I once read that the overwhelming compulsion which
people who suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) feel to do what they
do, is mainly one of terrifying incomprehensible dread.
A dread that, for instance, if they don’t wash
their hands ten times every half an hour, that all of their family – every
single person they love - will immediately and inexplicably fall down dead.
A dread that if they don’t turn the light on and
off three times whenever they enter a room, the earth will be hit by a giant
meteorite and all life on the planet immediately extinguished.
A dread that…well you get the idea.
They know it’s illogical, improbably and deeply
damaging/debilitating to their lives…..but…well… it’s just there nevertheless.
They feel it in their bones, to their core…and
goodness it’s difficult to change the way you feel.
They live caught in a perpetual dichotomy – a
nightmarish cognitive dissonance in which they both know that their compulsion
is illogical and a product of their own rebellious consciousness – but they
also feel absolutely and entirely convinced that their dread is real.
Frankly it must be bloody awful and I feel for the
poor blighters, and…you know what….I sort of get it.
With me – as most of you know – it’s sitting at
corners.
I’m nowhere near suffering what those poor buggers
have to daily endure, but I do sort of understand where they’re coming from.
In Taps I have to sit at the corner of the bar;
whether that be behind the hatch, at the hatch or in the Perryman.
Anything else and I feel like I have ants in my brain.
An unreasonably rage – a back of the neck burning, ears ringing, rage.
And of course I know it’s unreasonable – I really
do. Contrary to all evidence I’m only half as stupid as I look. But it is what
it is. That’s just me. That’s just it.
It’s undoubtedly my own fault of course; for
letting it get so far I mean – for not squashing it dead and flat when those
feelings first arose, but…well… it’s done now.
It is. It had become. It has manifested.
The ridiculous thing is that I can sit anywhere in
the Kings Head. Obviously I much prefer
to sit near the hatch – but I can live without it – but when it comes to Taps
all bets are off. Whenever someone – someone who isn’t Barry that is – is sat
in the corner or at the hatch, I just can’t enjoy myself.
For all the time that I’m in there all I’m doing
is waiting for them to go. That’s it. I’m waiting, I’m worrying, by God I’m
worrying, and minute by minute I’m becoming more and more enraged.
You might think we’re having a moderately
interesting conversation about your day, or my day, or your holiday, or
my….well, your holiday, but that isn’t what’s happening.
What’s happening is that I’m eyeing the corner and
plotting blue bloody murder. I’m chopping up limbs in bath tubs in my head. I’m
wondering where I can buy limestone. I’m bludgeoning some poor aged
motherfucker to death with his own walking stick.
And I really wish I wasn’t like that – genuinely I
do – and I know it’s immensely annoying to many people, but as I said, it just
is what it is.
So all I can ask is that you continue to indulge
me…after all, who knows, maybe it really is all that stands between us and
planetary destruction.
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