Brian Aldrich: July 2007

I didn't see the movie in the theatres, but when I watched the commercial for the upcoming DVD release of Jim Carrey's latest film, "The Number 23," I remembered how obsessive compulsive Donatien de Sade became in prison, trying to figure out clues that didn't exist to come up with the date of his open ended release. Then, I remembered my own ocd.

I hid my ocd from my childhood peers, but my mother knew. She made fun of me one time in an effort to shame me out of the behavior. But both my parents had ocd issues themselves, even if they didn't realize or want to recognize the truth. In the end, my mother had several rituals that entertained me.

But the christians enjoyed mocking me the most. When two "sisters in christ," whom I shared a church basement with one summer while volunteering in a San Francisco inner city youth program, witnessed my rituals, they couldn't get the gossip back to the "body of christ" fast enough. When the cult pastor found out, he confronted me, telling me that my mental illness was "idolatry."

Maybe if there had been an apostle or a saint with ocd, then christians would have a concrete enough example for them to understand the concept. If Fretfully Freddy the Freedonian Friar had counted his every step on his historic trek to the holy land and then died from sore feet at the hands of pagans, he could be the ocd martyr and perhaps the christians might be one dead man closer to comprehending the nuances of psychology.