Semester update #1

I listened to a 1996 broadcast of "This American Life" this afternoon while doing the dishes. You can listen to it here: link.

The subject of the show was obsessions, compulsions and rituals in many forms. The first interview is with a woman obsessed with the number two, the number guides her life. Drop the keys once? Drop them again. Set the alarm at for 8:02am, never 8:01. She says, "I was clued in enough to know that people would think it would be kind of weird."

The hosts propose that perhaps the obsessions and compulsions arise to fill the shoes of religion for the nonreligious, that perhaps these rituals perform the same coping mechanisms that religion offers to believers. I am annoyed by this proposal because I think it both trivializes the struggle for those trying to problematize their actions, trying to liberate themselves from these ties, and I think that it also speaks ignorantly and mockingly of religion to suggest it is merely a 'coping mechanism' to get through this world.

The next interview is with a woman whose case falls in the more severe end of the spectrum. Her story begins with simple things like checking the stove a few times before going to bed evolved into rules for walking, where the foot falls and what must happen before it does. She stopped leaving the house, afraid of what compulsions might be triggered.

"Say 'God, I'm sorry' 14 times."
"This is crazy."
"15 times."

She hospitalizes herself. She enrolls in an experimental drug program: Prozac (remember, this is 1996). After three days of nausea, she wakes up and the commandments have quieted. She could read again, "read with an appetite." She could go to work again. I cried over the dishes while I swirled the sponge three times around the lip of the cup I was washing.

"We have come to think lately of machines and animals, of machines and nature, as occupying opposite sides of the spectrum. There is IBM and there is the lake. But really they are so similar..."

She speaks about bodily experiencing the revelation that our brain is electrical, is the sum of some equations. Like Josiah had once put it simply for me when I was at a loss as to how to describe it: the brain as a bowl of chemicals.

One day the medicine stops working again. She has to count before every step. Every move takes ten minutes before she can feel safe. She gets stuck in a doorway. Her dosage is upped but things are never quite the same again. She has a vision of safety, outside of compulsions. Even though it was hard to come to grips with the fact the medications effectiveness had declined she says of that experience and of her vision of safety, "doors in me had opened... I was not completely claimed by illness, nor was I a prisoner of Prozac, entirely dependent on the medication to function. Part of me was still free, a private space not absolutely permeated by pain. A space I could learn to cultivate."

For the next interview, the hosts take the religion hypothesis further and decide to interview a Hasidic Jew about the rituals of his practice. They note that the interviewee's rituals connect him to his traditions, to his community, but the suffers of OCD are not connected to anyone or anything through their practice. Their ritual is alienating, "their path is much more lonely." The interviewee says that the only similarity he sees is the capacity to be devoted to something but that the similarities end there. I am glad they aired this part of his interview. However, he goes on to describe the fear of something bad happening if he does not fulfill his religious rituals. When asked about what this fear is he says, "The fear of not knowing. The fear of not belonging. Sort of like this abandonment. That maybe with my abandonment of God, God would abandon me. And I would be alone... and I'd be responsible for myself where, here I feel like if I can go and do the things that God wants, God is with me."

The final interview is with a woman whose obsession leads her to create a full scale beaded kitchen over the course of five years. The part of this interview that stood out to me is her confession to keeping endless To-Do lists. Her confession of feeling like a failure every day.

"Everyday you feel as though you've gotten nothing done. Five inches of work done. Five inches of an entirely beaded kitchen."

After listening to this broadcast I consider the work that I have to do today, already two days late. I consider the things I've done instead of doing work. I consider the amount of time it has taken me to leave the house everyday. How embarrassing it is that when I agree to leave the house with someone I eventually have to ask them to wait outside the room for me or to meet me at the car. How sometimes when eating with other people I try to say my prayers inside my head instead of in front of the people and can't get through them all without someone trying to get me to talk, having to go to the bathroom in the middle of a meal to finish praying because they are so long and I can't stand to have people stare at me while I complete them. Or question me when I'm done. Or make a joke. Feeling like if I don't kiss my hands the right number of times that something bad will happen. To someone I love. Line up my shoes before sleeping. Yes, check the stove. Put the Bible on the night stand and the cell phone on top of that. The glasses to the side. Kiss my hands 35 times before turning out the light only with my sleeve. Jump into bed from across the room without disturbing anything else in the dark. If I hit something on the way into bed, start again. Unplug everything before leaving the house. Wash my hands then spit in the sink then wash the hands... until the number equals 3 (rarely), 5, 7, or 15 (most usual) or higher. Touch the books. Line them up on the floor. Looks like a mess, but I made it that way. Fold the pajamas and lay them on top of the slippers, put them under the covers in the right spot, pull the blankets over them and make sure the tops of each blanket line up in a way that feels ok. Fold the bra under the pillow. If I can't fold it right, stick in my backpack for the rest of the day. Pull the edges of the pillowcases. Make sure the other shoes are lined up. If I'm leaving to do something fun, I need to make the entire bed and get rid of as many ripples in the fabrics as possible. Outside, don't step on shadows. Don't step on cracks in the cement. Or, stare at the sky so that I can't see what I'm doing wrong down there.

What does my family want? What does God want?

"If I knew those answers I wouldn't do it. Nobody who thinks like that would bead a kitchen."