Living with OCD is nightmarish; but living with it in a city is driving me to distraction. It’s misery-inducing enough being tormented by daily intrusive thoughts, firmly believing my partner will be hit by a cement mixer every time she cycles off, without the additional stresses that filthy, overcrowded cities bring.
For I am blessed with a disconcerting combination of OCD-types, the worst being my intrusive thoughts, which centre around my lovely girlfriend. I am always imagining her dead and am convinced that almost everything is going to kill her – she can barely cough without me having a near nervous breakdown. I’m obsessed with her leaving me, and lately, I’ve developed a preoccupation with my own feelings, putting our relationship under the microscope. My therapist tells me I’m hypervigilant.
On top of those ever-niggling worries, I’m consumed by a need for symmetry and orderliness, spending hours every day cleaning, tidying and lining everything up – including the cats.
Then there’s a spot of contamination OCD thrown into the mix, which leaves me unable to touch anything other people have touched, especially people who appear unsanitary.
I had a breakdown last year and was confined to my bed, shaking, sweating, rocking and worrying. A van-load of medication and weekly CBT have improved me, but now I’m quite keen to leave London and live in a happy little Disney world that’s clean and peaceful.
Transport can be torment
To the socially-inept pariahs who pick their noses in plain sight on the train – this is offensive to people with or without OCD and is the reason I can no longer touch anything. With next-to-no strength and a decent amount of fat to carry around, I am forced to surf around the city, being hurled from person to person and consequently receiving dirty looks. I need an ‘OCD on board’ badge.
Then there’s penis face to contend with. When a man uses the toilet, he touches his penis. Some men – I have no firm statistics – do not wash their hands after penis contact. They touch the train, then you touch the train, and at some point you touch your face. You have penis face. Everyone in London has varying degrees of penis face. Even if I wasn’t a lesbian, I wouldn’t want penis face. The bus isn’t even worth taking. It’s far too bumpy a ride, with almost no possibility of surfing and guaranteed bogey-penis face.
Walking around is fine until someone asks for a lighter and soils it, rendering it useless to me and my antibac-glistening hands.
Working in an office didn’t help
After the aforementioned journey into the office – I work part-time or from home now – my anxiety was rampant. All I wanted to do was enter quietly and anonymously, make a coffee and avoid touching anything that anyone else might have touched – milk, handles, everything.
As I maniacally navigated my way around the kitchen, someone would inevitably appear and make small talk. Conversing with anyone when my nerves are shot is near impossible, as is hiding my all-encompassing rage and desire to punch myself in the head until I keel over and don’t have to worry any more.
Even home-working has its struggles. Before I can start working, the whole house has to be clean, orderly and hoovered. The cats must be impeccably tidy and kitted out with fresh food and poo-trays and I have to be washed, moisturised, dressed and sporting a full face of make-up.
The vast population will be the death of me
When my girlfriend and I were first going out, she thought I was putting on a hilarious, Absolutely Fabulous-esque stress show when we went anywhere. She thought it was all an act – my shouting at passers-by, pushing slow people out of the way, having panic attacks in every shop, bar or restaurant and biting my hands to unveil purple tooth marks – because surely, I couldn’t be that mad.
My anxiety, before all my wonderful meds, was so forceful that I’d become enraged and would be plagued by violent intrusive thoughts. I envisaged kicking stranger’s heads in, smashing them against walls, stabbing them, shooting them – all very violent. By the time I reached my destination, I’d be close to tears.
** I don’t like living with other people**
If, like me, you live with other people because rent is very expensive and you spent all your money on plastic figurines, you’ll be well acquainted with other people’s mess. My girlfriend and I live with a few other people in a big, very nice house in east London. The people we live with are also very nice, but when they leave their possessions lying around or fail to realign a chair in perfect symmetry, I seriously consider changing the locks.
So I left my job and took up residence at home as a full-time, unpaid cleaner. And when everyone comes home and messes it up again, I tidy around them before fleeing to my bedroom where I tidy around my girlfriend and try to imagine the rest of the house how I left it. Needless to say, I fall asleep within seconds and sleep for about 10 hours.
Partners who cycle are a massive stress
This could be placed under ‘transport’ but it was a large contributing factor in my breakdown, so I think it deserves a section of its own. Relationship intrusive thoughts have been ruining my life since I met my girlfriend a couple of years ago.
As I mentioned earlier, she cycles most days. I envisage, in graphic, gory detail her hypothetical demise. Being hounded by unwanted images of your dead loved one is seriously distressing. If she’s on foot, she’s almost certainly bumped into a serial killer. If she’s at home, something has probably upset her and she’s hanged herself, or she just didn’t chew her food properly and has choked to death.
**There are ways you can cope **
If it’s totally overwhelming, the absolute best thing to do is go to your GP. When I went, I was in such a state that she referred me for therapy, prescribed me diazepam and upped my dosage of sertraline. Since then, I’ve found various things helpful, including practising some CBT techniques myself, which you can Google very easily. I constantly remind myself that thoughts are not facts and have gradually learned not to engage with them.
Being healthier seems to help
My anxiety has also drastically reduced since I made a few health-related changes. I’ve cut down my caffeine intake, I drink less, I even exercise. I love drinking, eating and smoking; I’m not remotely fit or healthy and the thought of living even a marginally healthy lifestyle was hideous. But just a few small changes – I’m still no saint – have made a difference, and I guess it’s worth it.
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Picture: Eugenia Loli
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.