Exile by Louis N. Sandowsky

Memories of lying on a yoga mat in a cramped bathroom crept into his dreams. His present waking world in South-East Asia was far removed from these claustrophobic images of the past in his small London apartment, but his earlier lifestyle remained with him in his thoughts as an underlying warning about the depths to which he could descend. Ben had struggled with OCD since his early childhood and it had morphed throughout his life into insidious murmurings that compelled him to create the most uncomfortable sanctuaries imaginable.

For years he had locked himself in his bathroom at night. It was a less than ideal solution to his problem of insomnia. He feared that his thoughts and dreams had the capacity to harm others and though he was able to maintain some control over them during the day, this lessened in direct proportion to the increased fatigue that would ultimately overwhelm him at night. To sleep, perchance to dream, represented an intolerable risk as his Pandora’s Box would burst open releasing all his internalized terrors into the world, like monsters from the id let loose to maim and destroy. The solution, if he was to get some rest, was to allow them free reign, but only in the confines of a limited and controlled space that he could purify with a variety of complex rituals and mantras the following morning.

Ben comprehended the irrationality of his internal voices and fears, which differentiated his condition from that of schizophrenia. Despite the judgements of a long line of psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and counsellors who had attempted to dissuade him from following through with a distorted belief system, only he really understood that his condition was not based on a foundation of belief at all, but rather on the basis of nagging doubt. If his fears were only about his safety, Ben could have taken chances, but his over-bearing concern for the wellbeing of others constituted a predicament in which a wholly different set of ethical imperatives had to be taken into account. He was prepared to take risks with his own safety but he could not do so when it came to the safety of others. He was a victim of a perverse agnosticism in which he could never be entirely sure of anything. This was the most insidious aspect of his condition and it was the hallmark of why OCD is often called ‘the doubting disease.’

Contrary to the populist conception of OCD, involving excessive cleaning, hyper-tidiness, hoarding, or any of a number of other easily recognizable and observable obsessive-compulsive behaviours, his condition was darker, more subtle, and hidden in the recesses of a tortured soul that had become a kind of tomb – a keep. This was Pure O, though there was nothing pure about it and he mused that it was a name that only an OCD sufferer, with a need for orderliness and precision, could have come up with.

Ben’s escape from his many years of self-imposed confinement came at the expense of putting real distance between him and those he loved. It was a heavy price to pay for the luxury of being able to sleep on a bed in a more natural environment which, for him, was a singularly exotic experience. There were other freedoms too, but they all came at a considerable cost and his feelings of extreme isolation were merely transposed into another dimension. Granted, it was more comfortable and less toxic, but it was just as isolating. He was alone and far from a home to which he could not return.

Ben was all too aware that his inner demons had travelled with him. However, their hold on him was situational, bound to another space. At least in his new environment, far from the terrible familiarity of everything that he had formerly endured in the UK – the loss of his teaching career, his mother’s illness and passing, the strained relations with his siblings and the betrayal of his friends, the close proximity to those who counted in his life, the risk associated with touch and the fear of transmission of his internal terrors – were now behind him. The strain of his emotional ambivalence from all of his former environmental stressors had lessened and the urgency of his internal murmurings was less alarming. But still, Ben’s demons were cunning and were in process of working out ways in which to achieve ascendency again. They were infinitely adaptable.

The mobility and adaptability of OCD are often overlooked by the clinical community with its predilection for finding constancy in its unceasing search for neat categorization. This irony did not go unnoticed by Ben. He had to be constantly vigilant. He knew that he was in danger of simply swapping one prison for another because his demons were always one step ahead; being intimately aware of his deepest fears. Granted, his new prison was more picturesque, warmer and more comfortable, but the feeling of comfort had a tragically funny way of dissipating when the consciousness of increasing isolation and the tyranny of regret came into their own. They provided further nourishment for the darker elements within that thrived on torturing him.

It was true that Ben now had greater freedom to explore ways in which to fill his new life with opportunities that had formerly been unavailable to him. The old constraints were no longer in effect. He had re-discovered the pleasures of diving and was now in a position to socialise with less fear of causing harm. He could now walk out in the open air beyond the confines of the darkest of comfort zones once defined by the walls of his London apartment. He experimented with a myriad of activities that had hitherto been impossible for him to even contemplate – spanning the mundane to the sublime. Ben had even taken a training course as a yoga instructor as a way of fulfilling his need to engage with others again in some sort of teaching capacity (a calling that he deeply missed). He had practised yoga for many years, as it had been the only form of exercise available to him in his former life.

But as Ben lay on his yoga mat in this, his new life, feeling the fresh breezes circulating about him in the open air, he dozed for a moment and, in his self-imposed exile, he could no longer tell the difference between the old and the new.