OCD

My home is on fire. The smoke is thick. It claws at the ceiling, slipping under doors. It fills the lungs of my cats while they search for me. They’re screaming.

I can hear their paws slipping on the hardwood. They die alone and confused. They die wondering why I didn’t save them.

I threw up in the kitchen sink. The house is quiet. The house is not on fire. It was all in my head.

My hand rests on the front door handle. I’ve already locked it once. I remember locking it. I think, but what if the candles reignite? What if a wire sparks? What if the dryer overheats? Actually, I think one of my cats is in the dryer burning alive.

I go back insidethe candle wax is solid. The stove is off, but the dryer hums in my brain, even though it is silent. I picture it curling into ash, a small body turning and turning and turning. I yank the dryer door open. It’s empty.

I count my cats: one, two, one, two. They blink at me, alive, but my brain is patient. It waits for all the possibilities.

Maybe one crawled in when I wasn’t looking. I checked the dryer again, empty. I close it. I open it again, empty. I finally manage to leave the house.

Driving feels like gambling with God. The light turns green, but was it green? It was. I replay it in my head, but I can’t see it clearly. If I can’t replay it clearly, that means something is wrong with my brain.

Brain tumors start like this, you know, memory gaps. The first sign is not knowing whether the light was green or red or yellow. My hands sweat against the steering wheel. I begin drafting the inevitable conversation with my family. I need to know how to break the news.

“They found something”—no, too big.

“It’s a mass”—no, too dramatic. Don’t be dramatic.

I’ll need a specialist. I should research the best neurosurgeon before lunch. Early detection saves lives. Survival rates depend on size. What if it’s already spread?

What if I’m already dying? What if this is the dying part? What if I’m not driving at all? What if I’m already dead? I’m in a hospital bed, or maybe I’m locked somewhere padded in my mind, made up this day to keep me calm. Am I real?

The light turns yellow. I consider running it. If I run it and crash, I’ll know. If I run it and don’t crash, maybe none of this is real. I slow down instead, like a coward, or maybe a sane person. I can’t tell anymore.

Small bump in the road, dull sounding. My stomach dropped through the floor. That wasn’t a pothole. It was the crushing of bone in a body being dragged on asphalt.

I see it instantly. A person’s skull opens, hair threaded into my tires, and a headline flashes in my mind: woman drives body for miles, claims she didn’t know. I see the courtroom, the others sobbing, the footage playing in slow motion.

I circle the block; there’s nothing in the road, just cracked asphalt in a shallow pothole filled with old rain. It’s just a pothole. It’s all in my head.

Back home now, I check the stove again: off, off, off, but my brain shows me the knob turning itself slowly, gas filling the kitchen, sparks flashing, my cat trapped behind a closed door while the house is consumed by hellish flames. It’s all in my head, but that sentence never seems to finish anything.

I try to slice an apple for lunch. The knife glides too easily, and red blooms across the tile, not apple, but blood, blood running down my arms. I see my own hands as weapons. I see myself standing over someone, and the headline flashes again: unstable woman snaps. I blink.

The apple lies in clean halves, no blood, but the image lingers. My brain has labeled me dangerous, not just to myself, but to the whole world around me. I try to sleep.

Catastrophe requires REM sleep; if I wake up enough times, nothing terrible can fully form.

Around 2:37 AM, something shifts the coat on the chair. The coat I’ve seen a hundred times is now standing, the shoulders look broader, and the sleeves hang like arms. I stare at it, but it doesn’t move.

My heart begins to pound so hard I can hear it in my ears. That’s not your heart, my brain says, that’s breathing, inhale, exhale, from the corner, from the coat, or maybe from behind it. There is someone in my house. I don’t move.

Sleep deprivation sharpens fear into certainty. There are no “maybes” at 3 AM. There is only: you are going to die.

I slide my hands slowly toward my phone. If I call 911 and whisper, they’ll come, but what if they don’t hear anything? What if they think I’m insane and send me to the hospital, and then I never get out?

Then a shift in the hallway, a foot against hardwood. I feel it in my spine. There’s definitely someone here. I force myself to sit up.

The coat is just fabric again. The hallway is dark, and I whisper hello, my voice fracturing, but there’s no answer.

Nothing, nothing, nothing, but my body reacts as if hands just brushed my shoulders.

I test doors. I test windows. I check every lock: front door locked, back door locked, windows sealed.

I sit on the couch, gripping a kitchen knife. I don’t remember picking it up. My reflection on the black television screen startles me. For a split second, I think someone is standing behind me. I look around. I look back at the screen.

My reflection looks delayed, like it’s catching up to me. That’s when the thought lands heavy: maybe there is someone dangerous here, and maybe it’s me.

The coat is harmless again; there’s no one in the hallway, no one outside the door, and no breathing except mine. I think about the bump in the road, the imaginary body, the fire that never started, the intruder that never breathed.

Every disaster ended the same way: it was all in my head.

If it was all in my head, then my head is the problem; if it was all in my head, then I am the threat.

People talk about mental illness like it’s sadness; they don’t talk about the violence of your own mind turning against you.

Did you lock the door? Did you imagine that? What if you hurt someone? What if you already did? What if you snap?

It’s brushing your teeth while replaying every possible way you could accidentally poison yourself. It’s driving while convincing yourself you’re seconds away from killing someone. It’s loving someone so much, you imagine their deaths over and over and over just to be prepared.

I used to think the scariest thing in my life would be a fire or an intruder or a tumor blooming quietly in my skull, but in this kitchen, shaking, sleep-starved, I understand something unbearable.

I was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever had to overcome, not because I am violent, not because I’m evil, but because my own mind can fabricate disaster so convincingly that my body lifts it as truth; adrenaline doesn’t care whether the fire is real.

Tomorrow I will wake up, and this house will still be standing. I will have to decide all over again what is real.