Читать книгу Life in Rewind - Terry Murphy Weible - Страница 7

Ed knew it was time to go home. He could no longer handle the stress of getting everything together academically to make the bid for Clemson, and he was consumed with worry that something bad would happen to his father if he stayed there any longer.

When Ed returned home to Cape Cod, though, his father was angry that he had not been successful. It was devastating for Ed to have to admit to his dad, a man who’d spent time as a Marine during wartime, that he didn’t understand what was happening to him that made it impossible to continue.

Bob doesn’t recall himself expressing or even feeling any such anger, however. In fact, he suggests that Ed was just on overdrive, setting himself up for disappointment by expecting too much. ‘I think he just overburdened himself by trying to do too much,’ remembers Bob. ‘Eddie went off the deep end.’

Bob tried putting his son to work in the plumbing business with him, but the two fought vociferously during their drive to work together. ‘I would drive and when we’d get to the roundabouts, Eddie would say, “Dad, let me out here.”’ When Bob refused, Ed would start yelling, ‘Let me out. Let me out!’ Recalling that frustrating time, Bob says, ‘I wondered what the hell was wrong with him.’ Over time, as Ed’s condition got progressively worse, Bob says, ‘A short drive anywhere with Eddie could turn into a sixhour trip.’

It’s not that Ed’s ‘quirks’ hadn’t been noticed on occasion by the rest of the family, but due to lack of understanding they’d been dismissed. By 1991, however, his symptoms, although still lacking an official diagnosis of OCD, were hard to ignore.

Whenever the Zine family gathered together for holidays, or birthdays, they couldn’t help but notice Ed was becoming more and more withdrawn. But avoiding people, even the family he loved so very much, was the least painful way for him to deal with whatever strange affliction now tormented him. He struggled to hide his embarrassing ritual of having to walk backwards up and down the steps, and doing so multiple times until it felt right. So he would simply remain down in the basement until everyone left. Ed’s older sister Tami remembers watching in disbelief the first time she witnessed Ed walking up the stairs backwards when he didn’t think anyone was watching. She didn’t understand what she was seeing, but knew this signalled a much bigger problem than anyone had previously imagined. At this point, though, she kept it to herself, and simply hoped it would go away.

The emotional pain of OCD isn’t limited to personal, internal obsessions unique to the sufferer. OCD sufferers often become inordinately concerned with external events. In Ed’s case, it was the Persian Gulf War. He listened to reports on television and became consumed with the fear that his brother, Tom, who was serving in the Army, would be called overseas-and killed. While this is a normal concern for any military family, the anxiety it triggered resulted in an exaggerated cycle of obsessive worrying, and a growing compulsion to keep ‘things’ in place-for Ed this resulted in a combination of ‘just right’ obsessions and hoarding-that began to erupt on a greater scale. If, for example, there was a hat sitting atop the television when he heard something on TV that inspired him to feel good-someone had won something, a life had been saved or a film had had an inspirational ending-the hat couldn’t be moved. It had to stay in that place, never to be moved, and as long as it did, nothing bad would happen to Tom.

Contamination fears are probably the most well-known symptom of OCD, and can be triggered when an OCD sufferer encounters illness. For Ed, the obsession with germs fully manifested itself in September of 1993, when the TV movie And the Band Played On, a dramatic story about the evolution of the AIDS crisis, first aired.

Ed acutely remembers this film, as well as an urban legend originating around the same time about a guy in New York City who wakes up after a one-night stand to find, written on his mirror in lipstick, the words, ‘Welcome to the AIDS club.’ This absurd, perverted horror story caused Ed to worry obsessively about contracting HIV. Ed’s OCD mind had equated sex with AIDS, and he began to fear sexual contact. While Ed had never been promiscuous, within a year OCD had turned his decision to practise abstinence until he found the girl he was going to marry into avoidance of all human contact.

Increasingly, OCD altered Ed’s physical reality. Once, when a stranger accidentally bumped into him, he followed him a short distance and carefully manoeuvred a way to gently bump his arm back, without being noticed, so the event could be erased from his mind.

As the manifestation of OCD symptoms increased, Ed became profoundly aware of the physical space around him. If anyone walked behind him, or parked a car behind his car, he would feel trapped-as if bound by an invisible rope that he couldn’t break-preventing him from rewinding his steps and actions so that he could properly ‘erase’ them in time. His older sister Tami recalls that when he rode in her car she would have to park in a place where no one could park behind her, so he would not get ‘trapped’.

And so much as hearing the word ‘death’, or any variation of it, would instantly stunt his thought process and even his ability to move, sending him into a state of sheer panic. His heart would race, he’d get hot flushes, begin to sweat and even struggle to breathe. He’d suffer extreme flashbacks and would instantly be transported back to the night of his mother’s death, which would become as vivid to him as it when he was 11 years old. The only way he could logically and calmly process any variation of the word ‘death’, ‘dead’, or ‘die’ would be to spell them out, or ask others to spell them out, instead of verbalizing them. If someone unaware of this need unwittingly said one of these words, he’d have them repeat it, so it would be ‘erased’. Eventually he came up with a word that he could tolerate for death: ‘freath’.

