So OCD! Program & Zine

July, 2022

Vol. 1

ZINE

A collection of works about OCD & anxiety

Playwrights’ Note The So OCD! show was created about our personal experiences growing up with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Anxiety. We realize our stories don’t tell everyone’s story. That’s why we invited others to join in the conversation--to share their voice so we can explore the different ways OCD & anxiety manifest, as well as the similarities. The accompanying doodles represent our childhood fears.

It’s through sharing that we erase stigma and stereotypes, break isolation, and build community.

Fear can either drive us apart or bring us together; we choose the latter.

The Demon By Ara Brancamp Hotter, hisses the demon. It must be hotter.

I crank the faucet handle a half turn more and watch my hands blush from the heat.

Hotter! It cries.

No, I think back at it. This is absurd. I’m going to scald my hands.

Bacteria won’t die below 140 degrees. Do it, now.

I turn the water up as hot as it will reach, my hands nearly numbing to the sensation. The sweet release from the demon’s control follows shortly. I shake my hands dry, afraid to touch anything yet.

What was I doing, I wonder. Right, dinner. I just put the chicken in the oven, the threat of salmonella having solicited the demon.

I turn to the island where the onion waits to be chopped and fall into a rhythm of dicing and slicing vegetables, the up-down motion of my wrist and the knife weaving a force field between me and that dreaded voice. I take a sip from my glass of Malbec and hit play on my phone screen. David Byrne lulls me into a trance of freedom. Chop. Dice. Sip. Swivel.

You touched the phone screen.

No. Not you. We’ve blocked you.

You paused the music before you washed your hands. And now you’ve touched the screen again.

Don’t care. Go away.

You’ll die.

Not true.

You’ll get very sick, at least. And you could die. You must kill the bacteria.

I used my knuckle to pause the music. My knuckle never touched the chicken.

It was close enough. Your phone is contaminated. You must kill them.

“No!” I shout out loud, startling Maisie, who until now had been asleep under the island, having positioned herself there in case of accidental chicken dropping. She comes out from her hiding place, shakes the sleep from her body, and sits at my feet.

(cont’d)

“Sorry, baby. Not you.” I rub her head and tug gently on her ears.

Now you’ve touched the dog. You can’t continue chopping with dog hands.

Fuck.

While my hands are already unclean, I give Maisie a treat and scratch behind her ears.

Feel that on your fingers? That’s contamination. Kill it.

Obediently, I return to the sink. I don’t even bother haggling the temperature. I swing the handle all the way around, hot water shooting full force over my barely recovered skin. David Byrne picks up his intensity to match the gushing heat.

More soap.

I pump more soap into my hands.

A little more. To be safe.

My hands are slathered in blue liquid. I run my nails in circles around the palms of the opposite hands. I’ve been told enough times how bacteria love to hide beneath the fingernails. I scrub between each web of fingers, rinse the soap, pump more soap, repeat until the demon is satiated.

Maisie lets out a sigh as she settles back into her spot beneath the island. I return to my dinner prep. At this rate, the chicken will be done long before the vegetables. No matter. I suspect I won’t be allowed to eat the chicken tonight, anyway.

It isn’t safe, warns the demon. We can’t be sure it’s edible.

I don’t bother bringing up the meat thermometer or oven temperature. It’s a losing battle tonight. Demons can’t process logic. When the timer goes off, I cut the chicken into small pieces and let it cool before dumping it all into Maisie’s bowl.

“Are you in on this, bubby? Did you summon him?”

She looks at me, confused, then looks at her bowl.

“Free,” I tell her. “It’s all yours.”

I don’t even bother to cook the vegetables. I can’t be sure how many times I touched the knife or the phone or the dog. It’s all a loss. I pour another glass of wine and head to bed.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

By Margo Kinney-Petrucha The dread sets in. That feeling that only hits when you’re alone, and excruciatingly aware of what it means to be alone, truly alone, and you don’t think you’ll ever feel like you’re not alone again because you’ve realized that everybody is alone, because nobody can ever fully understand anyone else, and in the end all you have is yourself, but you know that existing for yourself is meaningless, and you’re meaningless, and one day you’ll die and it won’t matter because your life is nothing-Waking Up Is Hard to Do But, it beats the alternative.

Instead of financial security, I’ve started praying for financial serenity and generosity.

I can do this with any of my objects of panic and insecurity I suppose.

But, everything in its own time.

I guess patience is what ails me most.

Whatever I don’t acknowledge or accept controls me.

What I acknowledge, examine, accept, that’s the stuff I can own, that’s the stuff I can liberate or let liberate me by acting a new way, taking a new street.

I don’t have to keep pushing that unresourceful mindset deeper into my pocket, stepping in it, or tripping over it every time I get anxious. I don’t take lightly any new behavior choices.

To acknowledge, examine and accept stuff that no longer serves me it’s hard! It means taking off all the lenses of self-deceit that I’m aware of. The ones my ego slips on and things feel uncomfortable or uncontrollable.

I gotta shine some serious light of awareness on my reactive habit and keep it lit for as long as it takes to really want to be free of it. I only give the defenses that I truly own.

Because that stuff I keep blaming everybody else for, that’s not going anywhere.

Even if those people leave my life or I leave theirs, there’s always new people to blame for the life I’m not willing to examine with the clarity that only comes with hard core (brutally gentle) acceptance, love and self-honesty.

By Zeffa Kinney

by Emily Drossell I don’t have OCD, I just needed to rewash my hands because my pinky grazed the sink basin and it wasn’t worth the potential contamination.

I just needed to repeat the same three sentences before I went to bed to make sure that I woke up as myself. And it wasn’t enough to say “I love being me.” I needed to specify that “I love being Emily Drossell” and “I love being a human,” so as not to tempt any loopholes that would cause me to wake up as some other version of existence that still counted as “me.”

I just avoided driving whenever I could because I couldn’t help but shake the fear that every time I got behind the wheel I might hit something and somehow never know it happened.

I just need to set aside any cleaning tasks for when I have an indefinite amount of time available and can determine the order in which I can touch items so as to wash my hands the fewest amount of times.

I just try to move everything away from that which might give off the slightest trace of heat, as I’m terrified that something might melt and I’ll inhale carcinogens.

I just put off laundry for as long as I can because it’s too emotionally draining.

I just thought I’d google to see if others felt the same.

I just took as many online diagnostic quizzes as I could.

I just started sharing my struggles and found others related.

Turns out, I just have OCD.

Our Closed Doors: Living with OCD by Rebecca Foltin They say practice makes perfect. But “perfect” is a loaded word for a person with OCD. For people with this condition, practice is not a sequential, cumulative task that makes a linear progression towards completion. Rather, practice is cyclical: a continuously unfolding task that must be repeated until the finish line becomes unclear. To have OCD is to be perpetually entrapped in the liminal space between progress and completion.

The Intruder I need to get out of here, but everywhere I go, I follow me.

by Rebecca Foltin

So OCD!

Performed at The Tank NYC

July 22-24, 2022

Written & Performed by Susannah Holub & Maia Kinney-Petrucha Directed by Anna Michael Associate Director Emma Hasselbach Poster by Katie Burke Zine Coordinator Rebecca Foltin Special Thanks to

The Tank NYC, Zeffa Kinney, Stefan Petrucha, Margo Kinny-Petrucha, Sam Findlen-Golden, Quinn Wilke, Reile Slattery, Tony Macht, Susannah’s Mom & Dad, Dakota Blackman, Lynn, Rebecca, Amber, Courtney, Emily Drossell, Ara Brancamp, Anna Michael, Emma Hasselback, Rebecca Foltin & Katie Burke