Carole Johnson knows all too well about days like my Day 156. She tells me this over sandwiches and fries a week and a half later, on Day 165. This is the lunch I’ve been putting off for the past five months. Why, I’m not certain. I thought maybe I was ready to talk with another obsessive-compulsive today. But now, sitting here across from one, I’m not so sure. Maybe I’m still not up to seeing my reflection in somebody else.
Carole explains to me that she’s a repeater, another common OCD creation I’ve never really understood. She says her obsessions almost always involve random catastrophic thoughts, like something really bad is going to happen to so-and-so, and the only way for her to “clear” these thoughts is to carry out specific patterns, generally involving sets of three. She might, for instance, be setting the table for dinner one night when the thought crosses her mind that a loved one is going to get hurt or die. In order to save herself the agony of obsessing about this horrific notion for hours, she performs a simple thought-clearing ritual, putting the plate that’s in her hand on the table, and removing and replacing it precisely three times.
For whatever strange reasons, three is Carole’s magic number, and its power over her is enormous. Sometimes it’s a toilet needing three flushes, or a light switch requiring three on-and-off cycles. Once, Carole tells me, she had one of her “intrusive thoughts” while going through a hotel doorway hundreds of miles from home. Circumstances kept her from making more than two passes back through the doorway right then, and she had to leave without completing her ritual. For more than a decade Carole obsessed about that particular thought. Nothing could save her from its grip until a return trip to that hotel finally provided an opportunity for exactly one more pass through the exact same doorway.
“Can you believe that, Jeff?” Carole asks.
I can, which is strange considering I have never felt compelled to repeat any action in sets of three, or for that matter, in sets of any other size. My responses to obsessions are so much more logical than those of repeaters. At least that’s what I always try to tell Jackie and Sam, both of whom generally raise an eyebrow and all but laugh in my face before I can finish. Still, I can’t deny that the power of my compulsions is every bit as strong as what I’m hearing today.
Carole’s stories scare me, not because they’re so hard to believe, but because they’re so familiar. We are, when it comes right down to it, no different at all. Nothing more than opposite sides of the same coin—one that some cruel twist of fate has sent spinning on its edge, out of control and nearly out of circulation.
It takes me a good twenty minutes to get past my hang-ups with talking to Carole, but then before I know it, I find myself sharing much more than I mean to. She is just such a comfortable audience, one of those rare people who can make you feel so at ease that you don’t even realize you’re blabbing on until it’s all out there and way too late to take any of it back.
We talk about my depression, and my checking patterns, and my years’ worth of wasted time and money before I found Jackie. We talk about our shared belief in a “greater good” and free will and the power of positive thinking. And at some point, the conversation comes around to my journaling project.
“You know those index cards you’re filling up aren’t just for you,” Carole says.
“I’m sorry …?”
“Your index card notes about OCD and doubt—” She is leaning across the table now, staring into my eyes. “A lot of people are going to find themselves in those notes.”
Now I know that I’ve said too much. This is my secret. My unspoken, deep desire to do something constructive with all my index cards. To keep my bargain with the stars and share my story for a greater good. Like Jampolsky’s cancer support-group kids. Or my old AA friends. I want to do this too, if for no other reason than the selfish one of giving meaning to all the lost years.
But this isn’t something I talk about out loud. Not even with Sam. Besides, the whole notion is pretty laughable right now. What a frightful, depressing anthology of failures any book of mine would be.
Carole must read my face. She reaches across the table and puts my hands in hers, much like a grandmother might. “It will all make sense some day, Jeff,” she says. “Mark my words, it will all make sense.”
I leave our lunch shaking my head. In just over one hour, Carole Johnson has managed to do what neither Samantha nor Jackie nor any of my self-help books has been able to accomplish in weeks: somehow snap me out of my funk. Maybe it was the talk about the index cards, or our discussion about free will. Maybe it was just being in the company of another obsessive-compulsive. All I know is that the dark and fuzzy edges are gone from my field of view. I am back on my sailboard, again harnessing the wind.
Day 156 is behind me now. It will go down as the low point of my entire project. Of this, I am as positive as an OC can be.
There are certain things you come to accept living with severe OCD—like the need to set realistic limits on your recovery expectations. Checkers with driving issues, for example, will probably never find themselves behind the wheel of a taxi or a Greyhound bus. I’m sure some therapists would beg to differ, but it strikes me that such acceptance is hardly a cop-out. I’d go so far as to call it healthy. The problem, of course, is the very fine line between acceptance and avoidance.
I am walking this line often in the early spring of ’98, and I know I’m guilty of winding up on the wrong side of it more often than I should. Still, there are at least a few items that I’m certain will always be on my “necessary acceptance” list, and chief among these is my inability to chaperone the girls, without Sam’s help, in a room full of kids falling all over each other. It’s just not going to happen. Samantha will always have to be the one to take them to Chuck E. Cheese and supervise their afternoons at the playground and gym. I struggle enough just watching our girls play soccer, bumping into their teammates and stepping all over everyone and everything along the sidelines. I can’t even fathom taking part in their scouting meetings and troop-wide get-togethers. And after the Christmas tree debacle, I certainly can’t risk getting caught again.
