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I count the cracks in between the blocks of cement as I walk, eyes downcast. Sets of two, sets of two. I can never quite shake the way my bones don’t sit right under my skin, too big for my body. It’s a constant itch that I can’t scratch, only mollified when I listen, when I listen to what it tells me. My disease tells me to count in sets of two—blink four times, two sets of two. I don’t understand, but those numbers are safety in a storm. They ruin me, though. They ruin me. I hide behind mathematical equations that account for sets of two, and I leave her to drown.

These are my hands, but they’re really just earthquakes. I am not afraid to crumble anything that gets in my way, and it’s always her. She always tries to stop me, tells me she loves me after calling me fucked up. Fucked up. I lose sleep because sometimes I dream in shades that I do not like. Blue, like her eyes. One syllable, half of a set. A ghost number.

I am losing her.

I can tell by the way she wakes up in the morning. She brushes her teeth at the kitchen sink, gets coffee at Starbucks instead of letting me make it for her. She says I take too long, because I always have to make two cups. Sometimes four, if it’s a bad day. She kisses my mouth once instead of twice, doesn’t look back when I dig my nails into my skin. I think she’s guilty.

I don’t blame her, though. They say I have obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it’s more than that. I am obsessive-compulsive disorder. I am the syndrome in my brain, the blood in my veins, the ligaments and muscles beneath my skin. I am the daughter on the step stool who fell and had to climb back up again just to fall back off. Twice. Twice.

On a Tuesday morning, she tells me I need to change. She doesn’t kiss me good morning—zero, an empty set—but she lingers in the kitchen, makes a cup of coffee. I am in the eye of my very own storm.

“You need to change.”

“I don’t know how.”

And it’s true. I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember. Is there something so wrong with me? I keep my job, I have my family. I leave the doors open around the apartment otherwise I have to close them twice, and it always wakes her up. She yells at me when I organize her papers, so I clean my things four times. I’m trying.

“Just stop!”

In that moment, I understand. I love her constantly: she is an open set I keep repeating. But I get it now. She doesn’t. She doesn’t understand me, how I work. I orbit in retrograde and everything happens different from what I mean. I know I move backwards when she moves forward and that opposites truly don’t attract.

There are so many things I’d like to say, and if I could just make her understand, we could work at this. There’d be that clichéd light at the end of the tunnel, where we’d be happily ever after. But I am not a story: I am a disease. I ruin schedules and dinner parties, I sleep on two beds pushed together and someone always ends up on the crack in the middle. I st-stutter over my words, count numbers in my mind until I have to say them out loud. I draw attention and she hates that. She stopped going out to dinner with me when I needed to look at two menus. She stopped holding my hand in public when I begged her to walk the way I did, skipping cement cracks as if it’d actually hurt. What she doesn’t understand is that it would hurt, my bones would scream until I made it right. It would hurt like being burned alive, and she doesn’t know so she cannot understand.

“I can’t.”

“No, you just don’t want to.”

“I cant,” I insist more firmly, and before I know it we’re screaming. She’s sick of the way I am, who I am, and I-I tell her that I’m just sick. I am just sick. It shuts her up, at least, enough for me to rub at my eyes before tears start to fall. Crying makes me uneasy; I have to count the tears as they fall and make sure the number is even. I’m fucked up. I am so fucked up.

“I made you that appointment with the therapist—“

“The one who tried to electrocute me?”

“…There was also the support group I—“

“You all think I’m crazy. I’m not crazy. I see things differently. You used to like that, remember? You used to like the way I noticed the skeletons on leaves, the way their symmetry spoke to me. You used to like me.”

“Are you saying I—“

“You don’t.” I know I keep cutting her off, and it’s unusual for me because a full conversation requires two people, and right now it’s just half of her, and me. But I am so riled; I don’t care about the magpies in my bones. They scream through my throat, trill and angry. This is my voice, but it’s really just desperation. I need to know.

“I could, if you just—“ This time, she cuts herself off. The offer sits in the air like a fog looming over my head. I know what this is, I know how it ends. I lose her, or I lose me.

“I can’t.” I said it three times, so far. My lips bleed with how hard I try to keep them shut, but I know she’s waiting. I know she’s waiting. “I fucking can’t.” She hates when I swear. It makes it easier.

Her back is towards me as she grabs her things, and I don’t try to stop her. This may be bad, but there’s nothing worse than two people being unhappy together. There’s nothing worse than two people being unhappy together. She slams the door. I twist the knob and it swings open, just so I can slam it again.

Three months go by, and she only came around to pick up her things. I can’t look at her, because I know I’d try to relate her to my favorite colors, making her eyes aquamarine instead of blue. But they’re still just blue. And I’m still my disease.

I don’t need her to live, unsurprisingly. There are no kisses, an empty set, but with no one there to provide them it matters less. I count the cracks in the sidewalk and now I can close the bathroom door at 3 am, twice. It’s nice, but I know it’s not right. I know it’s not right. These days I’m so focused on myself that I don’t realize I meet someone at work, until I meet someone at work. Her name is Annie, and she thinks my quirks are weird right from the beginning. I smile. I smile again.

I pick up the pamphlet on OCD she left me back when we were still together, and delete her number. This time, I’m not doing things twice.

