Chapter 1
Chapter One
S o some stuff about me you should probably know before I go on:
Pearl O’Reilly, twenty-seven (nearly twenty-eight), born and raised in a little village called Drangan, County Tipperary (I’m still here). I live in my grandmother’s house (she died) and work in the village shop (O’Callaghan’s), and my days begin simply enough.
Two pieces of wholemeal toast for breakfast, with margarine and peanut butter, and I like a cup of tea to go with it.
Pretty standard, eh? Most people probably have the same thing every day for breakfast, right? The only thing is, I have to have my breakfast after I’ve counted the fourteen stairs, getting down them all before I’ve thought of something totally inappropriate and crude. If a thought does come into my head before I can get down the stairs, I have to start all over again.
I basically have to beat my own thoughts, which is pretty impossible at the best of times, but if I don’t, I will die on my way to work, or something catastrophic will happen to a family member. Or both. That is just a fact and I am not willing to test it out.
So for me, breakfast is a life or death situation and takes around forty minutes from the top of the stairs to the kitchen table, on a good day. On a bad day, I can be there for well over an hour.
It is all part of my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder – and possibly ADHD, but that has yet to be confirmed because the waiting list is so long. Everyone’s got that nowadays haven’t they? Like a trend, only it isn’t cool. It’s a complete pain in the arse.
I hide it well, unless you were to observe me over a period of time, then you’d notice that what I use to wipe my cutlery (at anyone’s house other than mine) is not a serviette, it is an antibacterial wipe I have brought with me. There are a pack of them in my bag, along with a tube of antibacterial gel and surgical gloves for particularly bad days. You would also see me spray the bottom of my shoes with one of those aerosol Dettol sprays (it’s the best one) every time I get into my car. It looks like I am trying to gas myself.
I wear the same clothes every day – when I am at home, joggers and a T-shirt, with my salmon-pink jumper. When I am at work, I tidy myself up a bit: jeans and my salmon-pink polo neck. What can I say? I like salmon pink.
I have a therapist, Mairéad. Her name means pearl in Gaelic, which can’t be a coincidence. At first I thought it was a sign that she could heal me, that she could rid me of my obsessions. But two years later I am pretty sure I am incurable.
If someone sneezes near me, around me, next to me or the other side of the room from me, I am done in. I am messed up for the rest of the day and can’t think about anything else other than which part of my body it had landed on, until I have a shower and wash my hair.
Oh, and I hate small spaces, like really hate them – as in, I’d have a massive panic attack if I ever got trapped somewhere lacking space. And heights – I do not like heights one bit. Unless it is up a tree, I like trees. They make me feel safe.
Usually, I replace my intrusive thoughts with something else, Mairéad taught me that technique – to say a word or thing that I liked out loud or in my head. My word is trees. Trees, trees, tree s.
Bless Mairéad, she tries her best. She really believes I can be cured, but she means well and her challenges give me something else to focus on.
I have a checklist system, one of Mairéad’s top tips – a little notebook, pocket-sized, that I keep with me at all times so I can tick-off when I’ve done something, so that I don’t go back and check it again. It worked well for a while, but doing it has become obsessive compulsive behaviour in itself and I’ll check my checks until my brain hurts.
Mairéad told me that everyone has intrusive thoughts and that the only difference between someone with OCD and someone without it, was that the person with OCD can’t let the thought go. But I wasn’t sure I believed Mairéad because when I asked her if she thought of her boss’s penis all the time, she couldn’t look me in the eye.
I was eleven when I was diagnosed with OCD. I wasn’t superstitious – I didn’t think it was bad luck if I saw one magpie or if a black cat crossed my path from out of nowhere, I could walk under ladders no problem and I didn’t care if it was Friday the thirteenth.
But when my grandfather was ill, I put a whole toilet roll down the loo because I believed if I didn’t he would die. When my mum walked in and saw it, she told me that he was dying anyway. I didn’t hear a voice telling me to do it or anything like that – it was an urge, a thought that came into my head before I could even work out how or why it was there.
I drank five glasses of orange juice to the brim because if I didn’t, either me, my mum or my dad would get cancer. My mum said statistically, one of us would get it anyway, but I don’t believe in statistics. Another time, I phoned the police and then hung up when the operator picked up. I thought they would cut the call, but when I lifted the receiver they were still connected. I had to tell my mum, who was mortified as she explained to the operator on the other end of the line something that she couldn’t comprehend herself.
My mum took me to see Father Michael after that because she thought I was possessed. She made him douse me in holy water, while saying The Lord’s Prayer, which I now find myself reciting over and over again whenever I’m stressed. I thought it had worked until I got home afterwards and it took me fifteen minutes to walk up the stairs because I couldn’t get up them before picturing Father Michael having sex with my mother.
It was around that time that my parents decided to get me some professional help and it wasn’t long after that I was diagnosed. I had to see a therapist once a week (not Mairéad, she came later). Her name was Lily. I saw her after school on a Tuesday. She’d come to the house with a notebook and a serious look plastered on her face, and my parents would pretend to be busy in another room whilst we sat in the kitchen and Lily tried her best to understand something she clearly couldn’t relate to.
In the end, I think she thought I was making it up for the attention, which suited my parents because it meant it was all just a phase. But it must have been a bloody long phase because nearly seventeen years later, I am still in it.
There’s more, (a lot more) but before I get ahead of myself, I should probably tell you how I found myself in this situation – the one with a naked man in my bed that Saturday morning.
I’ll start on the Thursday, when I was getting ready for work.