Page 3 of Devoted

He’d managed to get so wasted that he’d thought my house was his. The fact that there was already someone in his bed wasn’t something his brain had worried about with the amount of alcohol swimming in his veins. It had made me feel bizarrely jealous. What must it be like to not worry over every little thing?

It was a wake-up call though. It’d ended okay this time, but what about the next?

A neurotypical person might have been able to let it go. The logical part of their brain would reassure their emotional side that something like that was a once in a lifetime kind of event.

Unfortunately for me, that wasn’t how my brain worked. While I could both see and recognise the logic, it wasn’t enough for my emotional brain. A doctor had once explained to me thatneurotypical brains usually had a rational part that was larger than their emotional one, meaning they were more likely to believe what their senses and reasoning were telling them.

For people with OCD, it was often flipped. The emotional side was dominant, meaning you’d question everything more than was healthy. It was called the doubting disease for a reason. So, you could drive past a little old lady knowing full well that your tyres hadn’t left the road. That you hadn’t mounted the path and run her foot over. But you couldn’t ever convince yourself that it was true.

You might have the intrusive thought as a neurotypical person. Everyone got them. The difference was, they could let it go.

It wasn’t that easy for me.

‘You definitely hit her. You have to turn the car around to check.’

Gritting my teeth, I glanced into the rearview mirror. Even this, I shouldn’t have been doing. Giving in to the compulsion would only make the need to do so again worse in the long run. But this was better than adding time to my journey by turning the car around. “No. She’s fine, I can see her walking along and chatting with her friend.”

I wasn’t sure if other people with OCD talked out loud to their thoughts sometimes, but fuck it. Out of all the coping mechanisms, it was one of the better ones.

I pushed on, ignoring the screaming thoughts that insisted I needed to turn around. Focusing on the drive, I tried to imagine the thoughts as balloons, floating past and away without me needing to do anything.

It helped. Not much, but enough that I was able to get home without driving back to where I had been.

Owning and driving a car in London was ridiculous. Parking was a nightmare, and don’t even get me started on thecongestion charge. It was stupid to have a car when there were such amazing public transport links available.

But when you couldn’t bring yourself to use them, you didn’t have much choice. Paying a small fortune to avoid triggering my OCD was worth it. It was just one of the many adjustments I’d made in order to get through each day. Adjustments that had made my life…well, miserable if I was being honest.

Recently though, things had been looking up. Not because my mental health was improving, but because ofhim.

Nervous excitement bubbled in my stomach as I unlocked my front door and stepped inside. Would he be online this early? I should do a few more hours work first, but the temptation to log ontoCreatorwas too great to ignore. That was the beauty of being your own boss—you set your hours. I might have to stay up until three a.m. getting work finished if I paused now for a bit, but it’d be worth it.

Chatting with Zeke was always worth it.

After carrying the shopping into the kitchen, I returned to check the front door. Once. Twice. Three times. Then I went racing back to the kitchen and started shoving the few bits I’d grabbed from Tesco into the fridge, freezer and cupboards. It was funny, some days I couldn’t face leaving the house, arranging instead for my shopping to be delivered. On other days, the idea of a stranger on my doorstep was enough to make me hyperventilate. On those days, running errands myself was preferable.

Say what you wanted about living with OCD, but it was never fucking boring.

My feet thumped on the stairs as I made my way to my bedroom with a bag of sweets in my hand. I made it to the top step before anything happened.

‘You didn’t shut the freezer properly.’

I gritted my teeth, trying to ignore the compulsion. After fighting with myself for a few seconds, I turned with a curse. It took less than a minute to check the freezer was shut—it was—then I was running back up the stairs again.

I was lucky that I could afford this place alone. I’d learned that having roommates wasn’t for me, especially when the roommates in question realised OCD didn’t mean liking my books organised in a satisfying way or being ultra clean.

The reality was so much more complicated.

I wasn’t an easy person to live with. I accepted that. No one liked being told they couldn’t leave windows wide open at night because I’d once heard that a bat might fly in and bite you, and you’d never know about it until you developed lockjaw and died of rabies. Or that I had to sit in a specific place in each room depending on where the door was.

That’s right, just call me Sheldon.

Nor did they understand why sometimes I could put things in the bin, while other times I’d stack the rubbish on the side. Or why some days I was fine with someone else touching my things, while on others it made me feel like my skin was peeling off.

I didn’t always understand it myself, so I didn’t expect others to.

That was the thing with OCD—some days were good, some days weren’t. Things that were easy one week would be impossible the next. It all depended on how good my general mental state was.

Naturally, I didn’tjusthave OCD. Life wasn’t that kind to me. I had what the doctor had called an “intriguing mix” of OCD, panic disorder, sensory processing disorder, and generalised anxiety disorder.

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