Obsessed

by Allison Britz

  Dr. Nelson is at her chair in the corner, picking up the manila folder on the cushion before sitting down. The room is somehow less dingy than it was just a few minutes ago. Still overwhelmingly horsey and brown, but it’s like the curtains have been opened and the sun has come out from behind the clouds. Maybe it’s because my parents aren’t here anymore. Or maybe it’s because of my decision to finally talk to someone. Or maybe, probably, it’s just the last edge of light before the incoming thunderstorm.

  Sitting patiently, legs crossed, Dr. Nelson is looking at me, waiting for me to make the first move. I’m holding my breath, listening for messages or rapid-fire labeling or a swarm of bees. Some sort of sign to warn me that what I’m about to do is a terrible mistake. I can feel the small wooden chair at the art table behind me buzzing frustration as it did before, but the rest of the furniture in the room sits calmly. To my left, resting on top of a large decorative rug, is a high-backed chair positioned across from Dr. Nelson that I know I’m supposed to sit in. I can feel it looking at me. And, unlike any other piece of furniture before it, it’s smiling. Beckoning me into its stiff, brown, upholstered arms.

  A friendly chair? I feel my face scrunching up in confusion. Well, this is a . . . surprise. I lift my left leg up so I’m standing on one foot while I survey the wooden base, the aged fabric. It looks like something from a nursing-home yard sale. But, then again, that does seem to be the décor theme.

  “You don’t have to sit if you don’t want to. I also like to stand sometimes,” Dr. Nelson says nonchalantly. “Helps me think.” She taps twice with her finger on her temple.

  My muscles tighten, preparing for a wave of annoyance at her for interfering, but when I look up at her, something about the way she is sitting, or maybe the way she is looking at me, slows the emotion. She isn’t trying to meddle, not the way my mom does. She’s being genuine. I think.

  “Huh? No, I was just . . .” My hands clench into fists, my nails pricking sharply into my palms. “I mean . . .” My mouth is open but there are no words to come out. Eyes zipping around the room, I find myself moving toward the chair and sitting gingerly on the edge of its thin cushion. With a small nod, Dr. Nelson settles a little farther back in her seat across from me and smooths her hands along the wrinkles on top of her khakis.

  “Welcome back,” she says with a singsong voice and a well-timed head bounce. “So”—she sets her hands down on top of the papers in her lap—“how are you today? How’s your Christmas break going?”

  Even though she looks like the personification of beige, her voice is strong and confident. It’s on the opposite end of the spectrum from Dr. Adams’s syrupy sweet, grandmotherly tone. It’s got my attention. It’s got energy.

  “Um, fine.” I look down at my worn shirt and pajama pants and think about stopping there. Make her work for her information. But, for some reason, the usual tactics don’t feel right anymore. If you’re going to do it, I whisper inside myself, just do it. “I mean, it’s nice to be off school and all. But I still have another exam to take when school starts, so I can’t really relax.” I inch back in the chair. “And it’s cold out. And I don’t like to be cold.”

  “Ugh! Me either! About every year at this time I ask myself why I don’t live in Florida.” She’s shaking her head, seemingly very into the conversation. “My husband says he likes the winter because he doesn’t need a refrigerator to keep his beer cold.” A small snort pops out of my nose. The beginning of a smile rises in me, catching me by surprise. It doesn’t make it very far up my chest, but I haven’t even come close to really smiling in . . . forever?

  I can’t help but reply. “Once last winter my dad left a whole pack of Pepsi in his car overnight when he was parked outside and they all froze and exploded in the trunk.”

  Dr. Nelson gasps loudly. “No.” She slaps her leg. “Oh, that’s terrible! I’ve heard of cans exploding in a freezer but not in an actual car. Oh, my stars!” She lets out another loud laugh that fills the room.

  “Yeah, he was sooo mad. It was great.” I let out small puff of relief as I think about my dad scrubbing his trunk in rubber gloves. I don’t remember the last time I interacted with someone like this. It’s a real conversation. She is talking to me like I’m a real person.

