Just Checking (Emily Colas)

When I was diagnosed with OCD, it was still early enough that you had to look your topic of choice up at the library, and that’s what led me to this slim, brutal and brilliantly constructed book about ritual, repetition and obsession. Emily Colas talks about the double life she led as her mind was increasingly consumed by an irrational web of commands. It’s the first time I understood that tragedy could be funny and humor could be tragic. It’s been thirty years and yet it’s still the most fully realized portrait of OCD I’ve ever read, as well as of the many ways women’s gift for subterfuge allows them to cosplay in the world even as they disintegrate.