OCD's, BPD's and PTSD's - by Chukwuka Valentine

I count the cracks in the ceiling because if I don't, something terrible might happen. One. Two. Three. Don't think about it. Four. Don't think about them. Five. Don't think about what happened. Six. It's funny how people notice these habits before I notice them myself. "You do that a lot." "Why do you keep checking?" "You've asked me that already." "You were fine a second ago." And I laugh. Because what else am I supposed to do when someone points at a part of me I've been living with without ever learning its name? So I check the lock. Once. Twice. Seven times. Because maybe this time the fear will finally believe me. My heart, however, has never learned the meaning of finally. It loves like a wildfire and leaves like one too. One minute, you are the safest place I've ever known. The next, your silence sounds like abandonment and your absence feels like a funeral. I hate you. I need you. Don't leave. Leave me alone. Come back. Don't come back. I am sorry. I am not sorry. I don't know which version of me is speaking anymore. And maybe they notice that too. The suddenness. The intensity. The way I can go from please stay to don't touch me without even hearing myself cross the distance. And then there is the past. It doesn't knock. It doesn't ask permission. It simply walks in wearing yesterday's face. A sound. A smell. A shadow at the edge of a room— and suddenly, I am there again. Not here. There. Back where my body learned that surviving and living were two different things. My hands shake at memories my mouth refuses to name. I sleep with one eye open and call it rest. I flinch at kindness because sometimes the gentlest hands have carried the sharpest things. And someone always asks, "What's wrong?" As if I know. As if the body is required to explain what the mind has buried. OCD tells me: Control everything. BPD whispers: Feel everything. PTSD screams: Fear everything. And somewhere underneath them, there is me. Or what's left when the noise gets tired. Sometimes I wonder if there is a difference between being afraid and becoming fear. Sometimes I wonder if I'm allowed to call it over when my body still remembers how to brace for it. Sometimes— I think I'm okay. And then someone says, "You just did it again." And I look at my hands. And I realize they've been doing something I don't remember starting. So I ask, "Doing what?" And they look at me for a second too long. ... I don't have OCD, or BPD or PTSD Wait, do I? While counting. While checking. While remembering. While feeling. While - Wait.How many timesdid I just do that? .... I should probably start over. One. Two. Three. Don't think about it. Four. Don't think about them. Five. Six. I remember being told by himone evening that ;I have OCD. And God,how strongly I denied it. No.Absolutely not. I don't.I'm just careful.I'm just particular.I'm just - I don't know. Anythingbut that. Because sometimesgiving something a namemakes it real. And I wasn't readyfor that kind of real.So I laughed it off. Maybe argued. Maybe changed the subject. Maybe pretendedI didn't hear the concernhiding underneath his voice. And then—I checked the lock. Once. Twice. Seven times. Like I always did. Only this timeI wonderedif he had been counting too.

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