Compulsion

Little conversations keep bubbling up out of my subconscious, some real, some imagined. At one point I found myself revisiting my friend Oleoptene’s recent post on her “Crazy Mind reaction to [her blog] comments, getting them, or not getting them, not knowing what it means either way,” compulsively hitting the refresh button to see who had read her blog. My first thoughts were of my own coming to terms with posting, and receiving comments. But the more I thought about it, the more the meaning seemed to change for me.

My temples are pounding and I keep closing my eyes and lowering my chin to my chest waiting for the pain to pass. I walk into the kitchen, pour myself a glass of water from the fridge and drink it on one long draught. I like to drink water this way. No little sips. I like the feeling as the water floods my mouth, seeps out around the edges of the glass and dribbles ever so slightly along the sides of my cheek and down my neck. I like the feeling as I roll my head forward and lower the glass, the cool feeling left in my throat already subsiding. I sit back down and begin typing.

I begin thinking about David Sedaris’s short story “A Plague of Ticks,” from his book, Naked. In it, Sedaris describes the obsessive-compulsive behavior that drove his life during grade school. Licking light switches, counting each of "six hundred and thirty-seven steps" on the way home from school, "pausing every few feet to tongue a mailbox" and having to retrace his steps if he lost count, Sedaris was compelled to " . . . do these things because nothing was worse than the anguish of not doing them."

I begin making metal lists of the things I do compulsively. The making of metal lists is at the top of the list, along with counting miles on the odometer, and smelling the tips of my fingers. The further down the list I go, the more strange and bizarre the behaviors begin to appear. I refuse to make a list that pigeon holes my behaviors and ends up making myself out as crazy. I look back at the list. Are these behaviors compulsive? My eye falls on one item in particular: Closing cabinet doors.

Every morning I wake up with the kids and walk out into the still dark kitchen. Inevitably there is always a cabinet door or two open. Most likely because I was sleep walking a few hours before, getting a glass of water or a cheese sandwich and I forgot to close them. My eyes lock on the void between door and cabinet. It has to be filled. I quickly move to close the doors before the maddening chasm engulfs me. I am oblivious to paint chips that indicate the cabinets need to be repainted, the smudges of small fingerprints that need to be wiped along with the dribbles that streak the side of the doors from countertop to floor. The void must be filled.

With a sense of satisfaction I close the last of the doors. I can now turn my attention to more pressing matters like making coffee, another ritual that, while not requiring me to touch my elbow several times in rapid succession, nonetheless must be completed in several articulated phases if the process is to be complete at all satisfactorily.

Chip the glasses and crack the plates! Blunt the knives and bend the forks! That's what Bilbo Baggins hates, so carefully, carefully with the plates.

I stare at the counter several minutes later. There is a pool of water on the countertop beneath the coffee maker. “Where did that come from?” I imagine in my haste that I became oblivious to the water splashing from the coffeepot into the receptacle. Yet the sight of the water is so foreign I can’t bring myself to admit the obvious. The puddle is mine to own. I made that puddle. Incredulous. I reach for the sponge.

I am not compulsive. I am not compulsive. I chant over and over again compulsively. We learn nothing that hasn’t benefited us in some way along the line. Character defects surround us. We learn them in hard times. They are the behaviors that once kept us secure but have now long out lived their usefulness. Compulsion. A red badge of courage perhaps? I resist the temptation to file my friends into such tidy categories. They are my security blanket, my experiences, and, well, my insanity all rolled into one.

My temples throb. My eyes feel dry. Am I dehydrated? Time for another glass of water.