Tea & Cockroaches

Isaac Murphy

I inherited curly brown hair from my dad’s side of the family, which resulted in my possession of a mane full of knots. I also inherited Obsessive Compulsive Disorder from my mom’s side of the family. Symptoms of this predicament started early in my life and they included countless moments of self-inflicted inconvenience or pain. The most memorable instance was kicking myself in the back of my legs every time I walked so I wouldn’t disturb an imaginary balance which I was thoroughly determined to keep. It hurt, but the very idea of not preserving this balance was unthinkable.

This balance was so important to me as a child and honestly, I have no idea why, or what I was even balancing. It felt like an invisible weight that sat in my bones and if it wasn’t perfectly even on both the left and right sides of my body, I would experience a wave of panic that wouldn’t ease up until I alleviated it by rebalancing myself in some nonsensical way. This imbalance haunted me during the entirety of my childhood and it resulted in the development of compulsions, any possible way that I could restore my balance. These compulsions occupied a large portion of my life and forged a difficult cycle to both exist within and break out of because they included scrubbing my hands until they bled in the attempt to remove a disproportionate amount of germs and doing absolutely everything sixty-four times because, in my third-grade brain, that number restored my balance. This was exhausting and stressful, but much less so than living with the anxiety that came with being imbalanced.

Thankfully, my mother recognized this early on and took me to a therapist. I don’t remember much about the start of my long journey of self-exploration in therapy, but I remember that my therapist had long, shiny black hair that cascaded around her shoulders and pink flowers in the room, although I don’t remember if these flowers were real or a painting of flowers. I also remember one of the very first lessons I learned in her office: life has an amazing tendency to just go on.

The best example of this lesson, in living proof, was my grandmother. I called her Reeya because my oldest cousin couldn’t quite pronounce “Grammy” as a baby, so her best attempt stuck as a nickname for my mother’s mother. She was old, and she told me stories (most of which were untrue) about how she could survive anything, because she had survived everything, even raging wars, raging politics, raging supervillains, and raging hospitable patients. She told me impossibly fascinating stories about her past, in which she was an drill sergeant, a queen, a superhero, and a nurse (again, most were untrue). (Most).

To me, Reeya was proof that yes, life does tend to go on. She once told me, as she blow-dried her hair, that she liked its blue-grayish color because it showed that she was “experienced,” that not many people could go through what she did and make it out on the other side on time for line dancing at the local senior center. Reeya was amazing to me because she embodied the lesson I needed to learn so badly—life will go on, and I’ll make it out on the other side on time for line dancing at the local senior center. Well, maybe not quite that last part, but still, she showed me that the upset balance that was so deeply ingrained into my head was not the end of my world, but bringing myself out of my harmful compulsion cycle would be a new beginning.

I remember the first time I learned she was not invincible. I was ten and we were going to see my third Broadway show, The Lion King (I was blessed to be born into a family with another musical theater fan). She asked me if I still liked to drink tea. I said yes. She said that that was great because she wanted to leave her fancy porcelain tea set to me in her will, because I would surely put it to good use. My stomach plummeted downwards towards my feet. I felt sick. My grandma, my Reeya, my incredible pillar of stability and strength was, by her own admission, not immortal. Shocking, I know. It felt like I was Simba, watching Mufasa getting trampled by the wildebeests. I wanted to help her in some way, but there was nothing I could do.

Something about her was never quite the same since that day, because, after that, she could never talk to me unless the conversation involved her own mortality and its limits.

I didn’t drink tea that night.

Death flooded our conversations, permeating our close bond. It was all she seemed to think about. She always talked about it, every time I saw her. At my brother’s little league games. At school plays. At Saturday morning visits. At birthday parties. At Thanksgivings and Christmases. It made me uneasy. Somehow, my role model felt like the shadow of the woman I loved. Every conversation broke my heart just a little bit more, as well as reminded me about my own imbalanced nature; about my humanity and its unquestionable, inescapable finality.

O.C.D., to me, is the fear of the inevitable threats that the universe poses to humanity, the unavoidable suffering coming with it, and our inability to change that. It loomed over my growing self and kept me awake at night. My phobias haunted me like a ghost and I did everything in my power to exorcise them, but this led to my own self-destruction. These attempts resulted in me ripping apart my own skin while washing myself, checking locks sixty-four times each, only eating foods that my fears deemed “safe,” and countless other echoing reiterations of the same all-consuming habits to keep my fears, and the lack of balance, at bay.

As my childhood fled from me over time, I watched my Reeya become swallowed whole by her fear, one that mirrored my own. I loved her, and that feeling of my stomach sinking every time she talked about her overhanging ending never stopped. She once depicted life so purely to me and I couldn’t let that end, so I took the memories of the drill sergeant, the queen, the superhero, and the nurse and I listened to them again, in my own recollection, and I used them in the very same way I had in my early childhood. I recognized life for life itself. I knew I had to break my compulsion cycles because Reeya showed me how the fear of death can corrupt life in its most raw, joyous form. Obsessing over life, over death, over balances and the number sixty-four is meaningless. Life tends to go on until it doesn’t anymore, and I couldn’t let myself become enveloped in the inevitability of it all.

I put in years of therapy to work through my O.C.D. and as I started to gradually get better, I watched her stay the same. I’m still working on this, twelve years after I started. I’m far from obsession-and-compulsion-free, but I’m trying my hardest. When the fears come back, I think about my drill sergeant/queen/superhero/nurse. Reeya is still alive today, but I can’t remember the last conversation I had with her that didn’t involve what loomed over us. My pleasant memories of diner booths, train rides, and walks to the theater with the dogs are all permeated by the two of us grasping at what we cannot yet fathom.

There’s never been any death in my family, but he watches over us because Reeya and I let it him in. He sits at her table as we sip tea. He is wordless, yet wise. He boasts that he will claim us too someday. However, my Reeya has taught me that you can either become undone by his presence or enjoy your time until his next visit. I know my choice.

Unraveling and unlearning my obsessions showed me what life really can do, and always will do—it tends to go on, but only if you let it.

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