I Want to Break Free From my OCD

The obsessive thoughts started when I was a kid. As soon as I woke up each morning, I’d think, “I am going to be late for school. I am going to be late for school.” Then I’d scream, “Mommy! I am going to be late for school!”

“No, you’re not!” she’d yell back groggily from her room. She never liked waking before 10 a.m. if she didn’t have to, but since I was too young to get myself ready, she had to be up at 8 a.m., the crack of dawn, to get me to Mrs. Walsh’s homeroom.

While inside my mother’s Toyota Corolla, I’d bite my fingernails and glance at the clock, outside my window, at the clock, then outside my window, over and over again.

“Mommy, it’s 8:26. I have to be at school in four minutes.”

“We are two minutes away,” she’d sigh.

I’d stare at the clock until it turned so I could justify my nagging.

“Mommy, it’s 8:27. Hurry up!”

I’d bite my fingernails so low they’d be bleeding by the time we’d arrive.

“Put pressure on it,” my mom, the nurse, would say. “It’ll stop.”

I’d say goodbye, slam the car door and run into class, and of course old Mrs. Walsh wouldn’t take her unenthusiastic rendition of attendance for another 15 minutes.

After school, I’d walk home with my best friend Ashley and stop every 30 seconds or so to check the bottom of my shoes.

“What are you doing that for?” Ashley once said.

“Dog poop. I want to make sure I didn’t step in dog poop,” I said so sternly, as if it were a grave concern a third grader should be worried about.

“I didn’t see any,” Ashley would reply. Her mother constantly yelled at her to make her bed perfectly every day before she went to school, or else. I related a lot to her mom.

When my mom would go to bed and I’d be the only one awake in the house, I’d check to make sure the front door was locked and the oven was off and there were no fires burning or burglars trying to break in or leaky faucets that could flood the basement. My friends who came over, by contrast, were scared of my Charlie McCarthy doll. But I knew dummies didn’t come to life; that was ridiculous.

One day, my mom couldn’t take it anymore. Perhaps she hadn’t been able to take it much earlier than that, but now she had a boyfriend with money and could afford to send me to the psychiatry hospital, Sheppard Pratt. I started seeing a cognitive behavioral therapist (CBT) for my Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

The therapist was a nice woman with brown hair who tried to explain to me — using a Mr. Potato Head — that whether she removed his eyes or changed his nose or switched around his mustache, he was still Mr. Potato Head. I don’t exactly remember the psychology behind it, and I’m surely dumbing it down now, but somehow, it worked, and I was compulsion-free for maybe three months or so. I felt that I could think clearly, that the weight was gone. There was so much free space in my head to concentrate on the Backstreet Boys instead.

The thoughts came back, though, and they got more vicious, more invasive, more time-consuming. Instead of spending 30 minutes a day obsessing, I was now spending a few hours. I became addicted to America Online, and I would go on my computer for 12 hours a day. My worst fear was that the computer would get unplugged and I would lose everything, from the Britney Spears website I was working so hard on to the 2001 version of “Lady Marmalade” that I was downloading for the last six hours. Every few minutes, I’d check that the computer plug was firmly in the socket. If it looked like it was slightly coming out of the wall, I’d quickly push it back in. One time, it came unplugged, and just like when I saw a bare Mr. Potato Head, nothing happened. Still, something could. That’s how I justified it in my head.

I also started overeating because of my OCD. I was worried about what would happen to my food if I didn’t finish all of it at once. Crabs were my favorite food, and one time, I saved my leftover crabs in the fridge to enjoy when I got home from school the next day. When I opened the fridge and they weren’t there, I asked my mom what happened. She said she ate them. I cried my head off. She said she wouldn’t replace them — they were $50 a bushel. I never left a crab or a slice of pizza or a bag of Chex Mix uneaten again.

I began to learn more about my illness but only from pop culture. When I was 14 and read David Sedaris’ “Naked,” in which he talked about his obsession with licking the light switches in his school classroom, I finally felt like I wasn’t alone.

Later on, as I became an adult and got married and started loving my life, I became absolutely terrified that I didn’t deserve any of it and that someday it would all come crashing down. Things were going too well, I was too happy, and the universe was going to show me what I had coming.

I’d think: My husband’s been out for three hours, and his phone is off. What if, G-d forbid, he’s hurt? The plane I’m on is shaking a little bit; this is a bad sign, and I’ll have to start calling all my family members and telling them I love them because we’re going down. I’m pulling out of my driveway during rush hour? I have to check each way three times before going because I’ve heard too many horror stories.

One thing I always obsessed over was my beloved pit bull Juno dying. I believed she would one day get run over by a car. The older she got, the more I played this terrible image over and over in my head. It got worse when I was postpartum after having my daughter because I was suddenly more anxious than ever that my beautiful little world was going to collapse.

Then, one night after obsessing about Juno for close to an hour, I decided I needed help. I read on a message board for dog owners that this is a very common worry, and we shouldn’t think about our dog dying because our dog wants us to be happy. That really helped. I went to bed peacefully and stopped imagining it. And then Juno died of kidney failure three weeks later. I vowed from then on to never stop thinking about my dogs dying.

In Judaism, we have this custom where if you say it, it might come true. So if I do have to speak about something that I don’t want to happen, I throw in a “G-d forbid” and/or “bli ayin hara” (“without the evil eye” or, colloquially, “back off evil forces”). Listen, evil eye, when I said that thing, I didn’t actually mean it, so don’t take me literally. I’m convinced that all my “bli ayin haras” are keeping me alive. (I do realize, of course, that I added another layer of OCD to my OCD in constantly reciting this saying).

My OCD is like a dear friend that I also hate. It can be quite good to me: It keeps my house clean. It probably keeps me safe in some ways. It definitely makes sure I am over-nourished at all times. It gives me a cool edge, I guess, something interesting I can mention at parties. I can claim to be offended when someone says, “Oh my gosh, I am so OCD,” and I know they are lying. “My illness is not a colloquialism. Take it back, Tiffany!”

My OCD is like a dear friend that I also hate.

But my OCD takes a turn when it gets too needy, and then I have to try and extract myself from its grip. I usually don’t succeed.

So how will I contend with this? My lifelong friend and foe. Will I go on medication for my OCD? No. I went on that stuff for my anxiety with varying success, and I gained 20 pounds and became much more OCD about my weight.

I won’t embrace the OCD like it’s some sort of honor because it isn’t. It makes me messed up, and it makes my life harder in most ways. I’d like to go to bed for once and not get up three times to check on my daughter and my dogs and my oven and my locks and my shower faucet and my windows and my heater and the ADT alarm system. I would like to be free.

This Passover, in pursuing my own freedom, I decided that I am sick of being at the mercy of my illness, and I’ve made an appointment with a CBT therapist. I am going to do intensive therapy, facing my fears and not giving in to my obsessive thoughts. I hope to conquer this thing one final time and get that much closer to recovery and a happier life overall.

But before I do that, I need to check the stove.

Kylie Ora Lobell is a writer for the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, The Forward, Tablet Magazine, Aish, and Chabad.org and the author of the first children’s book for the children of Jewish converts, “Jewish Just Like You.”