“There is no longer a way out of our present situation except by forging a road toward our objective, violently and by force, over a sea of blood and under a horizon blazing with fire.”

I was out walking the other day. As always, as my OCD dictates, I was keeping a careful eye on where I was walking, where my feet touched, my head down, ever careful to never step on something that might set off an obsession. You see many things this way. Over the years, as trends in society have come and gone, the throw away trash on the sidewalks and gutters has changed. Some years ago I would see broken stems, crack pipes, here and there. Now it is used needles. I have been seeing those more frequently over the last year or so. And I do not live in a major city, or the inner city, just a small Midwest college town. Heroin is replacing crack as the drug of choice it seems. I wonder if anyone has ever done any sociological studies by cataloging the detrious of life along the streets of our towns? I am sure they have.

Needles, used drug needles, scare the hell out of me. I stepped on one years ago, it stuck in the sole of my shoe. Did it go through? That can set off a really nice OCD obsession, but that is another story for another time. As I was saying I was out walking and paying attention to what I pay attention to and I noticed what at first I tried to tell myself was a series of reddish brown paint drips on the side walk. Large drops, closely spaced, trailing along the sidewalk like bread crumbs left to follow. It was blood and a lot of it. It went for several blocks. The amount was significant and I half expected to find a body at the end of the trail.

Now my obsessions don’t revolve around blood in particular. I am not unfortunate enough to have that obsession so strongly that any red spot on anything sets off the OCD. But blood is, well, blood, and I see what is clearly blood and my OCD starts to party. And here was blood, fresh blood and people were walking in it and not noticing. (How is that possible? They don’t notice?) And it is being tracked around and spreading. Over the years in an effort to reduce anxiety I made the huge mistake of seeking information on diseases, whatever disease was the focus of my current obsession, and as a result I am a walking textbook of epidemiology. Any temporary anxiety relief I may have achieved from this desperate search for reassurance has been offset greatly by the increasing complications of my obsession fueled by education to the point where they sometimes border on or even cross over into “Overvalued Ideation”. On realizing I was seeing blood and walking near it, not on it mind you, all, this information was there immediatly and HIV, HBV, HCV, incubation periods, survival outside host, fomite transmission, survival rates served only to throw gasoline on the spark of this nascent obsession and I was once again lost in that world that few, outside of those who have OCD, will ever understand. But fear everyone knows and fear is what you feel when the obsessions are riding you. And frustration, as once again, you are betrayed by your own mind. To fight the fear is useless, you cannot win. The only way to beat the fear is to ride it out and not give in to those things you know will soften it. It is all so stupid, you know it is only OCD but your body and your mind don’t care, they are enveloped in this wave of misfiring circuity, faulty chemistry and unfortunate genes. It is fight or flight with no threat, no enemy and nowhere to run. It sucks.

As the obsession took hold that wonderful aspect of contamination obsessions, the magical spreading of the contamination began. It’s on the sidewalk, what if someone walks through this and then turns the corner to walk past where I live? Then that sidewalk is contaminated and then when I enter my home I contaminate the floor and well, anything that might be contaminated then is contaminated till the whole southern half of this state is and well, magical isn’t the right word. Black magic perhaps. This is my nightmare.

With the majority of the the things that trigger me they are unrealistic and can be beaten if I just don’t give in and wash/clean by just letting the obsession run in relatively short order. In a few hours, I can breath again. These are just the standard What if? obsessions. The problem is I have so many of those and there is only so much anxiety I can or am willing to tolerate. But this obsession, this bloody obsession, is triggered by a real thing. There is some real risk here. This will not fade by riding it out, not for weeks, and it is overwhelming in it’s intensity. It seems that along with the need for certainty or the inability to tolerate uncertainty, OCD does not tolerate risk, any risk – there are no grey areas. No acceptable levels of risk. And here with this contact there is real risk, minute perhaps, but real. Obsession of this type have changed the path of my life in the past. I have quit jobs, changed my social life to avoid whatever was eating my soul at the time. I am too tired to do that anymore. I resign myself to the fact that the next weeks will be joyless and miasma of anxiety. Unless I choose to lock my door and not venture out again until it is safe. I may as well nail my door shut, it is never safe to go out. I purposely choose to go out everyday to avoid becoming house bound. If for nothing else just to take a walk around the block, that is a low risk activity, what could happen?