  “Isn’t it the best when things like that happen? To other people, I mean. Once when my son was young, my daughter let him give her ‘tattoos.’ He was about five and she was seven or so. He wrote his name all over her body, and only later at bath time did we realize he had been using permanent marker!” She yells this last word, lurching forward. “Oh myyy, she was so upset. Little thing had to go to school for at least two more days with her brother’s name scrawled all over her arms and legs.” Shaking her head, she looks up to the ceiling, beaming at the memory. “One of those things that’s not funny but still funny, you know?”

  And as I look at her, there it is. My eyes creasing, my mouth pulling up at the edges. A smile. As soon as I feel it, I jerk back in surprise and it melts away. But it was there. The first one in months. I crease my eyebrows at her again. What’s going on? I don’t even know you but I just . . . smiled?

  Maybe I can do this. Maybe I can do this with her.

  There’s a long, quiet pause. It’s not awkward, surprisingly, but it comes to an end with a small and meaningful throat clear across the carpet. I know what’s coming. Time to be serious. “So I’ve talked to Dr. Adams. I’ve talked to your parents. But I’m still missing the most essential part to this whole puzzle.” She tilts her head to the side. “The only part that really matters.”

  That’s my cue. I can feel her staring at the top of my head, waiting for an opportunity to make eye contact. But, looking down at my fingers, I don’t move.

  She adjusts in her seat and continues on despite my silence. “Your parents noticed some of the more obvious changes in your behavior. Dr. Adams told me about what you called ‘bad thoughts.’ ” Again she pauses here, hoping naively that I might join in the conversation with her. “She said that, specifically, you mentioned your fear that maybe something you did would cause one of your parents to get hurt or sick.” Five-second pause. “Could you tell me a little bit more about that?”

  What does that even mean? Tell you a little more about that. Everything I do, every action throughout the day, is invisibly linked to some sort of negative outcome for me or my parents. And it’s my job to do my best to save us. It’s simple.

  “Allison.” My head still tilted down, I shift my eyes to her, looking at her beneath my eyebrows. I’m sitting perfectly still on the edge of the seat and notice the clock ticking against the silence.

  “Okay, okay. Another way to do this.” She waves her hands in circles in front of her, literally clearing the air. “Tell me something specific. Tell me about a time when you felt like something you did was going to hurt your parents.”

  Something specific. I see myself standing on one foot in the dark kitchen, my eyes staring pointedly away from my chemistry notes. I’m at a lab table bubbling in my answer sheet with zigzags. With a slight chill, the words build in my head and take shape in my mouth. They feel thick and dry like cotton balls. Come on, I needle myself. Do it.

  I take a deep breath in and exhale out loudly, letting my words ride the wave forward. “I failed my chemistry exam so my mom wouldn’t die.”

  I’m looking straight at Dr. Nelson and see her eyes widen slightly, eyebrows raising. But it’s not surprise, it’s more . . . interest. “So, when—”

  “And I don’t wear my clothes because something bad will happen to me or my parents,” I interrupt her. “It started with the pink sweater but then I realized it was all of them.” Suddenly I have the overwhelming need to talk. To tell. The words are bursting out of me like I’ve popped the cork on my tightly bottled champagne. “I keep all the food from the lunches my mom makes me because throwing it away would make her get cancer. Or some other scary disease. My school binders will make me fail my classes if I keep them i
n my locker, so I carry them around.” I shift slightly in the seat and my back pops. “Sidewalk cracks cause cancer. But I count my steps, so that helps. Even though it’s pretty exhausting. And annoying.”

  I pause to think, and breathe, and Dr. Nelson lifts her hand gently toward me. “Okay, wow. Okay. So it sounds like your obsessions aren’t just focused on your parents, but also on yourself, and maybe your schoolwork?”

  I nod at her enthusiastically. “Yeah, for my parents, it’s like car accidents or murders. And also cancer. For me, it’s usually brain cancer but also just cancer in general. That’s the main thing. It’s almost always about cancer. Lots of cancer.”

  “And your schoolwork?”

  “My binders are the only thing that threatens my schoolwork. But . . .” I hesitate, about to move into foreign, unexplored territory. I don’t even really know how to start. “But . . . a lot of the things that have to do with school or homework are things that will also give me or my parents cancer.”

  “Okay, what do you mean? What specific things about school do you worry about?”

