards into a book, I battled my way past Doubt by promising myself I’d write a thirty-page disclaimer qualifying each and every thing I had to say, imploring readers to avoid drawing any meaningful conclusions from my experiences.
Doubt would still like me to do this. And more.
Were I fully recovered, I suppose I might flat-out refuse.
I can’t.
But I can, and I will, force myself to say everything I still need to say within the confines of the next three paragraphs:
Rewind, Replay, Repeat is a work of nonfiction: an account of actual events in my life. It is also, however, a memoir, meaning its pages are filled, first and foremost, with my memories—recollections that might best be hedged by disclaimers such as “As best I can recall …” or “While I can’t remember the particulars…” My early drafts were filled with such qualifiers. Over the years, though, I have forced myself to remove all this clutter and allow my imagination to fill in the holes in my memory while re-creating scenes and conversations as best I can. Moreover, I have knowingly altered names and personal characteristics, and have made occasional minor changes to details and chronology for the sake of clarity. To avoid confusion, I have also made consistent use of two labels which, in reality, evolved over many years: Doubt (with a capital “D”), to refer to the source of my obsessive what-if? questions; and tapes to refer to all my mental reviews.
These liberties, though entirely insignificant to the heart of my story, are nonetheless pure blasphemy to a precision-obsessed OCD checker like myself. What fascinates and encourages me, though, is this: while I may yet obsess over my story in years to come, at this moment, I am more certain about the contents of this clearly imperfect “recording” than I am about the material on any of the countless cassette airchecks I’ve played back over and over again in the past.
I think it has something to do with learning how to believe in one’s heart, even while doubting one’s head.