I find my fifteen-year-old self on the concrete steps that connect the high school to Glenwood Avenue. She’s sitting with her back to the school, knees pulled up to her chest. A car rushes by, and she flinches. Probably just had a thought about throwing herself in front of it, even though she doesn’t actually want to. She’ll be thinking about the image that passed through her head for the rest of the day, though.
If only all of the images were like that. Then we might’ve been able to handle it.
I stop beside her, hands in my pockets, and gaze down at the street. She glances up at me, then quickly away. I sigh and lower myself to sit beside her. The steps are warm from the sun.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.” She stares at me when she thinks I’m not looking, trying to read me, trying to figure out what’s happened to us and what I’m going to say. This feels like life or death to her; she thinks that what I tell her will determine the trajectory of the rest of her life and whether or not it’s a life worth living.
So I just say, “You’re okay. It’s going to be okay.”
She folds in on herself, sobbing heavily against her knees. I scoot over and wrap my arms around her, holding her tight as she gasps and shakes. I will the tears in my own eyes not to fall; I need to keep it together long enough to tell her what she needs to know.
We sit together for a few minutes, her leaning against me and me patting her on the back like she’s an infant. I can’t believe how young she seems to me now. She’s just a child, but she hasn’t felt innocent herself in a long time.
Eventually she sits up and rubs an arm across her face, sniffing as she wipes away the tears and snot.
“So. What’s wrong with me?” she asks. “Why am I like this? How did you get rid of it?”
For a moment, I don’t say anything. I watch an oak leaf break from a branch high above us and twirl down toward the road.
“I—it doesn’t really go away,” I say slowly, “but it gets better.”
She stiffens. That was not what she wanted to hear.
“It doesn’t… but, you’re still… I don’t get it.”
“We’re in a good spot now.”
“What does that mean?” she says, her voice pitching higher. “That has to mean it’s gone. It has to be gone. We can’t just go on living like this forever, right?”
I move in front of her to grab her shoulders, steadying her. She’s starting to shake.
“It’s okay, really,” I say. “It’s not distressing anymore. Not most of the time, at least. The bad times move on a lot faster now.”
She stiffens again, grimaces, shakes her head as if that could silence the noise inside. She holds herself, but her nails are digging into the skin of her arms. Punishment.
“It’s not your fault,” I say. Her eyes flash to meet mine.
“Who else’s fault could it be?” she snaps. “It’s in my head. I—I’m—I’m awful. I am such a horrible person, and—”
She buries her face in her arms again. I sit back, chewing my lip.
“You’re not,” I say. “If you were, the thoughts wouldn’t bother you so much.”
“Maybe,” she whispers. “I just want it to stop.”
“I know.”
“Why can’t I make it stop?”
“I…”
I’ve been in therapy for a couple of years now, but she doesn’t yet realize that this is something people go to therapy for. She doesn’t know that other people’s brains hate them too, that there’s a diagnosis and counseling and medicine for it. In other words, any of the tips and tricks and skills I’ve learned at this point are just going to freak her out if I suggest them, because saying stuff like “just let the thoughts come and don’t fight them” or “embrace the uncertainty” would sound callous and insanely counterproductive to her right now.
She needs certainty. She needs it so bad, but it’s the one thing she can never have. I can’t bring myself to tell her that, either, so I don’t.
When I don’t finish my sentence, she lets out a breath.
“Well,” she mumbles, “do we at least have a boyfriend?”
“Well, no.”
I can see the muscles in her jaw clench.
“We don’t have a girlfriend, either,” I say. “We’re just… content by ourselves for now. We’ll see if that changes later, I guess.”
“I don’t want a girlfriend,” she whispers.
“I know,” I say.
She looks up again, eyes wide, but I shake my head.
“Like I said, it’s not gone,” I say. “It’s better, though. Sometimes we get stuck thinking about something else, sometimes we’re still worried about that, but it’s not so scary anymore. You won’t be, you know, fighting it every waking second. We get breaks. Nice, long ones, sometimes. I don’t wake up with a racing heart anymore. I can let my mind wander before I fall asleep.”
I could just tell her that she’s not gay. I could just tell her that she’s not possessed. I could tell her that she’s not dangerous, that she’s not a freak, that no one else is aware of what’s happening in her head and waiting to expose her, but the relief would be fleeting. She would exhale for a moment, but then the doubts would crawl back in just as sinister and sticky as they were before, and we’d just be stuck in a loop of reassurances forever.
So, I just say what I came back to tell her instead.
“So… you’ve heard of OCD, right?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“Well, it’s not always like they show in Monk or whatever. Sometimes it’s different.”
“What are you saying? I don’t—what?”
She shakes her head and lets out a short laugh.
“That can’t be it,” she says. “I mean, I guess I’m pretty organized, but what does that have to do with everything else?”
“No, see, OCD isn’t like, a personality trait,” I explain. “It’s… this. It’s these scary thoughts and images that get stuck in your head, that you can’t let go of because you have to know what they mean, so we do these ‘compulsions’ to try and get rid—”
She’s up and pacing now, running her fingers through her hair and balling them into fists.
“No—wait—no. That means it’s—it can’t be a whole thing like that. It has to go away. It has to end. I can’t have—I don’t want this!”
