Weltschmerz. Not always pure is the snow

I was eager to help. Now ghosts visit at night, memories haunt me.
I’d like to go back. Ghosts come and visit because I am still committed to helping. They don’t want me to go back. It is a conflict upon values.
Let me share what I’ve learnt. Experiencing obsessions and compulsions does not have primarily to do with washing or checking, nor with control or certainty, rather with values, acceptance, freedom.
I wanna go back. Let me go back.

It was November, it was cold, and the snow outside just claimed another victim. Berlin’s Winter can be harsh, especially if you have got no roof over your head. Until that very day, I had felt extremely helpless before homeless people. My friend had found an open-air soup kitchen and gently nudged me to give it a try, together. Under Berlin’s grey sky, there they were. Hundreds of hungry, miserable existences were there, queueing to have some food, perhaps some clothes, and most importantly, a dialogue with another human being. Indeed, any kind of interaction would have been enough. On the streets, people do not get to look at them, nor do they speak to them. As if they were sentient pieces of furniture, acknowledgment of their basic existence would normally be denied. And this is what they were there for.

What we were there for, that probably differed for each of us. For some it was the sense of community; then solidarity, compassion, others embraced the call to care for the vulnerable. And as for me, it began much before. I remember crying desperately when, as a little kid, I happened to see for the first time a homeless man, begging for change.
“Why Mom? Why him and not us? What did he do? Mom?”.
I was inconsolable. I can never forget that moment, ‘cause my mother went back and gave him some pennies to make me stop. I wish I could have hugged that little kid instead, who did not have any tool to comprehend what was happening. The Germans do have a word for that - they call it, ‘der Weltschmerz’. Attempting a translation would be a waste of time, my German friend told me. One could try though, with world-weariness, literally, ‘the pain of the world’. And so that evening I was there hoping to console the little kid, to do some good, despite what I knew, and I had known for some time already - a part of me was not happy, at all. The Voice was blackmailing, “You’ll have consequences, you know right? You do you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. But you do you”.
They began assembling benches, and that was already the first task I could not carry out - I did not have the right gloves. The guy organising the whole thing saw I was on the fence. The memories, the anguish, the Voice, I had more than one reason to just go back home. But then again, the queue, the snow, my friend’s smile. I gave myself some agency, and allowed myself to stay.

The organiser was a young man who did not have much time to explain to us beginners how to handle the whole thing. He decided that two pieces of advice was just fine. So it goes. First rule, first commandment: “We do not touch them”
Second rule, second commandment: “We do not, ever, call the police. We would rather give it up. If anything happens, we just leave”

“You nailed it, sir”, I thought to myself, “If you wanted to scare the shit out of me, well done, now I am ready to help”.

First obsession: Contamination. “If I touch them, I am screwed. Soon, I will have to take off my lenses, and I will go blind. Later this evening I will have to shower. Can one shower without using their hands? Sounds quite hard. I will have to use my hands. In order to get clean, I will have to get dirty. I will be stuck. For how long will I be stuck this time?” (You see, we OCD people feel, or, feel more than others, like moral dignity and bodily cleanliness somehow overlap. In other terms, the physical is the moral. For this reason, contamination is feeling degraded, deprecated, unpresentable. For the very same reason, I thought I could get rid of my disquiet, by washing it off.)

Second obsession: Persecution. “What are their intentions? Who prepared the food? Is it poisoned? Am I responsible for it? How can I possibly know? I am here to do good. I do know I am here to do good. However, it is only me, knowing I am here to do good. I am going to get caught. Going to be intercepted. But I am here to do good”.

