They call it a kind of madness, the need to correct the uncorrectable. My doctor—a man with the emotional range of a parking meter—called it "subclinical obsessive-compulsive patterning." I call it the Hum. Because it isn't thoughts. It's a frequency. A low, patient thrum that says: that chair is two millimeters out of alignment with the window frame. Fix it. No, not with your hands. With your mind. Fail, and we will hum louder.
So here I am, writing this on the back of a grocery receipt, because the Hum doesn't like the sound of keyboard clicks— too many variables, too many possible patterns . I am not asking for help. Help would require explaining that the problem isn't the shakers, or the rug, or the crumb from this morning (which I finally swept up, then put back, then swept again, just to feel the relief of a decision, even a wrong one).
The madness is that I will spend the next hour trying to figure out which one to remove. a kind of madness dthrip
For three hours.
It doesn't. I checked.
The problem is that the Hum is quiet now. And I know—I know —that means it's saving up. Tomorrow, it might decide that the shadows on the wall are wrong. That the light switch needs to be flipped exactly seventeen times before bed. That the word enough has one too many letters.
And then I'll start again.
The rug has no wrinkles. I checked. Twice.