Organized Chaos - Volume 3
At the Kitchen Sink …
by Jeffrey Mark Erfe
Slithering, crawling, twitching, scurrying, and writhing. I can feel them. They're there.
Sink as I stand in front of the kitchen sink. I look down at the backs of my starchy hands. My scarred and cracking skin stretches over my knuckles and the bones of my fingers. My hands try to reach into the cascade of cool tapwater flowing from the faucet. I hold them back, clenching them into iron fists and letting my nails dig deep into my palms, hoping the pain will keep my consciousness tethered to reality. They're there. I can see them. My heart starts to race. I feel like a junkie supercharged on speed. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
I close my eyes, trying to forget what I've seen. I know, but the fear won't let me. As I try to stifle the mind-reeling fear that has paralyzed me. I discover just how helpless I am. I can't do my therapy.
I find temporary respite in a good, defeatist laugh. Dr. Silver's face coagulates from the formless blur of blues, reds, greens, and grays stuck to the back of my eyelids. Don't let it control you, Jeff, he says. It's just obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is a neurochemical imbalance. There are no germs eating your skin. You know that. Let your actions dictate your reality. I laugh again. My psychiatrist is a Nietzschean existentialist.
Or is he? What would Nietzsche have said about OCD? I don't know, but he would have acknowledged the value of my suffering. Dr. Silver's face retreats back into the amorphous mass of color and is replaced by Nietzsche's. He would say that I should place value in my torment as an affirmation of life. Exercise the will to power, the will to experience suffering in order to reconstruct one's identity. If I were to run away from the bacteria crawling across my hands, I would be no better than those who reject the realm of the body in the name of the other-worldly utopia. Those who downplay the body in overemphasis of the spiritual. I would not be embracing the totality of my humanness.
I blink. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I do not have the will to power. I can't even perform cognitive-behavioral therapy. I can't even wait for twenty seconds to wash my hands of imaginary bacteria. Twenty seconds of irrational anxiety. I don't relish suffering; I avoid it. A dizzying miasma of self-doubt washes over me. I lean against the sink. I laugh weakly. It's not good to question yourself without a philosophy book at hand.
I begin walking to my room in search of a book that sheds some light on what Nietzsche would say about my OCD After four steps I notice something. The kitchen faucet is still running. I look down. My hands are still dry -- they haven't been washed. What's more, I don't feel them writhing with adrenaline and crawling with bacteria anymore. I smile; I've just performed my therapy without realizing it.
I walk back to the sink and close the tap. I laugh again, but something has changed. It's the first laugh I have truly enjoyed in quite awhile. It's as if my will has been unshackled from its heavy iron weights. I'm no ubermensch, but I can still be something -- I can still exercise control over my emotions and my body. It may not be a conscious, entirely self-willed effort, but it's a start.
