New Respect

I have a new respect for people who suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This is debilitating. My obsession with mold continues, and if anything, is getting worse. I wake up in the middle of the night and imagine mold hiding behind the bedroom walls, pumping through the heating system, stealthily creating spore after spore in our beloved Tiki Room. I try to get a hold of my mind, to remind myself that lots of women live in moldier conditions than I and manage to have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies.

And then I start thinking about lead and chlorine in the water.

I fight my mind in the darkness, watching the sky finally, finally start to lighten as the middle of the night chemicals loosen their hold on my system and the alarm clock finally, finally rings.

Bruno rolls over, opens his reluctant eyes into my staunchly wide-awake ones and mutters, "Why are you up?"

He doesn't know what to do with me. Neither of us do. I've never fought something like this. It is so much bigger than me, and I can feel it has the power to swallow me up. I get up and make breakfast, make it through breakfast, and then Bruno leaves for work and then it starts again.

"Is moss toxic"? And my hand reaches for the mouse, the gateway to the devil's playground, and I'm googling and reading horror stories. Well, not about moss. Moss, it seems, is safe, even desirable if you are building a Japanese Garden. But from moss, I go back to mold, and I start to suspect my windowsills, and the corners of the closets, and now I am looking up air purifiers, but there is a question about those that use ozone, and are the HEPA ones really just pushing the spores and dust mites around or are they actually effective?

The strongest part of me manages to close the google window, and send an e-shout out for help. I write my cousin, who's been through similar challenges. She writes back, quite clearly, "It's not the mold".

Somehow this one simple sentence actually soothes. Right: it's not the mold. This is me looking to control something, sublimating all my feelings onto this one topic. I remember, from my Psych 101 class, that houses frequently represent bodies, at least on the dream-scape. I am obesessing that my house is toxic, and what I really fear is that my body is toxic. That it won't support these little souls who are trying to make their way through me and into this world. I am trying desperately to control my house because I don't seem to be able to control my body.

I still spent the better part of the afternoon fighting against thoughts of mold. But I feel just slightly better armed for the fight.