i know the door is locked and i check it anyway

someone told me once that they were “so particular” about keeping their desk clean and i almost laughed. not at them. at how far away that is from what this actually is. because this is not a clean desk. this is not organizing your books by color. this is not being particular about how the dishwasher is loaded.

this is standing at your front door at 11:47 pm knowing you locked it. you watched your hand turn the lock. you heard the click. you pulled the handle to confirm. and then you walk to the bedroom and something in your brain says..but did you though. and you know you did. you know. and it doesnt matter. because the thought is louder than the knowing. so you go back and check. and it clicks again. and you walk to the bedroom again. and the thought comes again. did you though. are you sure. what if you didnt and someone gets in and something happens to your kids while theyre sleeping and it will be your fault because you didnt check one more time.

so you check one more time.

four times tonight. some nights its two. some nights its six. the number doesnt matter. what matters is that every single time i know the door is locked and every single time i go back anyway. and the going back is not a choice. thats the part people dont understand. its not “oh i just like to double check.” its my brain holding my family hostage until i perform the ritual. check the door or something bad happens. thats the deal my brain offers. and i know the deal is fake. i know nothing bad will happen if i dont check the door a fourth time. i know this with the same certainty that i know the earth is round. and i check the door a fourth time.

thats what this feels like. knowing and doing it anyway. the knowing makes it worse, not better. because if i were just a nervous person who worried about locks that would make sense. but im a person who knows the worry is irrational and does the ritual anyway. which means something in my brain is broken in a way that logic cant reach. and that..thats the part that scares me more than the door.

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its not just the door.

its checking that ive set my alarm. four times. screen on, see the alarm, screen off. repeat. even though i can see it. even though the phone shows the alarm icon at the top. even though i have not missed an alarm in years. doesnt matter. check it again.

its re-reading a message i just sent to a client. not once. over and over. looking for something wrong. not a typo — something worse. something offensive i might have written without realizing. something that will destroy the relationship. i read it and its fine. i read it again and its fine. i read it a third time and my brain finds a sentence that could maybe possibly be interpreted as slightly cold if the person reading it is having a bad day and is looking for reasons to be offended. and now thats all i can think about for forty-five minutes.

its the intrusive thoughts. god the intrusive thoughts. i cant write most of them here because theyre the kind of thoughts that make you feel like a monster for having them. not violent. not dangerous. just..wrong. thoughts that arrive uninvited and park themselves in the center of your mind and refuse to leave. and the more you try to push them out the stronger they grip. the harder you pull the tighter it holds.

the cruelest part is that the thoughts target what you love most. thats how this works. it finds the thing you care about more than anything — your kids, your wife, your health, your sanity — and it says what if something happens to that thing and it will be your fault. thats the template. every intrusive thought is a variation of that template. what if [worst thing] happens to [thing you love most] because [something you did or didnt do].

and you know its your brain. you know the thought is not real and the danger is not real and the connection between checking the door and your familys safety is not real. you know all of this. and you check the door anyway. because knowing is not enough. knowing has never been enough.

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i hide it well.

thats the thing about this that nobody talks about. most people who live like this are hiding it. not because theyre ashamed — although they are. but because the rituals are small enough to disguise. checking a lock takes three seconds. re-reading a message looks like being thorough. lying awake running scenarios looks like insomnia. the compulsions hide inside normal behavior like a virus inside a healthy cell. from the outside it looks like a careful person. from the inside it looks like a prison.

my wife sees some of it. she sees me go back to check the door. she used to say “you already checked it” and id say “i know” and go check it anyway. she stopped saying it after a while. not because she stopped noticing. because she realized that telling me i already checked it doesnt help. she cant logic me out of it any more than i can logic myself out of it. the logic part of my brain is working perfectly. its not a logic problem. its something else wearing a logic costume.

