Fifteen steps. It takes fifteen steps to get from the front door to the car. Fifteen steps. Any more or less, I have to go back to the door and do it again. Fifteen steps, and once I get to the car, I have to walk back to the door and make sure it’s locked. Fifteen more steps and back to the door to check again. Fifteen more steps and then back to the door again. Three times I have to check. It’s silly, I know. Somewhere in my mind, I know the door’s locked. But if I don’t check, I get nervous. I have to check. Otherwise, it just feels wrong.

It was my fault that my mother died. I was driving. There was a stop sign hidden behind a tree; I didn’t see it. A couple of hours later, I woke up in the hospital and my mother was dead. Since then, I haven’t really trusted myself to drive. I don’t think my dad trusted me either, so I let him drive me anywhere that I needed to go. But just letting him drive me around wasn’t enough.

My condition started just after Mother’s death. I would get images of my father lying dead in the street. It was terrifying. I hated those thoughts, and yet, as hard as I would try to think of other things, it’s all I would see. Soon, I would get urges to do things. That’s when the counting started. Fifteen steps from the house to the car. I felt that if I did things perfectly, I could save my father somehow. If we were leaving the house, I would check over and over that the door was locked, trying to shake my doubts. That would prevent my dad’s death, certainly.

I have always been somewhat of a perfectionist. My room is in perfect symmetry; I spend hours every day making sure that every book is perfectly organized. The rest of the house, for the most part, is the same; my mother kept it that way before she died. She didn’t have a job, so she spent her day making sure that there was never so much as a dust bunny that was out of place. She and I had a collection of things, stupid little tchotchkes from over the years. My dad begged us to get rid of them, but he just didn’t understand us. Our trinkets weren’t something that we could give up.

After my mother’s death, the perfectionism got worse for me. My schoolwork was getting worse and worse because everything I ever turned in had to be perfect. Timelines and deadlines didn’t matter to me. Drawings were perfectly to scale; essays were perfectly spaced, written, and revised, no matter how long it took. It got to the point where I would turn things in four to five days late. School became miserable for me. I liked the perfection of my assignments, but my tardiness lowered my grades. I was given detention nearly every day because I would leave class to wash my hands. I didn’t like the hand washing; my hands were always red and raw, and it hurt to write. My teachers didn’t like my hand washing because I would get up during class to do it, usually without permission. Yet, though I hated it, I had to do it. Maybe clean hands would somehow save my father’s life.

One day, my dad decided to bring me in to see my doctor. My doctor referred me to a mental health specialist. As soon as I got into the room, I straightened it up. The asymmetry bothered me, so I fixed it. I talked to that woman for what seemed like hours, all the while cleaning things that didn’t need to be cleaned. In the middle of my appointment, I had to get up four times to wash my hands. Finally, after watching me and talking to me, she told me that I had obsessive-compulsive disorder and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. I went to the bathroom again and washed my hands as she discussed things with my father. When I got back, we planned out a treatment plan for me. I had mixed feelings about it all. I was glad to see a possible end to all my stupid little rituals, but I didn’t want to be considered obsessive-compulsive. What would the kids at school think? What did Dad think about it? My father and I drove home in silence. He dropped me off, and as I counted the steps to the front door, he sped off. I still don’t know where he went. I spent the night straightening my room.

It was three in the morning when the policemen came. They told me that my father had been in an accident. He’d been drinking, and he lost control of the vehicle. They told me that I had to go to the hospital to identify the body. I washed my hands before I left.

After my father’s death, I went to live with his sister. I never told her about my OCD or my OCPD, but I’ve gotten worse lately. My hands stay cracked and raw from the constant hand washing, and I know drive my aunt crazy with my crazy obsession with symmetry. She must know by now that there’s something wrong with me.

Even in a new house, it’s still fifteen steps from the front door to the car. Fifteen steps and back again to check the door, fifteen steps and back again, fifteen steps and back.