Page 107 of To Hell With It

‘It’s not that,’ I said as I rubbed it in. ‘I have OCD.’

Tim looked pensive.

‘Nicola had OCD.’

He nodded to my bottle of sanitiser. And I went from feeling sorry for Tim to feeling annoyed with him because using sanitiser doesn’t make someone have OCD.

‘She used it a lot,’ he continued. ‘Do you know that humans have a natural antibacterial property in their hands that helps kill bacteria and viruses?’

‘No.’

‘It’s true. There’s a lot of research on it. It really helped Nicola to know that and she stopped doing it in the end.’

‘Using sanitiser doesn’t make it OCD,’ I repeated my thought matter-of-factly.

I hate when people say they have OCD just because they check their car doors are locked or used hand sanitiser. It is far more complicated than that. The thing with my OCD is that it is based on facts (facts that I make up in my head) and urges and compulsions and desires, and if what Tim told me was a fact, that my own hands could clean themselves, then it should have potentially ended a lot of my self-inflicted trauma. But the only problem there was that it doesn’t work like that. OCD is irrational, and irrational behaviour can’t be overcome by rational thinking.

‘What else did she do?’ I asked, even though I still felt irritated. I wanted to prove my point once it was established that was all she did – used a bit of hand sanitiser now and again.

‘What do you mean?’ Tim asked.

‘What other OCD things did she do?’ I said impatiently.

‘That was it, I think.’

‘She didn’t have OCD then,’ I said smugly, like it was a badge of honour someone had to earn the right to wear.

Tim fell silent, so I continued.

‘OCD is so much more than just using hand sanitiser. It’s a compulsion. You can’t control it by just rationalising it – you can’t just stop because someone tells you your hands can clean themselves.’

‘It was because of the chemo,’ Tim snapped, and my body shrank. ‘Nicola was more susceptible to getting ill because the chemo killed her immune system. She became obsessed with using it, so that, you know, she didn’t get an infection and die.’

I felt like a twat.

‘Sorry,’ I said shamefully.

‘You shouldn’t jump to conclusions.’

‘I don’t usually, it’s just a touchy subject.’

‘So is my dead wife,’ Tim said, and I felt like I had died too.

‘Do you have any children?’ I asked, as if I couldn’t have made the situation any worse – why did I ask that?

‘That wasn’t an option to us while Nicola was dying.’

‘Shit, I’m sorry.’ I cringed. ‘I say stupid stuff when I don’t know what to say. Of course she couldn’t, I mean I’m sure she wanted to, but of course, how could she?’

Tim kept silent. I could hear the crunch of our feet against the path as we made our way slowly (I was hobbling, remember) back down the track, and just when I thought he must have hated me, he sighed.

‘She wanted me to have a family, to meet someone else, in fact she made me promise her that I would.’

‘She wanted you to be happy.’ I beamed, grateful to Nicola for giving me a lifeline. ‘It probably made her feel good to know you could still have and do the things you both wanted.

‘But I don’t want that if it’s not with her,’ Tim said.

‘Of course you don’t,’ I sympathised. ‘But it’s nice she has given you her blessing, that must have been hard for her, and for you.’

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