• The Other Me

    OCD’s Intrusive Thoughts: My Unreal Reality

    (1990) I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a family. I have to prove to myself that I know this is my reality as a 19-year-old. I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a family. I don’t know when it began, when I needed to start proving this to myself. No doubt, it’s a byproduct of the anxiety that’s grown through my teens, and recently exploded. I am Les Zigomanis, I’m unemployed, I’m not a famous writer, I’m not rich, and I’m not married with a…

  • The Other Me

    The Other Me

    ‘The Long Hard Fall’ i. Allie was a girl who’d had a crush on me in Grade 6 (twenty-five years earlier) and chased me through high school. Then she married some guy and that was it – until she rang me unexpectedly and we swapped stories. She told me she’d had three kids and was unhappily married. I told her I was pretty much where I was when we’d last spoke over fifteen years earlier. As her marriage disintegrated and she separated, we became friends, and then later developed our own relationship – much to the disapproval of my parents. They saw danger: I wasn’t working; she had major financial…