Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a term we sometimes throw around to describe an obsession or excuse a proclivity.
Meghan Newkirk winces when she hears that.
She’s the author of Loving Naomi, a rather autobiographical story about a young girl coming to terms with clinically diagnosed O.C.D.
My friend Ben set up our conference while I was in Raleigh, NC, knowing she’s the kind of person I’d want to invite to a Row House Forum.
A Shoe-In
Meghan is a born-and-bred Raleigh woman with a husband and three young kids.
She’s a bath bomb: Colorful, effervescent, a blast.
By the end of our lively conversation at Cup A Joe’s, she got an open invitation from me to speak anytime in Lancaster.
Hopefully we can get her and her family to spend a few days.
As a Row House board and Team, we’re kicking around the idea of giving our presenters more exposure within small group gatherings, one-on-ones, and the like.
Her story would be hopeful and humanizing for a lot of us, especially if up till now, we’ve been suffering in silence.
Our goal would be to “unleash” her to as many people as possible.
Invasive Thoughts
When the Naomi character in her book experiences troubling thoughts, they are portrayed in italics.
This tool is effective at confronting the reader with the kind of paralyzing patterns O.C.D. sufferers are forced into.
All of us encounter bad thoughts, but most of us are not dragged down by them.
When I was about ten years old, I got interested in human oddities. I even collected books about the lives of sideshow workers.1 But I hadn’t seen such an anomaly up close.
One evening, though, at a discount store, I saw a woman whose face and neck were covered with large boils.
I feared, as I lay in bed, that perhaps I’d see her grotesque visage till the day I died.
After a good night’s rest, the image faded as I reflected on her humanity, or just plain forgot about her.
But what if each day I had to fight thoughts that I didn’t ask for?
That’s what O.C.D. can be like, and Meghan pictures this trauma vividly in her narrative.
Nothing New Under The Son
Around the time of the Renaissance, the obsessive and compulsive dispositions were referred to as scrupulosity. Numerous religious and scientific dignitaries weighed in on their treatment, including Soren Kierkegaard:
The sufferer, humanly speaking, suffers guiltlessly. Not, as in the case of sin, where he himself occasions those thoughts, but the very reverse, the thoughts pursue him.
Full of dread, he flies from them in every possible way; he harnesses all his ingenuity, all his attention, to the point of despairing perhaps, in order to escape not only the thoughts but even the most distant connection with them.
It is of no avail, the dread only increases. And so in this case the usual advice, to try to forget and to avoid them, does not help; for that is exactly what he does and it only brings dread nearer.2
The source of the condition morphed from superstitions to medical explanations in the intervening years, allowing someone like Meghan to walk into the dark to confront her condition with intelligence and hope.
Pick Up And Read
When you say a book is “real” or “honest,” it better include descriptions of invasive thoughts (murderous ones, really), flustered arm-pit sweat, and the fear of vomiting.
That’s what you get with Naomi.
A feisty gal who falls in love with a no-bull, patient young man, receives love from an unlikely mentor, abuses love from a long-suffering sister, and keeps falling back into the arms of a heavenly Father.
It’s refreshing to read a story where mental illness is addressed directly without turning to recovery as if it were a god or end in itself.
Joy in the Journey
Ms. Newkirk, being a committed Christian, does not simply “pray away” her illness. She’s out loud about her cooperation with medications and therapy.
At the same time, she certainly doesn’t disregard her trust in God, loving family, and church relationships.
These are a carefully arranged stage where she can take her part in the drama and become more stable and productive than she would’ve been otherwise.
Likening her to a bath bomb is not superficial. Meghan’s life and her book bubble with hope.
She brings a soothing and substantial word of cleansing to those who suffer…and to those, like me, who love those who do.
I still have the collection and will gladly show you for 50 cents. Just step right up, and let me tell you about Chang & Eng, John Merrick, and The Lobster Man (whom I saw in person). I admire these people, more for their stories than for their bodily rarities.
https://www.ocdhistory.net/nutshell/earliest.html ("Short History of OCD", 2009).