OCD’s Intrusive Thoughts: Knives and Me

(1989)

I hold the point of the knife to my belly.

Dare myself.

I feel the point prick my skin.

And there’s the possibility I might, I just might, thrust, and impale myself.

A friend tried to take his own life this way; he told me as he felt the blade going in, he couldn’t keep pushing – it wasn’t so much the pain, but the sickening realization of what was happening.

But I’m not standing here with the intent of taking my own life.

It’s the thoughts around knives.

The feelings.

The uneasiness.

Images flash through my head that I’ll seize a knife and thrust it into somebody.

But it won’t be me but this impulse that’ll override everything else in my head so that I’ll be shunted to the side, becoming nothing more than a spectator.

That’s the fear.

I’ll snap.

And this’ll happen.

This dread has grown more and more around knives. They don’t even have to be particularly sharp or threatening knifes, either. Even a butter knife. Or like the basic kitchen knife I’m holding right now.

It’s got a point. That’s sharp enough.

I tell myself, I challenge myself, If you’re going to hurt anybody, hurt yourself.

And now we’re at a temporary impasse.

I want this challenge to prove to me that I’m in control, that these aberrant thoughts are schisms that are not part of me – if they were, that would be the most frightening thing of all because they might facilitate a systematic devolution from thought to actualisation.

I also want to show myself that I’m in control, that I’m in control, that I’m in control, even though I don’t feel that. Just because these thoughts pop up doesn’t mean that they’ll influence me, determine my actions, or become me.

But there’s the terror that my logic will prove faulty. That’s good, though – the terror. The terror tells me that I’m not becoming comfortable that violent thoughts around knives are normalizing to the extent that I might just do something unthinkable.

At least that’s what I cling to.

Under that is something much more terrifying: that if I were to cross that line once, I would just keep crossing it. Go on some stabbing rampage. Kill everybody. Become awash in blood. Stab and stab and stab while cackling maniacally, and I would witness all this from the deepest dim recess of my mind, but be incapable of stopping it.

So I push the knife a little firmer against my belly until the point impresses a concavity.

If you’re going to hurt anybody, I tell myself again, although now I enunciate each word in my head, hurt yourself.

And I wait.

I push everything else out of my mind and wait.

Silence.

Emptiness.

Both offering an invitation to be filled.

This is where I draw the line.

The knife goes no further. The thoughts back off – at least enough I’ve proven to myself I’m not a buddying psychopath.

I wash the knife, stick it in the dish rack, then go sit in front of the TV.

I’m okay.

I’m all right.

For now.