Meant to Be and OCD

I was drinking a Negroni because he liked Negronis, and I was trying to impress him, which was increasingly embarrassing with each sip. 

He’d been talking at me for thirty minutes, and in all honesty, I hadn’t been listening to him. I was staring at the Christmas lights strung from the ceiling, and eyeing my friends who were piled into a booth across the bar from where we sat. He’d asked me to sit with him so that we could talk in semi-private, and I was wishing I’d refused. I was wasting my precious time with my friends, and he’d just asked if I believed in past lives. 

And what’s worse is that when he said it, I smiled, because I was in love with him. I was in love with him because he laughed at my jokes and had sent me a good playlist. So I told him I wasn’t sure about the afterlife and let his fingers brush against mine as he reached for his drink.

He said, “I think you and I are meant for the next life.” And he kissed my cheek, and left the bar, and by the time I crossed the room to rejoin my friends, I was crying. Because he had met someone, and I wasn’t “meant to be” his girlfriend. She was.

So I swallowed my pride with the bitters and for weeks after let him text me song recommendations, and call me when he was sad, and complain about his girlfriend, and mourn what we could’ve been. What I wanted it to be. Because when someone says destiny, I want to believe them. 

That was years ago, and now I tell him how Lennon and I met, and I show him my engagement ring, and I tell him I’m getting married in September. He asks about my siblings, and I tell him my baby sister asked me for dating advice the other week, and I don’t have any because once I met my fiancée, it was so easy for me to fall in love with him, and it’s even easier to stay in love with him. 

He smiles, and when I ask him why, he says, “See? It all worked out.” 

He was meant to hurt me. 

I was meant to wait, but I didn’t, so now he’ll take credit for my marriage, too. 

When I come home, my fianceé asks how it went, and I don’t answer. Instead, I head into our bedroom and open my closet doors. I take off my sweater and my boots. I slip off my jeans. Silently, Lennon hands me my headphones and kisses the back of my neck. I spend the next few hours in my bra and underwear, reorganizing our closet. 

My clothes are hung in color order, and then by sleeve length. Long coats are tucked to the right, and my formal dresses to the left. I clean my shoes and designate a few items for donation. I leave the bag in the hallway because I won’t be able to sleep if there’s a full tote bag sitting on my floor. 

Before I was diagnosed, Lennon referred to my OCD regulation as my “Neat Freak Hour.” We don’t call it that anymore, and it’s made the ritual marginally less fun. He knows I’m feeling better when I start singing along to the music in my headphones. Right now, as I write this, it’s Demi Lovato’s newest, It’s Not That Deep. (Please stream “Little Bit,” it’s one of the best pop songs of the year.)

Lennon has had to bear the brunt of my OCD work. You see, I’ve been in therapy since I was a teenager, but the first few years were dedicated to other issues; it’s only in recent history that I’ve started unpacking my irrational fear of death, loss of control, and obsession with free will.

I broached the subject with my therapist after I moved to the city. I noticed I couldn’t wait for the subway without pushing my back against the nearest wall, because I convinced myself otherwise, I’d jump.

When I told her that, she pressed her lips together. 

I interrupted her thought, “I’m not suicidal.” 

“Right. Do you think this is connected to your fear of driving?” 

I’d told her in session prior that I couldn’t get behind the wheel of a car, because I was afraid of running off the road. I told her I wasn’t sure, so then she asked if I’ve ever considered myself superstitious. 

I thought back on all the crossed fingers in my childhood, of all the wishes on fallen lashes, and unanswered prayers. I considered my Catholic guilt and my inability to discuss life after death. My refusal to acknowledge a God, and my paralyzing fear that he might exist. I nodded. “I took the phrase ‘step on a crack, break your mother’s back,’ very seriously.” 

To this day, I count my steps while I walk and jump over cracks in the sidewalk. So she eased me into the diagnosis, and I cried. 

Turns out, my staunch belief in destiny was actually Anxiety Disorder - Obsessive Compulsive with no Visible Compulsions. (DSM-5) 

Before my diagnosis, I was living my life by a predetermined fate I wasn’t necessarily benefiting from. I forced relationships with people who claimed “destiny” with me. I was obsessed with karma. My diagnosis recontextualized my whole life. Maybe some things are chance, maybe some things just happen, and it’s up to us whether they hold value. 

Did I meet him in line for the bathroom that first night because the thumb and forefinger of fate pushed us together? 

Did I run into him on the street, years later, because God needed a laugh? 

Or did we just have mutual friends and live in the same neighborhood?

We tell each other some things are fate, like it's a comfort. But some part of that always made me uneasy. Like my life was in the hands of some larger power, and I couldn’t gain control. Because for years, when I’d tell people about the bad things that’ve happened in my life, they’d say, “But look at you now, you’re so strong because of it.” 

Lennon was the first person I didn’t have to be strong with. Funnily enough, Lennon and I are only together because of a domino trip of bad things that happened in my life. I tell people I wouldn’t change any of those bad things, though, because then I wouldn’t have met Lennon. But I don’t think Lennon and I are meant to be. Case in point, I had to ask him out; I made him too nervous when we first met for him to ask me. 

I have to admit, early into our dating, Lennon also asked me if I believed in past lives. I rolled my eyes, but I let him monologue about how comfortable he felt with me, and how it must be because we knew each other in some other universe. I told him I loved him for the first time that night, and we haven’t referred to our relationship as fate ever again.

Because relying on fate is lazy. Lennon and I have made the conscious choice every day to stay together, and to grow together, and to fall in love with each new version of each other; Otherwise, we wouldn’t be getting married.

So Lennon and I aren’t meant to be, but we do feel made for each other. Because Lennon knows how afraid I am of living my life wrong. He knows how desperately I want to leave this world, having chased every flighty pursuit and every last passion. I don’t want to leave any regrets behind. 

He also knows that most of my life, I’ve tried to do things a certain way, the right way, because I’d convinced myself that if I did, nothing bad would happen to me. But bad things kept happening, and Lennon now knows to hold my hand while the train pulls into the station, and to bring me my headphones when I come home from a bad day. 

And my therapist and I have been talking about living life fully. On how to move through fear, rather than staying stuck to the spot. 

I moved Lennon to London, thinking that would be the bravest thing I could do. But while I was there, I found myself missing my life in New York. So, on a train ride home, I reached for Lennon’s hand and asked him how he’d feel if I went back to New York. Because our love doesn’t negate our personal needs. And I needed to be home. So, he helped me find a new job in the city. He packed my suitcases with me. 

I’ve been back in the city for a month now, and I just logged off from therapy. My therapist and I were laughing through most of the session while I updated her about my last few weeks. At the end of the session, we were touching base on how long-distance was going for Lennon and I. 

I got to tell her that Lennon was happy to see me happy. I sighed and told her, “I didn’t realize it, but I think I was really afraid I couldn’t live in New York without Lennon. Knowing that I can is such a relief.” 

She nodded and said, “It’s like you were meant to be in New York.” 

I smiled. 

I don’t believe in a higher power or a divine path, but I believe in myself. I trust in myself to know what’s right for me, and to ask for it. I’ve never been shy about asking for what I want. 

So I still count my steps, but I skip over the cracks in the sidewalk. Intrusive thoughts still pop up while I wait for the train, but now I turn my attention to the planes of a stranger’s face. I try to count the freckles on their arm. I compliment their shoes. 

I still get anxious that I might be making all the wrong choices, but I am trying to trust myself more. 

Because what is meant for me will be. Because I get to decide. After all, it’s my life, and I am my own God.