A virus of filth. Living side by side with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: A reflection
Think “virus”, and I think “brother”.
Or more accurately (and kindly), his OCD in a house over-full of abuse – a virus in an already diseased beast.
The most destructive kind.
In my childhood, we knew this. We were familiar with viruses.
First, it was outbreaks.
Saturdays. Around 11am.
Eternally clothed in black my brother towered hovering, two large pincher fingers dipping and snatching from Woolworths bags. Index finger and thumb, one hand only, the chosen item dropped into his own plastic bag, clutched to his chest.
A delicate maneuver, attention drawing.
“Germs”, he explained, once only, his tone reasonable.
But that was where reasonable ended.
Sweets, toilet paper, condiments, cereal, paper towel, soap, soft drink. His private larder, minimising the need to touch what anyone else used, and ensuring no one else had what they needed.
Once full, the bag glided across the room to a corner of carpet where each product was plucked out, wiped with soapy paper towel, and nestled in a second (uncontaminated) bag.
Bag 1 binned, Bag 2 into his room, joining the other damp-warped boxes and such. His own filth, so contagion free.
The process was rigid, violent screaming if those lobster red fingers were batted away.
Once pincered, it was his.
As germs do, they mutated virus-like in a high-speed slow-motion, infecting every interior surface.
Where it stubbornly stuck, resistant to Glen 20, Bleach, and Domestos. Not just one product, but several, a complicated multi-treatment regime.
The empty bottles piled by the door a permanent reminder to our mother to re-stock. And re-stock.
A task never forgotten - thrown objects are powerful motivators.
Chairs and walls, his golf ball collection… Anything inert which could be cleaned, was. A tiresome task, comfort weighed against effort - any chair a bottom left had to be scrubbed.
An incentive to stand. Or sit on the edge of seats, furtively.
Because, we soon clued on that disease riddled surfaces contaminate clothing, which if placed outside his door triggered off a train-wreck of a domino effect, as it slowly rattled open…
Followed by a bellow of rage as he calculated that the clean t-shirt may have brushed the wall on its trail down the hallway, infected anyway by our refusal to wear gloves on our germy hands.
And so.
Screaming, in an athleticism powered by fear the shirt was pincered by the neck hole, sprinted at arm’s length to the laundry sink, and dumped. Then, a run to the bathroom, hands scrubbed, the bedroom, clean clothing pincered, the bathroom, 20-minute gush of shower water. Muffled towel drying noises, spray-hiss as he applied Glen 20 in lieu of deodorant, stomp of feet back to the bedroom. Where the door was cleaned and metre of carpet between bedroom and bathroom shampooed. Then to the kitchen, cleaning apparatus binned, and the bathroom, hands washed in bleach and air dried – avoiding the germ harbour of the handtowel.
Finally, rage and bleach-red, he emerged.
Vengeful.
A surface and/or person, potentially infectious, had touched his shirt.
Which he could never wear again.
Like diseases which cross from animals to humans so did this –
leaping from objects to people, following his reasoning: Infectious surfaces infect clothing, AND THEN skin. People have skin.
Metres of it.
Rapidly implemented, we soon have social distancing down pat.
That wary tip-toe-walk across detergent soppy carpet, sidestepping the violent shove when, misjudging the allowed distance, a body part of mine touched one of his. An error which acted like fire to a fuse, setting off his I-will-die-now-you-have-slain-me roar and my silent I-am-dirty-and-rejected-and-therefore-worthless feeling.
So, I quickly got the knack of slinking cat-like around surfaces, a flexibility further enabled by anxiety. I was inured to violence, but the germs worried me.
Clearly, I could kill him. Simply with an unwashed finger. A power many siblings would envy, but something that bothered me.
From time to time.
An unnecessary concern really, as his three-step no-contact delivery service (bellowed instructions from afar, finger flick indicating section of table, menacing order to withdraw), increasingly eliminated any risk of person-to-person contact. Allowing him, with canary yellow washing up gloves shielding his hands, to safely inspect any item(s) presented to him, with a hit and miss acceptance.
Birthday presents? Binned unopened – there was no way of safely fumigating them.
And so it went on.
The virus was relentless.
A daily all-day event, peaking like a tsunami at 6:30pm, coinciding with our father’s own (and thus everyones’) unhappiest hour.
See, that dining table was okay as a drop-off zone, but not to eat off.
Rejecting the provided meal my sibling stood at the far side of the room, cramming in sandwiches, pop tarts, Mars bars - anything easily consumed in one hand, ensuring the other remained a fist.
A lookalike to our father’s.
And a redundant reminder that there were two volatile males to dodge, and little space to do it in. A cramped-ness which only amplified the shouting. Male and female.
But not mine.
To my trauma-dead heart this was dinner – threats, fists, and food that lost taste as the meal progressed.
Muted by white noise, staring into air, 365 nights per year I autopiloted my fork between plate and mouth. Only a slight shake to it. Attuned to the nuances of voices, recognising the vicious edge to tone, I was self-preserving-ly smug with relief – although more conveniently placed, so long as the junior male kept going, there was no bullseye on my chest.
Wisely mindful not to clink knife on china – a reminder that I existed, I spent the hour obsessing on our father’s hairy hands, appendages I wanted to hack off. Overly touchy-feely, impervious to my lethal germs, too often on my skin.
And attached to someone I feared.
Stuck in my own traumatised hell my brother’s pandemic was merely a surreal twin to my own, twisted together in suffering.
And seemingly, of unclear origin.
But I knew -
Behind a thin wall, at night my brother’s mind filled in the image of sex-germs, as challenging to remove as oil.
Then smeared by my hands all through the house…
Ground-zero was my bedroom.
That’s my theory.
It is only a theory though.
What I do know -
Our family understood about viruses.
And how to create them.
Originally written May, 2020