A Non-Exhaustive List of Intrusive Thoughts I’ve Had
A sampling of ways in which OCD hijacks my brain
I once saw myself extracting hypothetically contaminated blood from my own veins and injecting it into a lemon drizzle cake in order to poison an office full of people.
I saw it in my mind, just so we’re clear. I was pretty sure it hadn’t actually happened, but that never means much to me. All I knew was that if it had happened my life was ruined, so that was my operating assumption — as it so often is.
To calm my nerves, I retreated to my bedroom and used my phone to video every inch of my naked body to make sure I had no puncture marks, no open wounds, nothing I could bleed from. I also took a video of the cake to make sure there was no structural damage. No blood in the icing or the sponge.
If you’re like me, you’ll know this methodology of reassurance doesn’t work.
Once you believe that your blood is diseased and that you are, unbeknownst to yourself, using it to poison food in an extremely convoluted (and ineffectual) way, video evidence is not going to save you. You are too far gone.
The voice in your head will quickly ask how you can be so sure that you didn’t take the video before your little Great British Bake Off Blood Transfusion…
