August 2026 - Vol. 23, Issue 4

It’s 4:30am when my mother finally wakes up, the lights of the kitchen shining through the crack in my doorframe, and I can finally take air into my lungs. I’ve spent the night afraid, trying to see if I could hear her snoring in the room across the hall, listening for the pitter patter of my dogs feet on our hallway floors coming to alert me, every hour tip toeing across the hall and peeking into her room to see her chest rise and fall. My mother isn’t sick, there’s no real indication that something might go wrong in the nighttime, but that doesn’t matter. The thought that tickled the back of my brain moved its way to the front, and suddenly it was the only thing crowding up the space until I could almost feel the pounding pressure in my skull.

I’ve done my research, I’ve looked at all the sources my psychiatrist has sent me, and I’ve bought the $30 workbooks that make me fill in the pages, and then tell me that, essentially, I just have to ignore the thoughts. That particular workbook is currently collecting dust on my windowsill, but I remember those intermittent facts weaved into endless metaphors that stuck in my brain like germs on skin. The percentages, the dosages of medication, the reminders that these fears that pop into my head will never truly go away.

She’s awake now, and though I no longer feel that tightness in my chest, I’ve had a long, lonely night, and I want some company. Our dog is already filled with electric energy for the day, hopping up to greet me in galloping prance, but my mother still has the remnants of sleep drooping her eyes as she fries an egg at the stove. It doesn’t take long for her to lock on to the little cup in our sink still packed with silverware that she asked me to clean two nights ago. It’s not rage that takes hold of her, and it’s not disappointment, but it’s some weary in between that sinks her body into itself.

“Are you playing a prank on me?” She asks, “Is this an act of defiance?” I’m 21 years old, defiance has been left in my teenage years where they belong, and I’ve never been known to play pranks. The words catch in the back of my throat, what I want to say is that I can’t do it. I can’t wash the forks and spoons that have been in her mouth, or the knives that have cut her food, even with the thick, yellow rubber gloves that go up my forearm. I can’t wash my own either, I know my mouth is clean, I know the food that it has touched is clean, and safe, and made with a watchful eye at every step, but there were bits of her food in the sink, and if I tried to wash those away and any water jumped back up onto my silverware, or, God forbid, my skin, the panic would overtake me. I can’t even look at it long enough to make sure I wash everything clean. Now, my own silverware sits in the cup touching hers, it’s not safe anymore.

“I’m sorry, I’ll do it today.” Is what comes out of my mouth.

Contamination and health anxiety is defined as “Thoughts or mental images related to negative events that may happen to oneself or others in the future if certain behavioral rules are not followed or if their negative effect is not neutralized.” I will have a panic attack, I will need to have an hour long, boiling hot shower that burns my skin to ‘neutralize’ this. I will cry and I will not be able to breathe. The only reason I want to share these definitions through my shaky breath and the sobs that are shrinking my throat is so that my mother will not turn red in the face at my “temper tantrum”, so that maybe she will give me just the smallest amount of grace.

I’ve told my mom these things before, or at least half of it, but my words can’t cut through her own life experiences, they cannot penetrate the fact that she has never experienced this fear. When I squirm, or my breathing starts to pick up into little hiccups and gasps because she sets a bowl of dog food on the counter where human food is supposed to go, where my food is supposed to go, she explodes.

I have not washed my water bottle in months, I can see where the buildup is in the crevice between my flip up straw and the joint it rotates on. It is disgusting. I don’t panic. Truth be told, I don’t even have the urge to clean it. It is disgusting, but it is mine, and I know where my mouth has been, I know that I floss every night, brush for two minutes twice a day, scrub my tongue, and have not had a cavity in years. My mother uses this as ammo that I cannot shield myself from.

The tears come more out of guilt than the panic that is rising in my throat. I know that this disorder makes me incompetent in most things, especially the things I can’t control. I know that when I take out the trash for her I start crying and need to take a scalding hot shower to wash it off of me, because this is her trash, and even though the bag is closed, I don’t know what’s in it. I can’t get the mail during the day because it’s in a mailbox, and the mailbox is dirty which means the mail is dirty and I’m bringing it into our home, and what if the mailbox had bugs in it, and those bugs got on my clothes, and I bring those clothes back to school after Spring Break is over, and then I have bugs in my room.

I explain the best I can, but I’ve always had this brain that works on the premise of obsessions that won’t stop until I complete the associated compulsion, even if the compulsion itself begins to turn into its own special obsession. I use logic all day, in my classes, in my research, deciding what to eat, what to wear, but this part of my brain is not logical. It’s frustrating enough for me, so I can’t imagine the frustration it must bring about in everyone else.

I want to shout at them the statistics from textbooks. I want to take out a whiteboard and have them take notes on the OCD cycle. The amount of people with OCD that have contamination fears. The fact that most people have multiple types of subsets within their own disorder, that yes I can have contamination OCD while also having health OCD (yes, that is a separate category). I want to explain as professionally as I can that my room being messy does not affect any of this, that everything scattered on my floor and on my desk is mine. I know where it’s been.

I’ve done the research, I’ve had all of this carefully explained to me by various psychiatrists and therapists throughout the years. I know how my brain works, I know that it is disorganized and messy in a way I cannot stand most things to be, but it is mine. It is because it’s mine that this doesn’t bother me, I feel no guilt from the obsessive compulsive cycle I find myself in, I know that it’s not my fault. I just wish everyone else could see it the same way.