Having OCD is like listening to two songs at once. One is a song you really like. For me that's a song with angsty lyrics, a strong yet subtly-flawed female vocalist. Maybe a soft twang of a banjo sprinkled in there. The other is arguably the worst song ever made: Lou Bega’s 1999 hit, Mambo No. 5.

When I was 18 and about to start college, I thought I had HIV. Or was going to get HIV.

You have a cut on your finger. That faucet you touched was contaminated.
You don't need symptoms to be HIV positive.
You need a blood test.
Your tattoo artist used a dirty needle.
That cough is your first symptom.
That fever is your first symptom.
You need a blood test.
You need to read about symptoms again.
You need to figure out your prognosis.
Your girlfriend gave you HIV.
You need a blood test.

A book I wanted to read had a page about living with HIV. I tore out the page. And I didn't read the book. I couldn’t.

I get a blood test. No HIV.
The nurse was poorly trained.
She used a dirty needle.
That needle was contaminated.
You have HIV.
You need a blood test.
You need a blood test.
You need a blood test.

OCD is selfish. It wants more of you. It's like—in the days leading up to your wedding you’re convinced you have throat cancer. You scour the internet. You scour medical forums. You review your symptoms. Every burp, cough, swallow—analyzed. Every day on your walk to work you check every pole, stoplight, and building for security cameras. You struggle to remember your previous walks to work. Did you do something illegal? Was it caught on camera? How can you even remember?

Obsessive thoughts cement themselves in your brain. They get played on repeat until they are indistinguishable from your memories. OCD torments you until you no longer trust your own thoughts. You committed a horrific crime. You just can’t remember exactly when, or how. You have a life-threatening disease, you just don’t know what it is yet.

You pour over your mom’s old desk calendars trying to stitch together the past. You check and recheck your old emails, texts, and chats for clues about forgotten crimes you might have committed. You comb through Facebook posts and photos from years ago, trying to remember where you were, what you did, and who might have witnessed you commit these egregious acts.

On the day you're graduating from college you know you're going to prison and your family and friends will be ashamed of you and you're going to die in that prison and there's nothing you can do about it because you're a criminal so what is the point of this cap and gown and talks of "following your dreams and today is the first day of the rest of your life?"

OCD is like a run on sentence. Or a book plagued with footnotes and endnotes by an author who thinks he's David Foster Wallace1. Or some other properly-aligned literary element that I can't think of at the moment. OCD is like that.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mambo Number Five.

Enjoyed this newsletter?

Check out my other newsletter: This is bullshit and so can you

Help me defeat Twitter: Pweeter

1

To see The Decemberists take on Eschaton, the game invented by David Foster Wallace in the novel, Infinite Jest, see this: Calamity Song.

A little bit of Monica in my life