“Hey, wait, hey, it’s—”
“Don’t say it’s okay!” she shrieks, whirling around to face me. Her eyes are red and dripping with tears. “It’s not okay! I needed something I can fix, but you’re telling me you still have it! That it’s a whole thing? I don’t—I can’t—I don’t want to live like this!”
She drops to the ground again, pressing her head between her hands and trembling. I put a hand on her shoulder, but she jerks away.
“Don’t touch me!” she screams. “Don’t—you—you’re sick! I don’t want anything to do with you. I don’t want to be you! You’re not who I wanted. Get away from me!”
In the moment it takes for me to close my eyes, take a breath, and open them again, she’s gone. I whirl around, scanning the parking lot for any sign of her, but I’m alone.
Down on Glenwood Avenue, another car rushes by. I flinch.
I call her name, but of course, she doesn’t respond. Would she have gone toward the school? Probably not, with all those lovely memories inside, but there’s no way she’s moved closer to the road. I head toward the woods that line the parking lot instead.
Under the shade of the pine trees, the sunlight is muted and my steps are cushioned by the rust-colored needles that cover the ground. Cardinals and chickadees call to each other high in the canopy, and I can hear a squirrel’s nails scrabbling up flaky bark. When I find her, she’s crouched with her back against a tree trunk, pressing her fists against the ground, eyes clenched shut.
“Don’t touch me,” she mumbles, and I don’t. I just sit down against another tree facing her and wait. I pick up a pine needle and twirl it between my fingers.
“That’s it, then,” she says. “I’m always going to be alone.”
“No, that’s not—”
“You said we don’t have a boyfriend.”
“We have friends, though.”
She opens her eyes. I shrug.
“We can’t have friends,” she says, turning away. “I can’t be around people without these… awful thoughts popping up about them, these images... I can’t get close to them, I can’t even be friendly without overthinking it. I can’t… gosh, I can’t even touch anyone, because what if...”
She shakes her head, sighs. I look at the pine needle in my hand.
“Why do you think I hugged you when I got here?”
“Because it’s been that long for you, too?”
“No,” I say. “But I knew it had been that long for you.”
She takes a stuttering breath and rests her head back against the tree trunk.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought… I hoped that knowing what it was would help. I guess it’s a lot to take in, though, huh?”
“Well, what did you do when you found out?”
“I… well, I was shocked, too,” I say. “I couldn’t believe it was a real thing at first, that it wasn’t just something unique to us. But I was actually relieved, because it meant that none of this was my fault. It was something that happened to me, not something I brought on myself.”
She squints at me. I smile, but she looks away again.
“And I was mad,” I continue, “because I wished I had known sooner. I thought if I knew, I don’t know, back when we were ten or whenever it really started, that things wouldn’t have gotten to the point they’re at now.”
“So why did you come here, then?” she says. “Why didn’t you go back to ten-year-old us?”
“Because ten-year-old us didn’t ask for me,” I say. “You did. At fifteen, we wanted a visit from ten years in the future letting us know that everything turned out okay. We wanted it more than we’d ever wanted anything before, so here I am, telling you that it’s going to be okay.”
“But it’s not okay,” she mumbles. “You were supposed to be fine. You were supposed to be free.”
“Well… sure, I guess we’re not perfectly fine,” I say, “but we’re more free now than we’ve been in a long, long time. And we know there’s true, forever freedom coming later, right?”
She crumples a handful of pine needles, then opens her hand and lets the pieces fall to the ground.
“...Yeah,” she says, “but it’s hard to look that far ahead sometimes. How do you know we’re going to make it there?”
“Because ‘making it’ was never up to us,” I say. “No matter how much we worry, no matter how much we doubt, that was never on our shoulders. God doesn’t hate you, okay?”
She has her arms wrapped around her knees again, sniffling. I slide a little closer, and this time she doesn’t move away. I’m careful not to touch her, but I scoot over to lean against the same tree as her.
“Maybe He should,” she whispers.
“He doesn’t hate you,” I say firmly. “He loves you. He understands you, understands this, more than we do. And this isn’t going to last forever.”
“I just wish…”
I stiffen when her head touches my shoulder, thinking I bumped her by mistake, but she’s leaning into me on purpose.
“I wish I’d never gone to the play,” she murmurs. “Maybe if I’d never seen her in the hallway, and maybe if I skipped that night at youth group, maybe I’d be okay.”
“I know,” I say. “I used to think that would’ve fixed it, too, but the obsessions would’ve just latched onto us some other time. It latches onto the things you care about most. It was going to happen sooner or later, and that’s just when it happened for us.”
“Well, that sucks,” she says. I nod.
A breeze brushes the tree tops together, shedding a smattering of pine needles and crunchy, brown leaves that land quietly around us.
“I know I’m not who you wanted,” I say, “but I’m here, and I care about you, okay? I just want you to know that you don’t need to hate yourself, because it’s not you and it’s not your fault. I promise it’s going to get better.”
“Okay,” she whispers.
I don’t know if she actually believes me, but it’s a start. I start to get up, but she grabs my hand.
“Wait,” she says, “don’t go yet. I—I don’t want to be alone. Can you stay with me a little longer?”
“Sure. Okay.”
We listen to the woods and try to stay in them, both of us fighting a different breed of the same storm in our minds. When the thoughts come, she squeezes my hand, and I squeeze back.
“You’re okay,” I say, and she nods.
And for a little while, we are okay. Both of us.
by Hatley