Sacrifice

Sensitive Content: This piece contains mentions of substance abuse, mental health issues, and attempted suicide. 

I am a person of many rituals. Of course, OCD is a ritualistic disorder, so that’s only natural. The rituals are sometimes holy, sometimes not; sometimes comfortable and sometimes unbearable. They’re sometimes small and other times obvious; they’re sometimes my friend and sometimes my nemesis. The point is, they contain multitudes. 

When I was in the seventh grade, my hands first got dry and bloody. I washed my hands in scalding water for minutes straight: halfway up my arms, under my nails, between my fingers, everywhere. I then neglected to properly dry them, then overused the hand sanitizer in my backpack. I also hated the feeling of lotion. So my hands bled when they moved. This was in the fall. They got worse in the winter, then better in the spring. They followed that cycle of bloodiness for years.

One night, when I was in the eleventh grade, I was home alone. I was scared. I kept hearing noises outside. The dogs kept barking at things I couldn’t see. They were probably just squirrels. But I stood in my living room and said my prayer. My prayer goes like this: “Dear God, please help us stay safe and healthy and feeling good. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray, Amen.” Short and to the point. I’ve probably been saying it at least once every five minutes for years now. Writing it out feels like a sin somehow, as if I’m betraying myself and my prayers. But this prayer is a ritual. It’s not a true prayer. It holds no meaning, it’s just something I say to myself to calm myself down over and over. I’ve said it so much that I forget that God’s supposed to hear it, too. But on that night, I wanted to make sure He heard me. I added a new part to the ritual: I made the sign of the cross. Now, I’m not Catholic. I don’t know why I felt that would give me any added protection, I just knew it was something else to do to feel safe. So I did it, even though I was worried it would weave its way into my OCD. I was right, of course. At first, it was the sign of the cross in full: forehead, chest, left shoulder, right shoulder. I tried to make it subtle. This was, of course, difficult. But nobody ever questioned me or my gestures. Still, I imagined everyone was looking, watching, wondering what I was doing. Was she some religious freak? Did she have Tourettes or something? What was wrong with her? So I made it smaller. I moved it from my body to just my hand, making a cross on my palm. I was worried that making it smaller would reduce the ritual’s potency. It did, at first, but then I got used to it. Now, I do the hand cross even more often than I say my prayer.

Now, I’m twenty. I don’t wash my hands as long or as often. I use hand sanitizer sparingly. My hands only get a little dry in the winter, and I can fix it with lotion, as long as it smells good. These are improvements. But I still say my prayer, and I still make the hand cross. I still have my obsessions, which are even more difficult to write about than the compulsions. 

My obsessions mainly concern the safety and wellbeing of me and those I care about. It used to be more germ based, hence the hand washing. I was specifically concerned about throwing up. To me, it was the worst thing imaginable to happen to my body. Other things worried me, of course, but this was on a level of its own. I’ve gotten over it by now, mostly through unwilling exposure therapy. When it came to others, I was afraid of anything happening to them, anything at all, but mostly that they would die. If my parents were making a long car trip and I wasn’t going with them, I was half convinced they’d get in a terrible car crash and I’d be left an orphan and in charge of my younger brother, left to the foster care system or the streets (though, probably, we’d just end up with my grandmother, who is lovely). I know this is irrational. My OCD does not care. I worried for everyone and everything. I also worried that I would die, which is a little ironic, since I tried to kill myself two months ago. 

In April, I was ending my second semester in college. I had developed new rituals to cope, which mostly involved a bowl or a bong and a lighter, or a case of beer. The smoking was a multiple-times-a-day type thing. The beer was pretty much every night. These rituals weren’t for the OCD. They were for pretty much everything else, but mostly for the fact that I was on the verge of failing out of school and was too depressed to do anything about it. Anytime I remembered an assignment I had to do, I would feel this dread in the pit of my stomach. It was so heavy I couldn’t move, and I certainly couldn’t get anything done. So I would go to the window and smoke a few bowls with my friend Lizzie, who was in pretty much the same state of depression I was, except she somehow managed to get at least some of her homework done. We called ourselves worms in the dirt, the dirt being her dorm room. It was an appropriate analogy, if worms were constantly high or drunk and incredibly depressed. We hardly left our dirt. I slept in Lizzie’s roommate’s bed when she wasn’t there. Classes were over by that point, so we had nowhere to go, except to get food or beer or cigarettes. None of this was helpful to our mental states in any way, of course. We only dug deeper into the dirt. One night, the 27th of April, I was incredibly low, and I’d had a few beers and a few bowls, and everyone had gone to bed. Lizzie’s roommate was back, and I didn’t want to go home, so I slept on the couch. At least, I tried to sleep, but all I could do was lay there. I don’t remember what I was thinking about. I do remember that I decided the only was to save myself was through a sacrifice. I needed to make a sacrifice in order to keep myself from being kicked out of college. I remembered the prescription cough syrup in the fridge, the one my friend had stolen from a frat party. I got off the couch. I downed the bottle. Now, I didn’t truly want to die. I didn’t want to succeed in killing myself. I only wanted to attempt it, to show the state of depression and desperation I was in. I wanted the world to know there was a reason I was doing so terribly in school besides my own laziness. So, after I drank the cough syrup, I told Lizzie what I’d done. Lizzie told two of our friends, her suite-mates. One of them made me throw up in their bathroom while the other called the campus police. They took me to the hospital in an ambulance, where the nurses asked me repeatedly why I’d drunk the cough syrup. I told them each time, “to kill myself,” even though it wasn’t entirely true. I drank the cough syrup as a sacrifice. Of course, I didn’t realize what exactly I was sacrificing when I did it. It wasn’t just myself or my health or anything like that. It was my relationships. It didn’t ever cross my mind to consider how Lizzie would feel when I told her I drank that cough syrup. Whether that means I was selfish, or just incredibly mentally ill, or both, I don’t know. But I regret it.

It worked, though. I get to go back to school. I made an appeal, and it passed, and I’m on probation, but I get to go back. Looking back, I’m almost positive the same thing would’ve happened if I hadn’t drank the cough syrup and upset everyone that cares about me. I’m almost positive that just telling someone I was seriously considering it would’ve been enough. Lack of foresight, I guess. At least, that’s what everyone in the emergency room said.

I have no urges to drink cough syrup anymore. I smoke less, I drink less. I’ve gone back to the usual rituals, the ones that are less damaging and more annoying. Saying my prayer, making the hand cross, things like that. Some rituals are healthier than others. I’m not healed, but I’m better. I’m grateful to be alive. I say my prayer to keep me that way. Dear God, please help us stay safe and healthy and feeling good. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray, Amen.