I have OCD. I don’t talk about it a lot on Twitter, because I like sharing my opinions more than my problems. What I do talk about a lot on Twitter is how much I love The Haunting of Hill House, the Netflix show, and especially how much I love the third episode, “Touch.”
I have no idea how many times I’ve watched “Touch.” Undoubtedly some Netflix server knows. But I do know why it’s so important to me. I watch it when I need to relax. When I need reassurance. It’s a safety blanket. I love Hill House despite being previously almost entirely horror-averse. This may seem to be a contradiction. It isn’t.
My symptoms increased dramatically a couple years ago, to the point where I was regularly taking five-hour showers (I’m doing much better now). I couldn’t function. Worse, it seemed as if no one was listening to me. While I was desperately trying to pretend to everyone that I was still “normal,” I was aware that I was very obviously failing. I was, despite myself, projecting an unhinged affect—yet everyone seemed to slide their glances past this terrifying new aspect of my existence (or else they stopped talking to me). I was trying to call for help without raising my voice. In a way, it felt as if I were somehow causing the world to gaslight me. I was complicit in my own suffering. Many of the most important people in my life (the few who are left, anyway) still don’t fully understand my situation. People I love hurt me, and I suppose, in a way, I hurt them.
I tried to write an essay explaining how my mind was currently working. I sent it to a few people. Responses varied. Most of my friendships ended. I had finally stopped trying to pretend that I was “okay,” and I’d ended up worse off than before. One of my former friends posted a status on Facebook about how This Mental Health Awareness Month, You Should Know You Can ALWAYS Reach Out To Me. I blocked her. I was angry. I was hurt. I still am.
Having OCD is crying in front of people, your face flushed, your eyes red, snot and tears running into your mouth, begging them to love you more than their own sense of convenience. Any comfort they offer hides razors.
(Spoilers for the first three episodes of The Haunting of Hill House follow.)
The third episode of The Haunting of Hill House, “Touch” (written by Liz Phang; directed by Mike Flanagan), focuses on Theo Crain, who wears gloves almost 24/7. She tells Trish, a woman she hooks up with in the first episode, that she’s “kind of a germaphobe.” This is not really true: Theo has a psychic “sensitivity” that manifests through touch: she can touch something and see glimpses of its past, present, or future. She cannot control this: it happens as automatically as one picks up germs by touching a surface. Towards the end of the third episode, in a scene where Theo is a child, her mother touches her hand and Theo sees a vision of her mother bloody, with her head smashed in. She backs away and screams. We know that soon, her mother will be dead.
And yet, even though this is a supernatural (sorry, Steve: preternatural) condition that does not have a 1:1 correspondence to my real-world condition, this is the most accurate portrayal of OCD I’ve ever seen in any form of media (don’t even talk to me about Monk). I’ve seen people discuss Theo Crain as a queer icon. But I haven’t seen anyone discuss this incredible aspect of her character, although Sara Century touches on it in her article about the queerness of the many versions of Hill House Theodoras:
I wear a lot of gloves. Disposable nitrile gloves, not the stylish kinds that Theo wears. Many of the times I’ve watched “Touch,” I’ve been wearing gloves (to handle the remote, to open a bottle of water, &c.). I, too, fear what may happen when I touch people. And, like Theo, I am often forced to have a painful sense of empathy. I want to illustrate some of the aspects of OCD (or my own life as it interacts with my condition) which I feel the portrayal of Theo gets absolutely right.
The first is her empathy. As an adult, Theo has achieved her goal of getting “[her] fucking PhD.,” and she works as a child psychologist. She wears gloves when shaking hands with the parents and guardians, but not the children, who are frequently traumatized. In fact, one of the main plots of “Touch” involves Theo taking on the experiences of a girl who is terrified of a figure she calls “Mr. Smiley.” Theo shares her trauma vividly. And she chooses to, because she wants to help. There’s something so achingly human about that.
This is by no means on the same level, but I feel that my OCD has made me more empathetic to the pain of others, particularly in the form of intrusive thoughts—similar to Theo’s intrusive visions. For instance, I am currently not capable of watching, say, a movie directed by an outed abuser without seeing vivid, upsetting (imagined) images in my mind of what that abuse must have been like for their victims to experience. I’d like to think that this isn’t mere self-flagellation and that it’s made me a better, more considerate person. However, like Theo as an adult, there are still some situations which push past this empathy and activate my rage.
The second is her distance. Even as a child, before her sensitivity seems to have developed fully, Theo is somewhat distant: she avoids touching people, she prefers to do things on her own, and she almost always seems to be wrapped up in thoughts which don’t necessarily have anything to do with her current situation. However, she desperately wants to be loved. As a child, Theo discovers a valuable object in the house, and when her father congratulates her, the way she smiles breaks my heart every time.