In January 1993, in spite of the mysterious and ever-increasing symptoms that plagued him, Ed loaded up his car-and his dog, Zeus-and with his father in the driver’s seat, made the 14-hour trip to South Carolina one last time. Ed was desperately unhappy trying to work in construction with his father and deal with the mix of intrusive thoughts, the counting and checking rituals, and the constant worry that plagued him. He hoped the incident at the path on campus had been a fluke and that a change in scenery would do him good. He hoped that being around Rudy and the guys, who had made him feel so welcome, and simply throwing the football around, could perhaps empower him again. Bob was at a total loss as to how to help his son find his way in life, and hoped that going back to Clemson would help.

But the moment his father left and headed to the train station to go back home, after helping him get set up at a local hotel, Ed curled up on his bed. Like so many victims of OCD, he was lost. He didn’t understand how everyone else could be so carefree when his entire world was fraught with worry of every kind. Though Bob was out of sight, he was hardly out of mind, as Ed now believed that he held the key to his father’s life in his every move.

Of course, recapturing the good feeling he’d once had at Clemson was out of the question. He called Rudy, but couldn’t commit to plans that involved leaving the hotel room. He remembers one of the guys from the team, Brad Thompson, stopping by to see him, but he never managed to make his way back to campus. And after spending two weeks mostly watching television, ordering food and taking Zeus outside for brief walks-he packed up his car and went home.

Back at his father’s house, Ed could only motivate himself to work sporadically, and only in so far as he wanted to ensure his father’s safety. He would carry all of the heavy tools and equipment up and down the stairs because he didn’t want to risk Bob getting hurt. His activities became increasingly more limited, to the point where he was staying in the basement watching movies and cartoons and playing video games nearly all the time. When Ed did venture out to someplace like the local mall, one journey would turn into a series of subsequent ones throughout the week, as many as 16 times back and forth, to ‘erase’ the initial journey.

Rewinding and erasing an event made sense to Ed because if one action-whatever it was-moved him forward in time, doing it again precisely kept time in place-in his mind. There is absolutely nothing logical about this way of thinking-and there is no clinical explanation for Ed’s specific rewinding manifestation-but this is how OCD manifested in his mind…his obsession over the number of times something happened was connected to time in his mind…he was compelled to ‘erase’ the event by repeating it-and in performing this ritual he believed this kept time from moving forwards.

Between his last visit to Clemson in 1993 and the summer of 1995 there were periods of time when the severity of Ed’s OCD seemed to wane before rebounding into greater obsessive and compulsive rituals. His brother Tom came home from the service, giving him a greater sense of family and bringing with him a sense of calm and relief. Life was far from perfect for Ed, but now it was at least manageable and ordinary. But OCD was the dark shadow lurking in the corner-it never completely went away-and every time it showed its face it became harder to dismiss.

High school friend Jason Peters recalls a trip with Ed to Emerald Square City Mall in North Attleboro, about an hour and a half from home. Ed seemed fine the whole day, until he accidentally dropped his keys in the mall’s car park as the two were about to head home. When Ed reached down to pick them up, his hand brushed the ground. This started a chain-reaction of touching obsessions, and the need to touch and retouch the car park an even number of times to erase the event.

Ed didn’t want to inconvenience Jason, or embarrass himself, and he fought the desperate urge to continue touching the ground, though he hadn’t reached that elusive magic number of touches that felt right. He forced himself to get back into the car. But he remained quiet on the way home as he counted backwards and forwards, visualizing his hand touching the ground, hoping this would satiate his seemingly uncontrollable mental demands. But halfway home Ed succumbed to the anguish that plagued him and told Jason to turn back-he didn’t tell him the real reason, because that would’ve been humiliating. Instead he said he’d dropped his driver’s licence back at the car park at the same time he’d dropped his keys, and had to go back to get it.

Jason turned the car around and, when they returned to the spot, Ed got out of the car and began acting as if he were frantically searching for his licence, while he touched the spot in the car park over and over until he reached the number of touches (an even number, of course) that would placate his anxiety. The number was always different, so he could be in one spot for four minutes, or four hours. Fortunately he was able to accomplish the touches he needed to make in just a couple of minutes as he ‘frantically searched’ for his driver’s licence. It wasn’t until years later that Ed admitted the ruse to Jason.

The need to walk backwards and retrace his steps was also becoming much harder to suppress, and consequently more difficult to hide. ‘We’d go into public places and Eddie would have to walk down the stairs backwards,’ recalls Jason. ‘It got pretty bad. I had an idea of what was going on, because I had seen a television programme about OCD, but the other guys just thought he was acting crazy, and would make fun of him.’ Jason recalls some of their friends doing impersonations of Ed’s behaviour when he wasn’t around, mimicking the backwards walking and tiptoeing across tiles. They weren’t being malicious-they were just young guys having fun-but when Ed’s rituals started to include wearing the same clothes over and over, which of course he couldn’t even attempt to hide, they teased him about it to his face.

