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One boy suffered with religiosity. Constantly questioning his worth and existence. He found his way, embracing his overactive brain and going into to ethics studies. The first in his family to go to university.
The girl, though, I remember as clearly as if it was yesterday her mother sitting down across from me, an unlit cigarette hanging out of her mouth, her entire countenance a mix of challenge and defiance. Uneducated. She struggled to keep ahead of the curve of a mental illness she didn’t understand.
But she understood devotion. And she was devoted to her daughter.
We met separately from her daughter because she feared the embarrassment it would cause her. I agreed. It wasn’t up to the child to educate me. Mom explained the fears that plagued her. The disturbing images and urges.
That girl still came in to visit occasionally. She lived a quiet life working with animals. She held herself in much the same way Minty did. I wondered if she, too, had white noise.
Once Brayleigh fell asleep, Minty and I sat at the kitchen table in front of my opened laptop.
Her fingers flew deftly over the keyboard, and she brought up a site that explained OCD and its various subtypes.
“I have all of these to some degree or another. Most of it is nothing but a fleeting thought. Some of it is white noise.” She pointed to the paragraph on sexual OCD and admitted quietly. “This is my nemesis.”
“So, inappropriate or unwanted sexual thoughts. What’s different about this kind of OCD that it makes it difficult for you to smile it away like the rest?”
“Basically, I just haven’t challenged it enough. I haven’t been able to. It feels too risky.” She lifted her hands in frustration. “You read this and it’s all very clinical. It doesn’t present itself as clinical.”
“How does it present itself?”
“Lucky, I’m nowhere near the point where I can speak aloud the depravity that exists in my brain. I can talk about harm OCD. That one I have a handle on. That one is white noise.”
I nodded for her to continue. She watched me as she spoke.
“I’ll give you some examples. Willa walked into the office, very pregnant, and a movie played in my head of me stabbing her with a hunting knife. It’s not a cartoon type video, it’s gory. When I went to see Willa at the hospital, Barrett handed me Rena and I saw myself grabbing her by her feet and swinging her head into the corner of the wall. You were carrying Brayleigh downstairs, and I got the thought urging me to push you down the stairs.”
My mouth gaped open in horror at her suffering. “And this,” I sputtered. “This is white noise? How is this white noise?”
“Because it doesn’t stop me from doing what I want to do. It stops being white noise when it interferes.”
“Isn’t it interfering? When it’s causing you distress?” I wanted to take her in my arms. I wanted to take it all away. I wished I could take it from her.
“Not for me. For me, it’s only interfering when it stops me from doing. I conquered harm OCD years ago. The clips have never decreased or disappeared. Sometimes they shock me, and it takes me a moment to get past it like in the case with Rena at the hospital. But I held her, and I enjoyed that. Another example is a visual I see of Brayleigh thrown from the car-seat. That is interfering. That is more than white noise because it’s interfering with me taking her out. In short,” she leaned over and placed her palm to my cheek, to comfort me, “if I can smile it away and carry on, it’s white noise.”
“It’s horrible. You must be exhausted.”
She nodded, looking more relaxed than I expected based on what we’d been talking about. “Sometimes. I do need my down time. And I do need to see my therapist to get help with this. I’ve improved, for sure. But I’ve never lived with a child. The circumstances have changed. The rules have to go.”
“What rules?”
Minty went on to explain the rules that protected her against the distress of pedophilia thoughts as well as her current struggles. “Safety issues are the worst, food issues are difficult but manageable, issues surrounding children seem to be insurmountable because they circle back to safety.” She looked down for the first time. “And there’s this underlying doubt that I might actually be a monster.”
I snorted. “You’re not a monster.”
“I’m not. I would never, ever hurt Brayleigh or my boys or any child.”
Her breathing picked up as she spoke, no longer looking relaxed.
“Baby, I’m not the one you need to convince.”
She stopped and looked at me.
“You’re the only person who thinks that. And like you said,” I shrugged, “it’s not you. It’s those damn birds.”
She laughed, the sound like music to my ears.
We spent the next hour making a list of all the things she wanted to do, the steps she wanted to work on, and my role in all of it. And I realized my mistake in bringing Brayleigh into the bed without giving her a heads up.