Samantha understands all this. She accepts my regular absences from so many aspects of the girls’ day-to-day lives. She has grown accustomed to having to cover for me. So a few weeks back when Nicole’s Brownie troop announced a father-daughter dance—scheduled for tonight—Sam was hardly surprised to hear me say I couldn’t possibly go. “I assumed as much,” she said, “It’s okay. I told Nikki you wouldn’t be available.”
I hate the idea of being unavailable for my daughter’s first dance, but, let’s be real, I don’t have a choice—or so I’m convinced until several hours after my lunch with Carole, when I’m driving home feeling especially bold, if not downright invincible.
“Nicole, you and I need to get ourselves dressed,” I announce as I throw open the front door to our house.
“For what?” she asks, looking over at her mother who is every bit as confused.
“The dance.”
My answer could have been “Disneyland” or “a ride to the moon” and still not have elicited the giddy excitement I can see in my seven-year-old’s eyes. Nicole scrambles off to her room to get dressed. Samantha pulls me into the den.
“What’s all this about?” she wants to know, almost as if looking for some catch or ulterior motive.
“Just feeling kind of brave tonight,” I say, knowing what a false bravado mine is. I’ve already accepted that Doubt is going to make me pay for all this in ways I can’t yet even imagine.
Within an hour I am parking our car three long blocks from the lot full of minivans outside the site of the dance. Nicole, who always whines about the hikes from my remote parking spots, this time makes the trek without a single complaint. Our bodies are both covered with goosebumps—hers from excitement, mine from fear.
“Hey!” a pony-tailed first-grader yells to Nikki as we make our way to the front door. The two of them run to greet one another and nearly plow down some other kid along the way.
“Nicole Lynn, watch where you’re—” I stop myself mid-sentence, realizing how futile my protective impulses are going to be for the rest of the night.
Nicole and I make our way inside, but not before she manages to bang into a wicker archway that somehow defies gravity by remaining upright.
I’m not going to survive this.
The next couple of hours play out like one of those old driver’s-ed simulator films, with hazards popping up around every corner. At least a dozen times, I catch myself wanting to suggest to Nicole that it’s time to go. But over and over again, I manage to choose not to listen to Doubt. Generosity. Others side of the pyramid, Investment level.
At long last, the Brownie father-daughter dance is drawing to a close. “One more dance,” I tell Nicole, who is probably getting tired of my dragging her off to the farthest, least crowded corner of the room every time she suggests we return to the dance floor. The music starts, and to my great relief the song is a slow one. I take Nikki in my arms and hold her tight. We spin in circles, even play with a dip.
Look at us, I want to whisper in her ear as I survey the floor full of little girls and their daddies. Look at us, baby doll; look what we’re doing. I settle instead for “I love you, Nicole.”
“I love you too, Daddy,” she says, snuggling her little head up to that spot where it meets my stomach. “And Daddy …” She pauses, looking up at me now.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
A full week passes, and despite my gloomy predictions, I do not spend the time obsessing about the wicker archway, or the slew of kids Nikki bumped into, or anything else related to the dance. Turns out I’m far too preoccupied with another more pressing matter: my impending reunion with Dad. Passover and Easter are now almost here. For better or worse, my father and I are about to sit down together for the first time since my cable episode began more than a month ago. At long last, I will get the very reassurance I’ve been craving.
So why, I ask myself, am I such a mess just before we head to my grandfather’s place for our annual seder?
April 10. I am as anxious today as I’ve ever
been, counting down the minutes until
I can “check” with Dad about the cable
episode. I hate that I am so compelled to
do so, especially when I can see the com-
pulsion for what it is. Yet I am determined
to carry it out with as much dignity as I
can muster. Dad will just have to under-
stand. I am doing this so I can move on
with things. I must accept my current
shortcomings and indulge them as neces-
sary. This doesn’t feel right, but it’s the
best I can do right now.
It’s the whole acceptance debate all over again. Maybe I had underestimated my ability to look after Nicole in a room full of wild young kids; I did survive the big dance, after all. But this is different. There is simply no way I’m going to get through the rest of my life without checking with Dad on what feels like the most oppressive obsession I’ve ever had to battle. Why even attempt to delay the inevitable? Get it over with now and move on. Isn’t that really what makes the most sense?
Makes sense to me, I answer myself in a voice that sounds suspiciously like Doubt’s.
We spend nearly four hours together at the seder, my father and I. Two hundred and forty minutes—any five of which would suffice for my checking needs. But I can’t seem to string together even three of those minutes between all the group time, and the seder ceremony, and Dad’s many stories about his grand adventures in Africa. Before I know it, it’s ten o’clock and Samantha is tugging on my sleeve telling me we need to get the girls home.
This is entirely unfair, in so many ways.
But no matter, I’ve still got plan B. Two days from now, Dad and I will have a full afternoon together, when we and the rest of our family spend Easter Sunday with Samantha’s mother, Joy, at her place in Napa. I’ve made it this long. What’s another forty-eight hours?
