Tag Archives: ocd

Itchy and Scratchy

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THE EDITOR

Even when it’s right, it’s not quite.

To prod and pull and stretch and twist.

Make something out of nothing, and nothing out of less.

It’s early morning on the drill line.

No tolerance or time to spare.

You think you’re safe in solemn silence.

But the life that you keep and the way that you struggle,

Is beyond comprehension and beyond your control.

Waiting for some rescue boat in the form of clever happenstance.

Eating time with hopes and promise, days turn into years.

You teach the ones who follow, and practice what you preach.

But it’s merely substitution, and the core persists, unchanged.

Fate has been both kind and cruel.

Faith has come and morphed and left.

There’s a comfort in your chaos, in the head that just won’t sleep.

But there’s a stopwatch for every system,

And they all count down to nil.  —original poem, c. 2010

Everything must sit neatly in a distinct mode, layout, structure, etc., to feel right, comfortable, or acceptable. I wiggle and edit and shake and switch until the puzzle pieces align. Like a scratchy wool sweater, I yank at the sleeves and twist the collar until the seams fall into place.

It all starts simple and harmless enough: exchanging shoes because the insole slightly rubs a toe the wrong way; remaking a bed three times because the sheets aren’t equidistant from the edge of the frame; returning five different pairs of glasses until finally finding arms that can rest on the ears in a particular angle as to not disturb headphones; endlessly researching the origins of every product, ingredient, chemical, additive, or cleverly hidden component to ensure it’s nontoxic, vegan, cruelty-free, natural, sustainable, and organic.

Then things start to get REAL specific. The systems, habits, and unbreakable routines function like a panic-inducing, swiftly falling Tetris line. One ill-conceived, hasty move or simple incautious step, and life tumbles in on itself like a Jenga tower.

The upside is ultimately arriving at precisely the energy, mood, temperature, lighting, music, feel, meal, time, position, or product I’ve painstakingly targeted.

The downside is a kind of constant manic discomfort and inability to settle or rest.

So, yeah…it’s not great.

Adolescence Interrupted

No Gray Crayons

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Choose your weapon. Pick your side. Never waver, wiggle, or compromise. We are swimming in a strict sea of black and white, and there’s no room in the water for those troublemaking tints.

This is the line in the sand of modern society. You wear the uniform, adopt the language, and blindly follow the Pied Piper’s tune like rats running out of Hamelin.

Common sense, intuition, and gut instincts be damned. If the coach says to do it, the team snaps to action. When your job is only to acquiesce, there’s no reason to hold tightly to ideals or personal convictions. Free will and independent thought are luxuries no longer afforded to a populace too inept or apathetic to speak up, speak out, or take action.

As someone who comfortably resides in the velvety soft embrace of extremes, with little interest in equivocation or vacillation, there is certainly value in being doggedly resolute. But personal lifestyle choices, habits, and routines do not affect society as a whole. When millions of lives are instantly transformed because of indiscriminate idolatry, we have a much scarier dragon to slay than my unremittingly repetitive diet and germ-killing compulsion.

So, how does a rainbow make its way into the final act of this nightmarish noir? How can we convince those wearing boots caked in concrete reluctance to step away from the safety of the flock settled on the edges and investigate the middle of the road? Meeting halfway has to be disguised as victory, a kind of triumph of the will, or an act of selfless accommodation.

Dress it up. Put sparkles on it. Whatever.

Just peel those fingers away from the security of the wall and move slowly into the center. The periphery is ultimately unsustainable, and everyone eventually runs out of enough room to retreat.

Adolescence Interrupted

Wearing Broken Shackles

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In 11 days, I will plant a stone marking 20 years since I last rolled under the blinding white lights and into the chilled, antiseptic air of an operating room. Two decades without a daily reminder of what’s always waiting in the shadows, ready to strike. 240 months spent tetherless and free. 7,300 mornings not wondering if I’d end the day how I started it.

