OCD Love Story

OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu Page A

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Authors: Corey Ann Haydu
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just-watching, and I get tired of the way her hand with the cigarette in it finds her mouth over and over and over without hitching on her jacket or stopping to consider lung cancer or even just missing its mark. She’s a painting and a work of art and a person I wish I could be. But the calm I get from seeing her is short-lived. My mind keeps returning to those pamphlets from Dr. Pat that lie, partly crumpled, on the seat beside me.
    Or maybe it’s Austin who is the real pull.
    He reminds me of someone else. Like another guy I used to like who had the same skinny unkempt-ness, the same ironic T-shirts. It makes my heart swing in my chest. He’s not my usual type, I guess, but he does look like that guy Jeff. The first kiss one. The one I don’t like to think about. Cooter’s old best friend. I push the thought away. The memory of a first kiss sticks to your heart pretty ferociously; I think that’s true for everyone, but especially me.
    I make my heart stop swinging with a deep breath like Dr. Pat told me to do. I put a good strong wall up around that thought and decide not to go near it again.
    Sylvia takes another drag on her cigarette and checks her watch. Doesn’t look expectantly at the door to her building, so I don’t think Austin’s going to suddenly appear.
    Then that’s it, and as impulsively as I decided to follow them here, I decide to leave again. It’s a long drive back whenyou can’t go much faster than thirty miles an hour, and I’m supposed to meet Lisha at our favorite diner for french fries and gossip. I will try not to tell her about my weird little drive to this mysterious couple’s building, but Lisha has one of those really nice faces that makes you want to talk. And the girl always says the right thing, or knows when to say nothing at all. I’m an open book anyway, and Lisha is a voracious effing reader.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    I go thirty-two miles an hour the whole way to the diner. I consider those extra two miles an hour a tiny victory. Even so, I’m about an hour late, so Lisha’s already at the Pancake House when I get there, still in her tights and leotard, hair matted to her forehead and knotted into a high bun, prickly with bobby pins. She’s set up with hot chocolate and half-eaten waffles and a plate of french fries drenched in mustard and tabasco sauce that she’s been picking at, hopefully not for too long. Lisha’s caught up in her love affair with Russian fiction, though, and she holds up a finger when I sit down, telling me she’s got to finish the sentence or chapter but hopefully not the whole book before she can focus on me.
    â€œYou know you’re the latest you’ve ever been, right? Do we need an intervention?” she says when she finally looks up at me and bookmarks Crime and Punishment . I’ve told her to give up and finally read The Fountainhead , but she’s determined. About everything. Always has been.
    The waiters know to bring me hot chocolate too, and a fork to help Lisha finish up her binge.
    â€œI think I already had one with Dr. Pat.”
    â€œSo what’s the conclusion? Are you crazy?” Lisha says. We don’t talk in vague metaphors or evasive questions like the rest of the world. We tell it like it is and add on a healthy dose of self-deprecation if things are particularly shitty.
    â€œDr. Pat thinks I am. But that, you know, it’s no big deal and I shouldn’t let it affect my life or whatever.” I don’t say the word “OCD,” because Dr. Pat didn’t actually say that’s what my problem is, and besides, I can’t quite get that terminology out of my mouth. I’m not ready for the I’m Bea and I have OCD moment.
    I reach into my bag and find pamphlet number three, Where Anxiety Meets Compulsion: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Obsessions. I slide it across the table and get lost in a waffle instead of

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