  “Oh gosh. Um. Well, so I told you about my binders.” As my mind moves on to the next words, I hear the swarm of bees in the distance, and the tumor near my temple starts to pound. “I don’t like pencils. They cause cancer. There is only one that doesn’t but sometimes I’m not allowed to sharpen it. Like during exams. And it’s also really tiny. My calculator, erasers, pens.” The words feel like acid in my mouth. “I can only use a certain amount of notebook paper for each assignment and it’s usually not enough.” My voice trails off as the bees fly in angry, invisible loops around the office. I close my right eye against the pain in my head, my shoulder instinctively rising up toward my ear. My mouth fills with saliva, trying to cleanse it of the words.

  “Okay, good. Very good, thank you.” She again raises her hand up toward me, this time a little more urgently. She looks alarmed as I lift my head from my shoulder and open my eyes, the bees receding back to their hive.

  “Wow.” She lets out a strong exhale, her pen still streaming across the paper on her lap. “Thank you for telling me all of this.” She makes eye contact. “Thank you for trusting me.” I recognize this line from Dr. Adams. They must teach it to everyone in psychology school.

  “So how many hours a day do you think these kind of thoughts affect you?” A casual shrug—she scrunches her face and waves her hand in the air. “Just an estimate.”

  “Uh . . .” I look up at the ceiling. “Twenty-four. Or, I guess, sixteen. If you don’t count sleeping.”

  “Twenty-four hours a day?” Her voice is incredulous, slightly higher than a few seconds ago. “So . . . always?”

  I nod sheepishly at her. Yeah. Always.

  Constantly.

  “My next question was going to be if you feel like they interfere with your daily well-being. If you find yourself being taken away from your real life because of these obsessions and compulsions. But I think you just answered that for me.”

  I give her one hard up-and-down nod. Do they interfere with my life? They are life.

  She makes a small note on her paper. “Okay, well, given all this, I think we better get started!” Looking up at me quickly, she wiggles her eyebrows twice and reaches into the small filing cabinet beside her chair. After rustling through a few folders, she smiles triumphantly as she leans forward to hand me a piece of white paper.

  “I’m about to give you a little homework. But you’re on Christmas break so you won’t mind.” She winks at me and keeps talking. “Before our next appointment, I want you to try to fill in this chart.” I look down at the sheet of paper in my lap. On the front is a large grid. Across the top there are four columns labeled TRIGGER, OBSESSION, COMPULSION, TEMPERATURE.

  “ ‘Trigger’ means the thing that gets you anxious, so, using what you told me earlier, sidewalk cracks. ‘Obsession’ would be what it makes you worry about, so, like you said, brain cancer. In the compulsion section, write what you do when you encounter that trigger.” Her pointer finger is pressing down as if to mark her spot. “What do you do when you come upon a sidewalk crack?”

  “I hop over it. And count my steps just in case I make a mistake.”

  “Good! So that’s what you would put there. And, lastly, ‘temperature’ refers to the intensity of your anxiety when you have to deal with one of these triggers. If, for example, it’s the worst fear you’ve ever felt, it’s a ten. If it’s just scary but not terrible, maybe it’s more like a five.” She places her hands on her lap and pauses for a few moments. “Try to write down everything you can think of, even if you’re not sure it’s right. Things that affect you, things that affect your parents, your schoolwork. Everything.” Looking up at me, she asks, “Does this all make sense?”

  I nod, flipping the sheet of paper over and seeing that it’s blank. There are only about twenty rows on the chart. I’ve never gone through and counted out my danger list, but I know it’s way more than this. “Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. But”—I hold up the paper so she can see there is nothing on the back—“I’m going to need more paper. A lot more paper.”

  CHAPTER 21

  It’s like I’ve been drowning, struggling for air, and now I can finally relax on the edge of a life raft. I can finally catch my breath. I only talked to Dr. Nelson for twenty minutes at the most, but it seems to have changed everything. I still think God might be behind all of this, somehow. But the terrible guilt and fear I once felt for confessing his secrets have evaporated, replaced by a beaming ray of light.

  Even though I just met Dr. Nelson, I’ve already told her the thoughts that I’ve been guarding so closely for months. It’s the psychological equivalent of going way further than kissing on the first date. But it was the right thing to do. I know it by the way I feel. The mercilessly tight belt that’s been squeezing on my muscles and my brain has loosened a notch, maybe two.