Back to the soup kitchen.
Every now and then my friend and I would exchange glances and, eventually, smiles. Reassuring ones. My thoughts left me temporarily, and I became one with my actions.
At the end, I spent that evening surrounded by what looked like a group of sincerely devoted, enthusiastic volunteers, serving what looked like a delicious milkshake. That was still a barrier, though. Only experienced practitioners and German-speaking volunteers could enjoy the first row. After serving soup, the next step involved distributing clothes and hygiene items. Finally, those who were there to help and those in need were now supposed to be together, were it not that a tape, similar to the one used in crime scenes, carved up the space we were sharing into two, different worlds. I was reminded of the words of psychiatrist Ronald D. Laing, who had sought with all his strength to bridge the existential gap between the psychotic and the sane, just to realise that he was still writing “too much about Them, too little of Us”. I felt like we were treating them as if they were of a different kind, although deep down I knew why we were doing that. We did inhabit two different worlds, me and the homeless, and even if only for an hour, I felt it was my duty to shorten up that allegedly ontological, unbearably unnecessary distance.
“Welche Größe brauchen Sie?” I mumble, in my insecure German. “What size do you need?”. Even now, securing a suitable pullover for that elderly woman remains one of the most gratifying accomplishments of recent months. That would have endured, despite all that awaited for me.

First compulsion, first ritual: “I was right. I did touch them, I am screwed. They did not invent a way to shower without using one’s hands! One’s filthy hands. Perhaps they did, but I did not have any at the time needed. That is why, I thought it best to wash my hands until they hurt. A lot. There was too much pain, too much misery, I was just trying to wash it away.

Perhaps this is why they never stopped hurting. Since then, every morning that feeling permeates my very clean, uselessly clean hands, and I am reminded of that night. 

That night where I could not sleep. Where Them and Us eventually blended. Nights have always been for me, like gashes in the obsessions - for I see through them. Nights whisper unwanted truths. “Is my disorder my dad's Voice?”
That night, and many others to follow, I would pray for serenity, courage and wisdom.
Those nights, I would breathe the pain of the world.

Second compulsion, second ritual: Three days have gone by, and sirens would still trigger me. I would climb up the stairs of my apartment just to discover my flatmates were not home. “It is a clear sign”, I thought to myself, slowly descending into panic first, then despair, “they have been informed, and left the house so that, this time, they could get me. They are coming to get me and there is no way out”. -There were times when my psychiatrist used to look at me, me shaking, me trembling during the worst therapy sessions. “If you could only see it from the outside, for a moment, if you could just step out of yourself, you would realise, nothing is really happening. Nothing is going to hurt”.
A part of me perhaps knew he would be right even this time. Nothing was going to happen. Nothing was going to hurt. And yet, I could not be certain.
“The past cannot be undone. So what do I do now? There has to be a way out of this insane, delusional spiral! Think!”. I was begging myself.
(You see, when nothing can be manually checked or physically neutralised, we OCD people move the compulsions one level up, and we perform them with our minds).
Out of desperation, I had an insight: I had not given my name! “Actions without an actor, deeds without a doer! Virtually, I have never been. To be responsible, I should have done wrong. But, in order to do anything wrong, I should have been there. Virtually, I was never there. So it follows: I am not responsible! I cannot logically be!”
At that moment I heard the key turning to the front door. One of my flatmates was home. Nothing had ever happened. It was safe. I looked at her, as if she had saved my life. She looked back, and could not make sense of the expression on my face.

The Voice always talked the same, obsessing over mistakes, guilt, responsibility. That there was something wrong about the very possibility of doing anything wrong. So I have been asking the Voice for eight long years, “What do you want from me? What do you need?”

Until, surprisingly, it answered back, “What do you want from me? What is my purpose?”. The first time you envisage such a perspective, you lose yourself in deep silence.
“I think you have been protecting me from what I am scared of, like, losing control, responsibility, freedom, I guess. And yet, you stand in the way, preventing me from living as I desire, embracing what I really strive to achieve, like, losing control, responsibility, freedom. How can this be?”.

And indeed it was true. There were forbidden stories, semantic games I could not even consider playing sometimes. Some of which I cannot play to this day. Games that I am afraid to play. That I want to play with all my being. Games like, Rolling around in a meadow, enjoying the blueness of the sky, jokes, taking oneself not too seriously, taking everything not that seriously. Being heedless, forgetting coffee on the stove, choosing something for the sake of fun, serenity. And then, driving without the seatbelt, looking at the clouds while on a plane, sitting and doing nothing, nothing at all. Existing without having to perform, being without having to do, breathing without having to compete.

Like a frightening lightness.

I wanna go back. At some point, I know, I will.

Phil