there was a night — maybe a year ago, maybe longer — when i was checking the stove. not because i had cooked. i hadnt cooked. but what if somehow the stove turned on by itself. what if theres a gas leak. what if the house fills with gas while everyone is sleeping. i knew this was insane. i knew stoves dont turn themselves on. i checked it anyway. three times. and on the third time one of my kids walked out of their room and saw me standing in the kitchen at midnight staring at the stove and said 뭐 해? — what are you doing?

i said im getting water.

i wasnt getting water. i was performing a ritual that my brain demands in exchange for letting me sleep. and i lied to my child about it because how do you explain that. how do you explain to a kid that their parent’s brain makes them do things that dont make sense and they cant stop.

the worst it ever got was when one of my kids had a fever.

not a bad fever. a normal childhood fever. the kind every parent deals with. you give them medicine, you put a cool cloth on their forehead, you check on them in an hour. thats what normal parents do. check on them in an hour. i checked on them every fifteen minutes. not to see if the fever broke. to see if they were breathing.

i would stand in the doorway and watch their chest rise and fall. rise and fall. and i would count the breaths. and i would stand there until i was sure — really sure — that they were breathing. and then i would go back to the living room and sit down and within three minutes the thought would come. what if they stopped breathing after you left. what if the fever is worse than you think. what if something happens while youre sitting here and you could have prevented it by being in the room.

so i would go back. and i would watch the chest rise and fall. and i would count again.

i did this for hours. my wife was asleep. the medicine was working. the fever was 38 point something — nothing dangerous. i knew it was nothing dangerous. and i stood in that doorway like a guard at a post that didnt need guarding because my brain told me that if i stopped watching, if i stopped counting breaths, if i went to bed like a normal person..then i was a bad father. then whatever happened next was my fault. that was the deal. watch or be guilty. count or be responsible.

and then the fever would break. and the thermometer would drop half a degree. and the relief..god the relief was like oxygen after drowning. my whole body would unclench. my shoulders would drop. id almost cry from the release of it. and for ten minutes everything was ok. everything was fine. my child was fine. i was fine.

and then the next thought would come. but what about tomorrow night.

미치겠다 — i’m going crazy.

thats what i say to myself on the bad nights. 미치겠다. and i know im not going crazy. i have full awareness that the thoughts are irrational and the rituals are unnecessary. but knowing youre not going crazy while feeling like youre going crazy is its own special kind of torture.

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the thing about this that i wish someone had told me twenty years ago is that its not about the door. or the stove. or the alarm. or the message. those are just the latest things it attaches to. there is a machine in my head that manufactures doubt. the specific doubt changes. when i was younger it was different things. now its doors and stoves and messages and my childrens safety. next year it might be something else. the machine doesnt care what it processes. it just needs to run.

i cant turn off the machine. ive tried. ive tried ignoring it and the anxiety builds until it feels like my chest is going to crack open. ive tried reasoning with it and it just gets louder. ive tried getting angry at it — why are you like this, why cant you just be normal, everyone else locks their door once and goes to bed. the anger doesnt help either. nothing helps in the way i want it to help, which is making it stop. it doesnt stop. it just..sometimes gets quieter.

some nights i dont check the door at all. those nights feel like victories except i dont trust them. because the machine taught me not to trust good days. good days are just the machine resting before it starts again.

i locked the door tonight. once. then i walked to the kitchen and boiled water instead of walking back to check. not because the urge wasnt there. the urge was screaming. but i boiled water and i sat with the screaming and i let my hands hold something warm and i waited for the screaming to get tired.

it took eleven minutes.

but it got tired.

thats not a cure. thats not even a strategy. its just..what happened tonight. tomorrow the machine will start again and maybe i wont be strong enough to sit with it and maybe ill check the door four times and hate myself for it. i dont know. i cant predict which version of me shows up on any given night.

but tonight i boiled water. and the screaming got tired. and my family is sleeping and the door is locked and i checked it once and thats enough.

tonight thats enough.