  I’m sitting down gently on the carpet, legs bending under me. My heart leaps with excitement, my brain already filling, brimming, with dangerous buzzwords to fill in the charts. Soap, apples, rubber bands. Oh, Dr. Nelson, wait until you see this. A strong surge of optimism blows through me as I imagine her, wrinkled khakis and Tevas, looking at me from across the brown room during our next appointment. She’ll smile at me as I hand her these scribbled sheets, one of her rare but genuine smiles that crease in deep at her cheeks. Thank you for sharing this with me, she will say. I’m very proud of you. A small warmth glows in my chest.

  I lean forward, laying the papers against the carpet, and crouch in front of them to begin my list. For myself and for Dr. Nelson. I’m rolling the tiny safe pencil nub in my fingers. It’s finally sharpened, now that exams are over, but barely big enough to grip in my hand. The empty paper on the floor gazes up at me, and I stare back down at its black lines. Where to start?

  My mind travels backward to that early-morning nightmare in October, the gray dawn when it all began. The yellow painted wood of the pencil is pushing hard into my pointer finger, turning the skin surrounding it a ghostly white. In the first blank, I tentatively write brain cancer and, after examining it for a few moments, add a question mark. At our appointment, Dr. Nelson said it would be considered an obsession, but I know it’s much more than that. It’s everything. It’s the nucleus of the next few months. Under “temperature,” I write 10. Exclamation point.

  And then the list continues. Mentally retracing the ragged twists of my mind, I fill in row after row in the order each obsession appeared. When the first page is full, I push it up on the carpet a few inches so I’m facing the next blank sheet.

  By the bottom of page three, flinging my hand in the air to loosen a cramp, I’ve reached exam week, where the wounds are still swollen and raw. Studying for precal, passing chemistry. The color green. Calculators. Standing on one foot.

  Chronologically, I’ve run into the present, but I’ve still got so many unacknowledged words floating around my mind. Continuing on the backs of the pape
rs and in the side margins, I list the miscellaneous, homeless triggers. They’re ones that weren’t part of a major battle like the first afternoon in the kitchen or the night of the Les Mis paper. It feels like there are thousands of them. Tiny, seemingly unimportant volunteers that when grouped together as one form a strong, formidable battalion. Rubber bands, tissues, most pairs of shoes. Going to Melanie’s party. Grass (because it’s green). Trees (because leaves are green). The gift cards I got for Christmas. Lettuce (mostly because it’s lettuce but also because it’s green). Carrabba’s Italian Grill. Our family cat, Scratch. Asking questions in class. Chewing gum. Toilet paper.

  About an hour after crouching down to the carpet, I’ve depleted my store of obsessions. I’m exhausted, mentally and physically. So this is happening, I think with a light sigh. It’s all here. Months of angry monsters, pounding steps around the corner, swarms of bees. Messages from God. It’s all here in these sheets of paper. It doesn’t feel right. It all looks so simple. My whole life boiled down into just three pages.

  I pick up the small pile. Even though almost every inch of the papers is covered in tight scribble, I know that no amount of writing could really capture what this is. But if there’s anyone who can come close to understanding, I think it’s Dr. Nelson.

  • • •

  Our next session is two days later, on Wednesday. I allow myself to relax a little in the comfort of her waiting room. Looking around, I see that it’s still just as beige, but something in its blandness is also its appeal. Surrounded by the office’s simplicity, I don’t feel embarrassed to be wearing tattered pajamas. I’m okay with my blaring acne and greasy, dreadlocked hair. I don’t need to worry about appearances. I’m with Dr. Nelson and her wool socks and horse paintings. There’s no need to be self-conscious.

  I have my danger list stuffed into the waistband of my pants, OCD pamphlet-style. My mom knows something’s up because I’m mysteriously crinkling with each breath, but she pretends she doesn’t notice. Even though she knows the truth now, even though she knows her daughter has OCD, there is something inside me that is still fiercely protective over my condition and its secrets. The idea of her knowing I even filled out these sheets of paper, or that I have three pages’ worth of fears in the first place, is terrifying. I get that she’s my mom and needs to be kept in the loop, but I have a powerful need to keep this to myself.