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Mella

Mella Travers, Jacob’s mother, called her son “very, very lonely.” She told us she has never been in his apartment. When we told her our production crew had not been allowed in, she was not surprised. “No, no one gets in. Can’t.”

Like her son, Mella has OCD, though less severe than Jacob. “Mine is here,” she said, gesturing at about shoulder height, “and his is here,” she said, reaching far above her head. “His is more heightened than mine. He’s got this extra bit that affects my relationship with him. Not in the way that we communicate, but in the sense that I can’t touch him.”

Mella said she was motivated to talk to our film crew about OCD “because there are a lot of misconceptions about it, and there’s a lot of people that are hurting, that have OCD.”

Mella had an interesting way of describing the OCD experience. She directed me to write down the words ‘I wish.’ I wrote the words down on a piece of scrap paper. She continued, “Now write the name of somebody you care for very much,” which I then did. “Now just stop for a second—,” she said. When I stopped writing, she continued “would die in a severe accident today.” My pencil did not move.

“You want me to write this down?” I asked, incredulous.

“Did you write it?” she asked.

“No, I’m not going to write that.”

Mella explained that for many people with OCD, this is a type of “magical thinking” that they deal with. “OCD people think that just because they have a thought, it’s going to happen. That’s what OCD is,” she said.