Sometimes it gets harder to remember…really remember. I suppose I should be thankful for that visceral absence, but the persistent big-picture long-term impact of wirewalking above a sea of hungry sharks never sits far from the surface, and the shrapnel left in the wake of a detonation is almost impossible to completely clean.

Still, I wander through middle age as curious and confused as ever, albeit without the nasty neurosurgical albatross adding even more unmanageable weight to an already struggling neck.

The monster may not be lurking in plain sight, but he’s always under the bed, plotting and planning.

Real repair has proven to be an elusive, moving target. An endeavor filled with far more hope than tangible solutions. One step forward, a thousand steps back.

An unambiguous, inconvenient conundrum stubbornly stands in my path as a wedge to sustained emotional health. How do you rewire all the fried circuitry without losing the solid soldering?

This has always been the question…and the problem. 

I am beyond grateful for the privilege of no longer spending countless nights cursing my station and desperately sprinting down blackened tunnels in search of a distant glimmer.

But with that freed hard drive space comes a bevy of compulsions, neuroses, and the itchy sensation that there’s never a big enough broom to gather the broken shards. Still, I sweep…and sweep…and sweep.

Twenty years is a long time. But those falling calendar pages have also accompanied far too many internal deep dives into the dark. 

I’m immensely proud of the courage (and maybe recklessness) it took to roll the dice on a procedure that had the potential to stop all others, even when the prior swing at the same pitch resulted in a mega miss. I was ready to risk losing all my chips at the table if it meant I could have my life back.

My surgeons, nurses, therapists, and support circles were beyond belief. So many pieces had to fall perfectly into place, and that took a tremendous amount of planning, strategy, and preparation. It’s still surreal to think about the number of spinning plates sitting at the top of some very lofty sticks.

Modern medical miracles of science met human aptitude and artistry. 

Regardless of all the rough edges still in desperate need of smoothing, it was a feat of unimaginable skill, capability, and compassion. 

I was a lost soul without any hope of being found. At least I now have the time and opportunity to continue the search.

Adolescence Interrupted

There Will Always Be Monsters under the Bed

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They will continue to wait, whether we remember to check or forget to inspect. On bended knees, our eyes remain peeled for a glimpse of anything unusual sitting on the planks. But it’s pointless to pretend the floor is clear. They were hiding there last night and last year. They’ll be back again tomorrow…and forever.

The nagging knocking behind the eyes that keeps us awake. The sense that we are barreling toward the inevitable edge. The lists of boxes that remain unchecked. The threat of impending doom. The planet on the verge of collapse. The infighting. The declining educational system. The poor. The sick. The sad. The struggling. The confused. The hurting. The hurt. The loop stuck on a loop. The dubious distrust. The fear. The uncontrollable variables. The time. The schedule. The appointments. The wasted opportunities. The cost. The consequence. The imbalance. The chasm. The loss. The hammer. The nails. The virus. The variants. The worry. The wonder. The sense that any plan must be penned by our own hands. The inattention to intention. The lack of air. The lack of breath. The search for courage. The responsibilities. The falling hourglass sands. The questioning. The projecting. The diet. The disease. The swing. The strike. The call to action. The answer. The bruises. The blood. The tightrope walk. The guns. The drugs. The laws. The disconnections. The deleted lines. The money wearing masks. The trust split into pieces. The rankings. The rancor. The voices. The voiceless. The hardened. The heartless. The abusers. The abused. The race toward a constantly drifting finish line. The ridicule. The neglect. The bottom line. The ringing. The spinning. The tension. The waves. The shortened fuse. The easy ignition. The order. The angles. The criticism. The denigration. The obsessions. The compulsions. The rigid routines. The punishing patterns. The reaching. The rejection. The shooting star wishes for a second chance at another lap.

There will always be monsters under the bed.

Be a scarier monster.

Adolescence Interrupted