Description
I count the cracks in between the blocks of cement as I walk, eyes downcast. Sets of two, sets of two. I can never quite shake the way my bones don’t sit right under my skin, too big for my body. It’s a constant itch that I can’t scratch, only mollified when I listen, when I listen to what it tells me. My disease tells me to count in sets of two—blink four times, two sets of two. I don’t understand, but those numbers are safety in a storm. They ruin me, though. They ruin me. I hide behind mathematical equations that account for sets of two, and I leave her to drown.

These are my hands, but they’re really just earthquakes. I am not afraid to crumble anything that gets in my way, and it’s always her. She always tries to stop me, tells me she loves me after calling me fucked up. Fucked up. I lose sleep because sometimes I dream in shades that I do not like. Blue, like her eyes. One syllable, half of a set. A ghost number.

I am losing her.

I can tell by the way she wakes up in the morning. She brushes her teeth at the kitchen sink, gets coffee at Starbucks instead of letting me make it for her. She says I take too long, because I always have to make two cups. Sometimes four, if it’s a bad day. She kisses my mouth once instead of twice, doesn’t look back when I dig my nails into my skin. I think she’s guilty.

I don’t blame her, though. They say I have obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it’s more than that. I am obsessive-compulsive disorder. I am the syndrome in my brain, the blood in my veins, the ligaments and muscles beneath my skin. I am the daughter on the step stool who fell and had to climb back up again just to fall back off. Twice. Twice.

On a Tuesday morning, she tells me I need to change. She doesn’t kiss me good morning—zero, an empty set—but she lingers in the kitchen, makes a cup of coffee. I am in the eye of my very own storm.

“You need to change.”

“I don’t know how.”

And it’s true. I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember. Is there something so wrong with me? I keep my job, I have my family. I leave the doors open around the apartment otherwise I have to close them twice, and it always wakes her up. She yells at me when I organize her papers, so I clean my things four times. I’m trying.

“Just stop!”

In that moment, I understand. I love her constantly: she is an open set I keep repeating. But I get it now. She doesn’t. She doesn’t understand me, how I work. I orbit in retrograde and everything happens different from what I mean. I know I move backwards when she moves forward and that opposites truly don’t attract.

There are so many things I’d like to say, and if I could just make her understand, we could work at this. There’d be that clichéd light at the end of the tunnel, where we’d be happily ever after. But I am not a story: I am a disease. I ruin schedules and dinner parties, I sleep on two beds pushed together and someone always ends up on the crack in the middle. I st-stutter over my words, count numbers in my mind until I have to say them out loud. I draw attention and she hates that. She stopped going out to dinner with me when I needed to look at two menus. She stopped holding my hand in public when I begged her to walk the way I did, skipping cement cracks as if it’d actually hurt. What she doesn’t understand is that it would hurt, my bones would scream until I made it right. It would hurt like being burned alive, and she doesn’t know so she cannot understand.

“I can’t.”

“No, you just don’t want to.”

“I cant,” I insist more firmly, and before I know it we’re screaming. She’s sick of the way I am, who I am, and I-I tell her that I’m just sick. I am just sick. It shuts her up, at least, enough for me to rub at my eyes before tears start to fall. Crying makes me uneasy; I have to count the tears as they fall and make sure the number is even. I’m fucked up. I am so fucked up.

“I made you that appointment with the therapist—“

“The one who tried to electrocute me?”

“…There was also the support group I—“

“You all think I’m crazy. I’m not crazy. I see things differently. You used to like that, remember? You used to like the way I noticed the skeletons on leaves, the way their symmetry spoke to me. You used to like me.”

“Are you saying I—“

“You don’t.” I know I keep cutting her off, and it’s unusual for me because a full conversation requires two people, and right now it’s just half of her, and me. But I am so riled; I don’t care about the magpies in my bones. They scream through my throat, trill and angry. This is my voice, but it’s really just desperation. I need to know.

“I could, if you just—“ This time, she cuts herself off. The offer sits in the air like a fog looming over my head. I know what this is, I know how it ends. I lose her, or I lose me.

“I can’t.” I said it three times, so far. My lips bleed with how hard I try to keep them shut, but I know she’s waiting. I know she’s waiting. “I fucking can’t.” She hates when I swear. It makes it easier.

Her back is towards me as she grabs her things, and I don’t try to stop her. This may be bad, but there’s nothing worse than two people being unhappy together. There’s nothing worse than two people being unhappy together. She slams the door. I twist the knob and it swings open, just so I can slam it again.

Three months go by, and she only came around to pick up her things. I can’t look at her, because I know I’d try to relate her to my favorite colors, making her eyes aquamarine instead of blue. But they’re still just blue. And I’m still my disease.

I don’t need her to live, unsurprisingly. There are no kisses, an empty set, but with no one there to provide them it matters less. I count the cracks in the sidewalk and now I can close the bathroom door at 3 am, twice. It’s nice, but I know it’s not right. I know it’s not right. These days I’m so focused on myself that I don’t realize I meet someone at work, until I meet someone at work. Her name is Annie, and she thinks my quirks are weird right from the beginning. I smile. I smile again.

I pick up the pamphlet on OCD she left me back when we were still together, and delete her number. This time, I’m not doing things twice.