(A Definition: OCD is a mental disorder where people feel the need to check things repeatedly, perform certain routines repeatedly or have certain thoughts repeatedly).
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Well, I'll tell you once
Better make that twice just in case,
Maybe even a third time to be sure
To be sure it's securely in place
Because you never know, do you, you
never know.....
When I was young I worked for the
man
I didn't have any other choice at the
time,
A strange man, aren't they all
Had a funny way of going on
Had pet names for things, his own
private little vocabulary
And there was always this one, this
one little proviso
No matter what you seemed to do
You! you were always wrong.
If you were to ask him for directions
you'd surely end up lost
Be left scratching your head or driving
into a wall,
Even if you thought you knew what he
meant
It was like he'd just turn it around,
stand it on its head
And suddenly it wasn't what he meant,
it wasn't what he meant at all!
But was something completely
different
And you! you were always wrong.
"Where are your eyes, can't you see!"
he'd say
I could see alright but not what he was
saying to me
Everything was upside down, every
which way across
All jumbled up, awkward, out of place,
I could never please him anyway,
In the end you'd just give up, just
give in
Admit you were stupid, admit you
were dim
Playing a game only he could win
With its ever changing rules all made
up by him,
Maybe it was just the mood he was in
He was a man though and I, I was only
a kid....only a kid.
II
Now its hard to live when you've
always been wrong
When you don't trust yourself or the
whole world around
You grow unsure about things, you
start to check things,
Where others see things for what
they are, you simply don't believe it
Reality isn't reality you've learned, it's
something else entirely.
Whereas the other guy can check
things once and let it go
You gotta keep on checking & checking
You look and you look and you look
again
You strain to see what isn't there really
Strain till your poor eyes are nearly
popping out of your head onto the
floor
And even then it's not over, there's a
punchline
When you finally do get something
done
You still don't believe you've done it
right
A ******* doubt remains & it follows
you about
A voice from your past comes back to
haunt you
And to remind you, that "You! you
were always wrong".
How could you ever hope to win
Working three or four times as hard
just to stay even, just to keep up
with the next guy
And it's hard, real hard, all that
indecision
It's no great surprise when you start to
fall behind
You look up & suddenly they've all
passed you by
You look at them like their some kind of Supermen, the ease with which they
can do things, like real men
But you, still like a little child who can
never get it right
You feel such a failure, feel so small, so
small and so inadequate.
And you stick out, others begin to notice you & your little peculiarity
They snigger and laugh behind your
back
They joke about you and call you
names
Their not like you, no one's like you
Nobody wants to be your friend,
No! Nobody wants to be a friend to
that.
You feel you don't fit, you don't belong,
You feel so lost, you feel so alone.
Bosses too, watching you work, they
shake their heads and say,
" He's not very productive, is he? He's
very slow
No! We can't keep him, he's no good,
he'll have to go ".
III
But where do you go? What do you
do?
When all the doors are closed on you,
If you're not all worn out by then,
your health all gone
Well, maybe....maybe you seek another
reality, yeah,
You take a drink and then another and
then wow!
What's all this? a world gone crazy,
out of control, spinning & whirling
around
And it's funny and you'd be laughing,
laughing at the craziness, the
absurdity of it all
And the great thing, you didn't care
anymore
You'd say to yourself " this is great, this
is amazing,
Maybe now I'd found a world I could
live in
Where things were always funny and I
wouldn't always be wrong"
You'd made a new friend, and a friend
worth having
Here was someone who could really
help you
That could ease your pain and dull
that crazy brain of yours
Someone that could fix you and
maybe, carry you home.
And so, you managed to get yourself a
job, then rising real early every
morning
You'd put some music on, then get the
drinks in
Have yourself a little/ wee party
Wait for the effect to kick in, the click
in your head to come
When the seriousness would all
dissipate
And the funniness come around
instead
Then you'd head off to work, you'd be
high but careful to conceal it
So as not to give yourself away
You'd be like an actor playing a role,
the part of the 'normal person'
whatever that is
But behind it all there was you,
watching yourself
And you'd be sniggering & laughing,
far away and far out of it;
And you'd be able to keep up with
them, the others
Keep up long enough until lo and
behold, surprise of all surprises
You'd see one of them make a mistake
And this would give you some
confidence
And you could build on that
You'd start to think, maybe I wasn't so
bad after all
And maybe they weren't the
Supermen I thought them to be,
And slowly bit by bit, you'd start the
long trek back, back to sanity
Till one day, suddenly you wouldn't
need it anymore, the drinking
You'd have realized the truth, that you were as good if not a whole lot better
than any of them
Yea, you'd realize the truth, that you'd
been robbed, you'd been duped
There was nothing wrong with you,
there never was
It was Him! all Him those many years
ago
And that crazy way he had of going
on.
How he always liked to make you feel
that it was such a really big deal
Every time you made a mistake, did
something wrong
It was something terrible! something
heinous!!
O! It was the End of the World!!!
His words, how they'd hit you right at
your heart's core, leave you reeling
Made you feel you weren't human
anymore
You were hopeless! Impossible! Like some kind of freak, some alien being...
You know, sometimes I look at great
structures, big buildings, bridges
and the like
And I wonder what kind of mind
made such a thing
It wouldn't have been me that's for
sure
I'd have been too afraid they'd
collapse or fall into the sea,
And I think again of him who made
me this way
His parents died when he was very
young
He had awful teachers who beat
him mercilessly
He had to emigrate to find work like
so many others
Had to work with foreigners far
from his own home and kin
Who knows what he must have gone through to make him the way he was
What crazy world created him and
made him do the things he did
He never wrote anything down, no!
not like I could
And so it is...and so it goes
(When one person bullies another and destroys their perception of the world)
Now I know it's going to **** me one of
these days
This penchant I still have for checking,
this overconcern for things
When I think of all the energy I must
have wasted
The things I could have done with it
(I could surely do with it now)
What might have been... if only... if
only.
You probably won't read this in any psychology books.