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BY HAMLET WRENNCROFT

In print | Published January 22, 2009

In June of 2007 I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder.

I apologize, because OCD is really boring. Understand that nothing would please me more than to captivate you with thrilling true stories of invisible talking llamas and publicly shitting myself.

Perhaps I might have hallucinated that I was Jesus and taught everyone simple truths about loving and living; they could make a movie of my life and I’d be played by Robin Williams in a critically-derided performance. But OCD isn’t entertaining, nor is it enlightening. It isn’t even sexy, and believe me, I’d love to have a ‘sexy’ mental illness, scowling and smoking, writing mediocre poetry to express my inner tormention, with attractive women throwing themselves at me, convinced they could ‘fix’ me, and me not necessarily saying anything to discourage them. It’s too bad. I bet I could totally pull off the tortured artist thing. Unfortunately my disorder has rendered me genial and non-threatening, and my truly heroic consumption of prescription medication over the years has spoiled my taste for recreational narcotic abuse. Also, if a girl accepts an invitation to help count the tiles on your bedroom ceiling, then she will probably be disappointed when she realizes you were speaking literally.

So, yeah, obsessive compulsive disorder. If it’s any consolation, I wasn’t especially thrilled when I learned about it either.

OCD is an anxiety disorder. It is rooted in a pathological intolerance of uncertainty and the development of elaborate neutralizing rituals in hopes of eliminating it. Some obsessive-compulsives struggle with contamination and wash their hands repeatedly; some cannot tolerate clutter and spend hours counting and organizing; some are plagued by recurring scenarios that reflect their subconscious fears, inescapable images of extreme violence and perversity, and then repeat futile reassurances trying to banish these until they reach psychological breakdown. I will allow my astute and perceptive reader to determine what manner of symptom your narrator suffers from.

I have suffered from OCD since early childhood. My primary symptoms involve recurring intrusive thoughts; others include perfectionism, minor contamination issues, social passivity (occasionally I can muster up some passive-aggression if I’m feeling saucy), scrupulosity (OCD plus Jesus), low self-esteem and generalized social anxiety (it is a tremendous relief to have a verified medical explanation for my personal manifestation of the Swarthmore Awkward, not unlike having a note from your mother to excuse you from gym class). I began to see a therapist when I was six. In high school, I was misdiagnosed with depression and put on medication, which I took until the end of my freshman year of college. After discontinuing the medication, my symptoms began to escalate, exacerbated by academic stress and an unhealthy Vicious-and-Spungen-level relationship. In early July of 2007 I had a nervous breakdown and was admitted to McLean Hospital. I subsequently spent the fall of 2007 in a residential program for obsessive-compulsives. Over the next fourteen weeks, I will be writing about my experiences with mental illness.

Some of you who are familiar with my previous writing, may be surprised by this dramatic shift in tone and content. I regret to inform any sensitive readers that my column this semester may be “dark,” “agonizing,” and possibly “an inappropriate public exorcism of personal psychological demons.” I will also use cuss words. Already, I can predict the response of the disenfranchised and grievously offended. “Hey. You’re that guy who wrote stuff that was kind of funny. What the hell, F______r?” I apologize for the unconventional censorship, here, as the verb form of “arrow-maker” is not strictly speaking a four-letter word. But I digress.

I need to explain my reasons for writing this column. Understand that I am not writing it as a confession. I am not writing to educate anyone. I am not writing this to promote compassion and tolerance of mental illness, although that would be nice, so everyone please be tolerant. I am not writing this, God forbid, as some kind of misguided manifesto for the mentally-ill; to attempt this I would need to be either a creative but narcissistic asshat or a telepathic supergenius, and despite being certifiably insane I do not labor under the delusion that I am either Kanye West or Prof. Charles Xavier. Indeed, should I ever refer to myself publically as “the fly Malcolm X,” I have asked my editors to revoke my pay and burn all existing copies of my writings, although I can neither confirm nor deny that I will be attending the premier of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” in a bald-wig and wheelchair.

My motivations are totally and unapologetically selfish. Over the course of my life, I have accumulated toxic levels of bile towards my disorder, the institutions and individuals that perpetuated it and the supposedly-professional fuckwits who failed to diagnose me. Incidentally, a not-inconsiderable volume of this bile is directed towards this very institution. As you may be aware, this is my last semester here, and while I am aware of the expression “don’t piss in the pond before you leave it,” I myself have always found such an approach to be superficial and inconscientious. Personally I intend to wage biochemical jihad upon the pond, to leave everything living within a hundred yards sterilized and tumored and cursing my name with its choked dying breath, to render the pond a scorched and lifeless waste; and then to build upon that waste a franchise fast-food restaurant, and then to build upon that fast-food restaurant a car bomb.

This column is my attempt to make sense of a lifetime of unhappiness. I’ve had my face dragged in fifteen miles of very heavy psychic shit, and I do not like it. I am a proverbial angry young man and this column is a middle finger the size of the Chrysler building, aimed indiscriminately and irresponsibly. It is a continuous torrent of venom, much of it directed towards this college, and I invite you, dear reader, to come with me on this horrible cathartic journey. I can only promise it will be repulsive and painful, and you will probably be made very uncomfortable when you see me at lunch.

This is my counter-curse, my zafa. It is for me, and if you choose not to read it I will nurture no resentment. This particularly applies to anyone afflicted with a cognitive disorder whose symptoms may be triggered by the content of this column. I wish that I hadn’t experienced these things, and it would be hypocritical for me to demand that others suffer through them as well.

I regret my half-assed semi-anonymity in publishing this, and the embarrassing inadvertent pretense of my pseudonym (my name is not naturally conducive to anagrams. Be grateful that I ultimately rejected an especially dire pun on Aerosmith). I don’t want to hide my identity from Swarthmore, only from prospective employers who might during an interview recall that they were talking to “Oh Yeah That Guy Who Maybe Thought About Killing Himself” (a nickname of affection and deepest respect for my condition) and then hire accordingly. Hopefully my prose style and unsightly mug shot will allow you to identify me. If they do not, or if for any reason you wish to discuss what I’ve written, please use the provided email address to reach me. You may also contact members of the Phoenix editorial board, or the Swarthmore “Speak to Swatties” Mental Health Advocacy group, all of whom will probably tell you embarrassing stories about me at the slightest provocation, bless their little souls.

I would like to thank my friends, my family and the handful of mental health professionals I have seen who were not antagonistic or grossly incompetent. As a writer I have an embarrassing tendency to lump together miscellaneous high-culture references into an impenetrable literary quagmire. Fortunately, the only appropriate passage I can think to cite is a recent verse by Messieurs Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo of Gnarls Barkley. So. I remember when:

I remember, I remember.
When I lost my mind.

Hamlet is a senior. He can be reached at hamlet.wrenncroft@gmail.com. The next installment of Hamlet’s column will be published next week.

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