Halfway through this next two-day delay, I find myself in Joy’s backyard, sprawled out and stargazing by her meandering creek. It’s a clear and crisp night in the Napa Valley, and a full moon is casting its glow across everything in my sight. There’s a certain stillness to the air that we in suburbia seldom get to experience, a distinct absence of car horns and air conditioning units and all the other hums and buzzes of modern living.
I wish Samantha could be out here with me to take all this in. She, however, is tucked away with Joy and the girls, dyeing eggs, baking pies, getting everything ready for tomorrow.
I suppose I too am getting ready, but in my own way. I am steeling myself for the humiliation I know is coming when I launch into my checking drills with my father and hear my own desperate pleas for reassurance. I am paving the way for the inevitable shame I’ll fight for weeks after having again succumbed to my monster.
God, I wish I didn’t have to go through all this. What I wouldn’t give to have the willpower to not even broach the subject with Dad. What an incredible step forward that would be. For a second or two I actually imagine that possibility. And then I hear myself laughing out loud at the prospect. Yeah, right. Not a chance— not when the alternative is sixty more years’ worth of cueing up the cable-installation tape, much as I again catch myself doing at this very moment.
For the bazillionth time, I hit the Play button. I watch the familiar images of me drilling the hole and running the cable and squeezing caulking out of a tube. I rewind the tape and start to play it again.
And then I realize something: here I am on my back, staring up at the mighty heavens, and I am seeing nothing of them. I am focusing only on the garbage in my head. And come to think of it, this is what I always do. For 172 nights I have forced myself to spend a few minutes under the stars. But why? When is the last time I really even tried to lose myself in those stars instead of using my time beneath them to review a few more of my life-sapping tapes?
Pretty hard to see when you refuse to look. Pretty hard to hear when you refuse to listen.
So that’s what I decide to do for the next ten minutes. Look and listen. I lock my eyes on the brightest star I can find. I let my ears filter out all but a nearby owl and a chorus of crickets.
Within a few seconds, thoughts of the cable line pop back into my head, but I refuse to give my attention to them. An image of Dad flashes across the virtual screen strung between my ears, but I refuse to assign my focus to it. Doubt whispers something about me wasting my time and repeats the warning over and over, but I let the words fade away like the drawn-out closing refrain of a ’70s pop standard.
And so it goes with one thought after another. I watch them float by like so many clouds crossing the sky on a windy afternoon. I catch myself feeling more in charge than I knew I could be. I note that I am exercising my free will in dismissing all the garbage inside my head. I see that I am choosing which thoughts I give my attention.
Good. And you must also choose where you turn for comfort.
Whoa. Where did that one come from?
The thought repeats itself, and I wonder for a second whether Doubt again is messing with me. I break my stare and look away from the star.
But this isn’t Doubt’s whisper, and I know it. In fact, I’m all but certain that I recognize the source of this thought as the very one that had gently suggested I turn on my car radio, and pencil out a pyramid, and give Carole a call when I did. I have no name for it and its powerful nudges, but because of the depth from which it comes, and because of its seeming alignment with something much bigger than myself, I can’t help thinking that perhaps “inner believer” is the label that fits. Maybe not. Maybe this is just the “voice of reason” that normal people are always talking about. The only thing I’m really convinced of is that this calming force—whatever its name—is precisely where I’d choose to turn for strength and comfort, if only that were a choice I could make.
But it is.
I am not staring at a star anymore, or picturing a blue dot in some trancelike meditation. I am not counting my breaths or losing myself in the pulsating rhythms of nature. I am just sitting here in Joy’s backyard, fully conscious and aware of everything around me. And yet right here with me is this mysterious whisper of inner guidance.
I let myself bathe in the wonder of it for as long as I can, but soon my thoughts return to my father and my challenge at hand. I think about our relationship over the years and how I’ve increasingly relied on his reassurance for comfort. I think about how my checking compulsions with Dad have come to represent the very worst of my OCD. And again I think about how great it would be to break my addiction.
“I choose where I turn for comfort. I choose where I turn for strength. I choose. I choose.”
I try on the words for size and think again about how much of my life I’ve let Doubt direct. I see in my mind the horrific “checking” scenes of so many films Doubt has scripted for me. I close my eyes and try to imagine my future in a non-Doubt-directed film. I expect dead air, as we call it in broadcasting. But to my great surprise, the scenes take form easily, as if they’ve always been there, just lying around on the cutting room floor. There’s a sequence of me laughing and playing with Nikki and Bri near a sand castle on a beach. And one of me dancing with Samantha on a hot summer night. There are scenes of me sailing my windsurfer, and scenes of me doing fix-it projects around the house. There’s a tape of me emceeing a big station event with kids all around me, and another in which I’m speaking at a lectern about my battles with OCD. In all of these scenes, I am happy and strong and whole.
This is me serving my greater good; I am sure of it.
“This,” I whisper, “is what I choose.”
Suddenly I’m feeling more comfort than any checking fix has ever provided.
Suddenly I can’t even imagine talking about cables with my dad tomorrow.
Or ever.