Her body language indicates how withdrawn she is, but when her father praises her for her help, she’s so pleased to have been able to do something—to have expressed her love as best as she is able—that she looks, for once, like a happy kid, instead of an adult carrying the pain of the world. (I cannot praise Mckenna Grace’s amazing performance here enough.)
As an adult, Theo shows a reluctance to hug others, even with her gloves. She hugs Steve’s wife (we are often more pressured to be “comfortable” with people we are not as close to), but, when Steve asks for a hug, she seems to need to resign herself to the action. As if he should know better. She is not just afraid of being emotionally intimate: she is afraid of the emotions which physical intimacy can cause her to experience.
I don’t think I’ve hugged anyone in over a year. Maybe almost two.
The third is her fear. These three things are, of course, related: she’s distant because she’s afraid of her psychic empathy. She wears gloves because she’s afraid of what she might see—of the certainty of the horror.
In the same way, I am afraid to go places because I am afraid of what might be. Perhaps the person who opened the coffee shop door before me works in a morgue. Maybe the sketchy-looking guy using the self-checkout line is a serial killer, returned from strangling a victim. These are not normal thoughts. I know this. But they are intrusive: the same as Theo’s visions. I’d argue she is slightly more fortunate: at least Theo usually knows for sure. She can take steps. I assume the worst at all times, which is, I think, even more terrifying. (In fact, the moments when Theo is most lost and terrified are when she is unable to see anything.)
The fourth is Theo’s flaws. I feel as if people have a tendency to try to identify an Underdog in any given situation who is the Good Guy. Theo is an underdog, but she’s not blameless. She hurts people. She holds on to her anger. Her sister, on the brink of dying by suicide, doesn’t even bother calling her because their relationship is so damaged.
I’m not easy to be around. I wince at people when they don’t wash their hands for the CDC-mandated 20 seconds (two moderately-paced rounds of “Happy Birthday to You,” in case you were wondering). Often, I ask them to do it again. People want to go to restaurants with me; I do not trust the food. If the former friend I blocked on social media ever needed my help specifically, I’m not sure how she would reach me. If she managed to, I’m not sure I would respond.
Theo doesn’t have obsessive-compulsive disorder. Hill House is not a pure allegory for mental illness. But Liz Phang, Mike Flanagan, Kate Siegel, and Mckenna Grace have constructed a character who represents almost exactly what it’s like to have OCD in a way that is so extraordinarily accurate and true that I’m not sure how they accomplished it, even if all of these parallels are 100% intentional.
One of my pet theories about the rise of ASMR, particularly among younger people, is that the alienation of modern life and the general fatalism of our current political situation has left everyone with a desire to be seen. ASMR provides a simulation of personal attention, to the point that the comments on any popular ASMR video frequently contain someone saying that they’re (for instance) pretending to have a beard so that the video will apply to them. I mention this not because it is a particularly rigorous theory, but in the hopes that those of you who do not have OCD or a similar condition may, in some way, connect with what I’m going to say next.
Having OCD is isolating. I consider myself a fairly good writer. The essay I wrote trying to explain my thoughts is, in a way, the piece of writing I’m most proud of, despite all the pain that accompanied it. And yet most people simply didn’t connect with it—or worse, it made them angry. To discover that a group of talented people I didn’t even know (and who, for all I know, may have never suffered from any kind of extreme anxiety in their life) somehow managed to make something which speaks to me so deeply is astonishing. It’s comforting. It’s almost a miracle. (In fact, considering that I previously didn’t like any horror visual media, I’d say my even watching it is a semi-miracle.)
People have been discussing/debating the “purpose” of art since at least Aristotle’s Poetics. Is the purpose of art to generate empathy for those who are not like us? Perhaps. As far as I know, there is no evidence that art manages to do this consistently. Woody Guthrie’s guitar bore a sticker reading “This Machine Kills Fascists,” but I am unaware of any Nazi who abandoned the ideology after hearing “This Land is Your Land.”
One thing I think art can do—even if it doesn’t always—is make someone feel seen. We can draw strength from the knowledge that there is someone out there who understands (even if they understand by accident!). We can look to these fictional counterparts of ourselves for inspiration.
(Vague spoilers for the end of The Haunting of Hill House follow.)
At the end of The Haunting of Hill House, Theo does something which doesn’t make perfect sense to some people who take everything in the story too literally, in a mechanical sense. But her action absolutely resonates if you realize that what the moment is meant to express is the hope—maybe even the certainty—that beyond every storm, no matter how long, there is sunlight.
Thank you, Theo.