In 1995, Ed invited his friend Kevin Frye’s cousin, Donald, to live with him when he needed a place to stay. Ed thought it might be good for him to have the company and, hopefully, a distraction from his repetitive behaviours. But the OCD had already created in him the need to manage the perfect placement of everything in his world. It didn’t matter if it was a bar of soap, a magazine on the table or a box on the floor. His world was already becoming an ‘OCD Holy Ground’, and the meticulousness with which he monitored his belongings-protective over them as if they were his children, not wanting them moved, or so much as touched-was extraordinary. ‘I can look at the markings and placement of things, and I can see, within millimeters, if something has been moved,’ says Ed.

In the bathroom, Ed would look at the seams of the tiles, gauge the gap between the seams, and know if Donald had touched his shampoo or soap in the corner of the shower. Ed would become agitated by disruption of his space and the idea that another person had actually touched his things. Each tiny infraction was magnified a thousand times, and it caused actual physical discomfort best described as that feeling you get from sharp nails scratching a chalkboard, creating waves of nausea.

OCD, unchecked and untreated, can splinter into a multitude of manifestations-a sufferer who is afraid to enter a room with tiles on the floor can suddenly find herself with contamination issues. A student who has to write his name on a piece of paper without erasing, and rewrite it countless times until it is perfect, may suddenly be unable to enter a mall with his friends without having to exit through the same door they came in. Perhaps a housewife who can’t leave her home without checking the lock 20 times is suddenly burdened by intrusive sexual thoughts. There is no logical, or predictable, path of progression of the illness.

Donald’s presence triggered the force of Ed’s need to have everything in his world in its exact place. At this point, in the summer of 1995, he was still able to venture outside, and so he made a trip to the chemist’s to buy four sets of bath products for Donald, hoping it would prevent him from using his. But of course, in the ordinary sharing of one’s bath and shower things get moved, touched and used. Ed’s anxiety escalated. ‘Everybody saw my behaviour as controlling, but anybody who knows who I really am as a person knows that’s the last thing I want to do,’ says Ed. While the two men remained friends, they did eventually agree to end their shared living arrangement. ‘That’s why I started living in a hell all by myself, because I didn’t want to be a burden to anybody,’ recalls Ed.

By the autumn of 1995, Ed spent most of his time alone in the basement as his checking, counting, hoarding, rewinding and contamination issues began to meld into a conglomeration of rituals that would lead to his eventual solitary confinement. He was not yet fully immersed in what would become his OCD ‘sanctuary’, however. It was on one of those rare days that he felt OK that he decided to invite Donald to eat out at a restaurant about 25 miles from his home. Don drove and, after an uneventful, quiet lunch, decided to use the airport roundabout on the way home, a detour from the path they had taken to get to the restaurant.

While Don vaguely remembers the incident, Ed recalls, with absolute clarity, yelling and pleading with Don to go another way, or be let out of the car. But Don was in a hurry to get to work, and didn’t understand the magnitude of Ed’s pain. In a state of blinding panic, Ed says he reached for the handle of the door, prepared to jump out of the moving vehicle. But it was too late: the car had already entered the roundabout. He became dizzy and nauseated and could barely catch his breath.

Twenty-five miles later, Ed threw the car door open and climbed out of the car onto his driveway, nauseous, exhausted from arguing with Don and terrified that he had done something that was irreversible that would have some dire consequence for someone he loved. He had to figure out a way to undo the damage.

To passersby who spotted Ed walking backwards-for the entire 25-mile journey ‘back in time’-he looked like crazy person. Young men leaned out their car windows to taunt him, lorry drivers pipped their horns, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t care. If he didn’t do this he would be consumed with the feeling that something bad was going to happen to someone he loved.

Between episodes of counting up even numbers throughout the nearly 50-mile return journey on foot, Ed pushed through by telling himself to ‘focus on the big game’. These are words he attributes to his role model, Coach Wade from Clemson.

Ed left his house at 7 o’clock that evening and didn’t return home until shortly before dawn the next morning. He had indeed made the entire trek walking backwards, and he’d hurried to make it home before the sun rose. He had started the journey when it was dark and he’d had to return to his house while it was still dark because, if the sun had risen, he would have been compelled to make the entire trip over again.

Ed fell into bed exhausted, but could not fall asleep. He lay there mentally rewinding his journey, honing in on every misstep. He instinctively knew he had a responsibility to review every time he’d stepped out of a straight line, every slight stumble, every time his arms and legs weren’t in sync-to make things ‘right’ so no one would suffer for his mistakes. At one point his shoelaces had become untied, which had caused a mental dilemma of epic proportions, because he had to will himself not to tie them for fear that by stopping he wouldn’t complete his task in the correct way. Now, in the safety of his dad’s basement, he had to mentally re-tie them. Retracing every misstep took over an hour, but he soon released himself from this mental trap and fell asleep.

The entire episode marked a critical new phase in Ed’s life where everything became, it seemed to him at the time, completely clear. His life’s purpose was unquestionably to fight the battle against time’s progression. It was the only way to stop death. ‘Keeping everything in reverse, just like watching a VCR and rewinding to ten minutes before, five minutes before, meant I wasn’t ageing, so no one else around me could age, so no one could progress towards [spelling the word out] d-e-a-t-h,’ says Ed.