Samantha and the girls pick me up at Sacramento International. Anyone watching the reception they give me might think I’ve just returned from a tour of duty in some foreign battle zone. In a lot of ways, I suppose I have.
It’s great to be back home, but as I begin unpacking my stuff and settling in, I can’t help noticing this weird time-warp phenomenon. A mere week has gone by for my family, but a seeming eternity has passed for me. My world has been turned upside down and back again, and it doesn’t seem possible that this has all happened in just seven days. I am not the same person my wife and daughters said goodbye to last Friday, nor will I ever be again. Yet nothing, nothing, has changed here at home. Sam and the girls look just the same, the weather is just as I remember it, the newspaper is following the same stories that I myself had covered before leaving, and the mail on my desk is right where I left it.
And then there’s the whole issue of attempting to convey my experience in Missouri. Do I even try? How does one go about telling someone—even his own wife—about a life-changing thunderstorm? Or about a pamphlet he found with The Golden Key? The short answer seems to be, you don’t. I reason there will be plenty of time later. It’s all right there on my index cards, if and when I ever have the nerve.
Cathleen calls a couple days later to see how I’m doing “back in the real world.”
I’m not sure. It’s been a tough adjustment, tougher than I’d anticipated, returning to all the chaos that is my daily life in Sacramento. My spirits are up. My attitude is in the right place. But any delusions I might have had about leaving my OCD back in Missouri are now ancient history. I’ve already battled my way though several episodes since returning and have caught myself reviewing a handful of tapes. Still, for what it’s worth, I’m finding that my checking drills now feel “wrong.” Any quick relief they bring me is more than countered by a sense of having sold myself short. I guess it’s the integrity part of my believing pyramid.
Carole and I kick all this around a few days later. She wants to hear every last detail about Unity Village. Carole may be the one person in my world who fully understands what my trip was all about. She herself has not traveled outside of Sacramento more than a half-dozen times over the past ten years. Too many OCD challenges, even with her husband, Bud, right by her side. If only vicariously, Carole wants to take in this magical place in Missouri she’s heard so much about.
She wants to make sure I’m getting it all down in print.
There’s nothing like counting days to make you appreciate the fleeting nature of time. Of the 365 I’ve committed to my project, exactly 265 of them have now passed and are recorded for posterity on the cards stacked in front of me. Some quick math tonight tells me a mere hundred days remain. This is sobering. It wasn’t all that long ago that a year seemed like an eternity, more than enough time to get a handle on my OCD and turn my life around. But now October 21 is staring me right in the face. The pressure is on, and I’m feeling it.
It’s time to get serious.
It’s time to put into practice everything I’ve been working on with my believing model—not just some of the time, but all of the time.
It’s time to start holding the line on my compulsions—the checking, the tape reviewing, the confessing, the hand-washing, the reassurance seeking—not only when I’m feeling strong, but even when I’m not.
It’s time to push myself harder with each passing day.
Notching up the discomfort—that’s what Jackie always used to call it. She’s thrilled to hear me using the term now in a phone session as I describe my plans for the coming three months. She’s also duly impressed when I recite my laundry list of accomplishments from the Kansas City trip.
“Good, Jeff!” she says, again and again.
In our three years together, I can’t think of a time I’ve felt better at the end of our fifty minutes.
I start counting down the days on my calendar. Ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six … I force myself to go through an entire afternoon without playing back an aircheck in search of missed spots. I drag myself to the self-serve soda fountain and get my own drink. I leave the corner of a curled-up floor mat just as I found it.
Ninety-five, ninety-four, ninety-three, ninety-two …
I pass on my nightly “checking time” with Sam. I take a trip to San Francisco with Cathleen and several friends and survive five trips to public bathrooms. I invite a co-worker out to lunch and offer to drive.
One hundred days become thirty before I know it. Now there is only one month to go. It’s time again to notch up the discomfort. I am still “cheating” too much, finding far too many clever and subtle ways to get my checking fixes, especially from Sam. So I pull her aside on September 21 and tell her I won’t be asking her opinion about anything for the next thirty days.
“Okay,” she says, more than a little amused.
“It’s the only way,” I explain.
“I won’t be insulted.”
I can tell she’s not taking me seriously.
“Just look away if I ask you about anything,” I tell her. “If I ask you whether you think I’m ready to tackle this or that, or if I ask you whether you agree I’ve handled something or another correctly. Even if I ask you whether my blue tie works with my pinstriped Oxford.”
“You got it,” my wife says, and I can only wonder what’s going through her head.
Later in my den, I make another commitment as well. I promise myself I will go out of my way to tackle at least ten OCD challenges every day. I will note them on the back of my index cards with little triangles, just as Nicole and her Girl Scout friends collect triangular “Try-It” badges on their scouting vests.
It’s another little game, but it quickly proves effective. Day after day, I fill up the backs of my cards with tiny triangles. I put one down for the piece of plywood I drive over without doubling back to check on. I put one down for the paperback I return to a shelf at Barnes & Noble after perusing with my germ-infested hands. I put one down for the small puddle of Pepsi that I don’t report to the guy behind the hot dog counter.
It’s not long before I’m running out of three-by-five space for all my index card Try-It notes.
On the first Saturday in October, the station throws a company picnic by the river, and the girls and I make what I figure to be a quick appearance. We eat hot dogs and chat with a few friends, then I’m ready to go. But Janice from accounting is walking around signing up people for the three-legged race. Sam, almost sarcastically, dares me to give it a try with her. She thinks I’m kidding when I take off after Janice to grab one of the ties. But five minutes later, there we are banging into everyone with our legs bound together. The wheelbarrow race is next and my kid-at-heart wife decides to push her luck. “How could it be any worse?” she argues. So I agree to give it a go.
We come in second. Smash into another tandem along the way. Laugh at the absurdity of it all.
Tangled up with me at the finish line, Sam whispers, “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were having fun.”
She’s right. And I can’t even think of the last time anyone might have caught me “having fun.” There just hasn’t been a lot of room for such a luxury amidst all of Doubt’s demands.
But maybe this is a turning point. Maybe I am back in the game in more ways than one.