How to Hide in Plain Sight

by Emma Noyes

I have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. But the OCD I have is very different from society’s “usual depiction” of the disease. It has nothing to do with fearing germs or touching doorknobs a certain number of times or stepping over cracks in the sidewalk. I’m not like Monk, the detective with eight different bars of soap on his bathroom sink. The OCD I have can only be described as inner torture.

My mind runs in circles, circles, circles. I don’t understand what’s happening. Soon, it isn’t even about whether I cried at Henry’s funeral anymore. Soon, I’m just worrying about how much I’m worrying. Then I start worrying about the fact that I’m worrying about worrying. Then I start worrying about worrying about worrying about worrying, and suddenly my mind feels so crowded, as if my thoughts aren’t filtering out in the way most thoughts do. As if something is blocking the exit. As if, rather than in and out of my mind in an orderly line, one thought replacing another, they linger. All of them.

Happiness, to me, isn’t a presence. It’s an absence. The absence of Worry. Of fear. Of sadness. Of the thoughts and compulsions that directed my life for so long.

Memory of pain is often worse than the pain itself. It drives us. What we do or don’t do, embrace or fear, repeat or avoid at all costs—all of that is dictated by our memory of pain.

OCD isn’t about washing your hands. It’s about living in constant fear of the outside world or, in many cases, of yourself. It’s a mind that attaches itself to whatever obsession it can find. One stuck in permanent fight-or-flight. One that can’t stop looking for tigers, even though it left the jungle millennia ago.