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O.C.D.
I struggle with—or against—my OCD while slowly reading the rich, calm prose of Annie Ernaux (French author, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize). Her writing is breezy yet potent, full of the feeling, for me, of literary dark chocolate.
But, alongside the reading, I battle with the obsessions. Cognitive compulsions, I call them. These natty little mental buzzing flies, buzzing rudely around my mind, circling, whirling, always there deep in the white noise background. I keep saying to myself, Embrace uncertainty; uncertainty is Life. Let go. Allow the river of existence (awareness?) to carry you passively down.
I think, One day you’ll be dead, kid. Don’t waste it. Don’t so blasély jettison precious time.
I like Ernaux for several reasons: 1. She believes in freedom of speech and doesn’t shy away from taboo; 2. She says it like it is; 3. She takes risks in her work.
I keep trying to let go, be free and in the present moment. I worry about the underlying assumptions I hold about the OCD thoughts:
1. I am a bad person
2. I am a piece of shit
3. I do not deserve love
4. I’m not good enough
5. My freakish past makes me a moral cripple
6. I can’t be redeemed
These are all, of course, absurd. I know I am a good person, deeply flawed as I am. How could I not be? I’ve suffered more than anyone else in my life because of my own problems, largely created by myself.
I am difficult, demanding, emotionally needy, afraid, insecure, wounded, powerful. Aren’t you?
To combat the OCD I read, yes, but I also meditate. Ten minutes, using the silent option with ringing gongs—that mellifluous, surging river of sound vibrating sonorously—and I breathe and sigh and sit and take all the sounds of outside in, me on the couch, windows open, sunlight like radioactive, heavy honey pooling against my eyes and cold-prickled skin. While meditating I hear that same loud barking dog, his hoarse, feral yowls almost intoxicating. I hear multiple cars driving by on my street. Our neighbor using his leaf-blower like he always does. Some walkers move past on the sidewalk, chattering loudly about politics. I allow the thoughts to arise and fall, appear and dissolve, come and go.