learning to walk in the rain

The first thing I did when he told me was look up his disorder on google. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, what did it mean.. All I knew about it was from how the media portrayed it. It was this abstract sort of thing to me, mental breakdowns, and obsessive hand scrubbing. It was spotless rooms and traced out lines holding school supplies on the desk. I didn't understand how to process this information, having been in his messy room, watching him sort through endless unorganized papers in his backpack.

Google search brought up a sea of confusing questions, such as "Can you cure OCD" and "What does OCD stand for" and "When do you grow out of OCD?"

None of these were anything that would help me. I knew I needed to dig deeper into the studies and find more reliable information on this mental illness the boy I was infatuated with had.

I dug through pages of the internet, intent on finding a definitve answer to whatexactly

was wrong with him. I turned up endless amounts of articles that never quite explained the whole story. I never realized how differently OCD manifested itself in people, with obsessive only, pure compulsion, acute irrational fears manifesting themselves in strange behaviors, the endless loops of thought only sated when completing an arbitrary task again and again.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Caused by a lack of serotonin production in the brain, treated with Prozac, Zoloft, other unpronounceable names. Genetic disorder, often passed down through generations. And Nate had it, suffered from it. Suddenly, so many little details about him came into focus.

The way he got irritated when I would change the volume of the music when he was driving, even if he asked me to turn it up, his controlling behavior I'd heard people complaining about pertaining to the bake sale; he'd wanted everything to be even, no odd amount of brownies, none of the prices ending 1,3,5,7,9, the rows of tables exactly six inches apart.

The way he was so picky about eating. I'd thought he was just uncomfortable in front of me, and maybe that was a part of it, but the way he spread things out on his plate reminded my of little siblings, barely more than toddlers. If even a single fry was touhing the ketchup on his plate, Ari would have a melt down, not unlike the way Nate reacted when someone knocked into the table, disrupting his organization.

I finally understood that Nate was so much more than that cute guy I'd been eyeing in English class, the one who always let out a hefty breath when we were assigned to read one chapter and not two. He was more than the secretary of the sophomore class, the one who insisted we have four dances this year, not three. He was more than the kid who petitioned the lunch ladies to include four slices of pizza on Fridays instead of three.

Although this idea that he was mentally ill explained such a wide array of questions I never even realized I had, it still didn't take from the fact that he was still just some fifteen year old kid with a whole messy life ahead of him. Nate wasn't really any different from how I was down at the core of his being, he just had some shit that was fucked up in his head.

I wanted to chastise myself for thinking something as cruel as that against a kid who simply could not helpt it, but the magnitiude of his illness was lost on me in that moment. I was faced with a torrent of confessions and memoirs from across the world of people who could not leave their bed for fear of catching a deadly disease, a woman who wore skintight shoes and clothing that allowed no room for anything hidden to keep herself from shoplifting.

All I really knew about Nate was that this was a guy who rarely said an unkind word. He was the kind of kid to return a twenty dollar bill to the lost and found. He fostered any kitten mewling out by his window until he was certain they were healthy enough to find a home. He was willing to tutor anyone for free, even if it was the same guy who called him a fag in the hallway earlier that day. He was nicer than most of the people I knew, kinder, but he wasn't dumb. That was a common misconception surrounding him.

"Oh did you see how Nate flipped out over the math test?"

"Yeah what a fucking idiot."

Before I'd heard this and didn't really care, he was a face disconnected from a name, no justification for me to step in, but now, now it meant something to me. This was my Nate, the guy who I knew was trying his best to keep it together, but the stress often seeped through the cracks.

It was too soon for me to realize it yet, but this unwavering feeling of protection was the first seedling of love I would ever feel for this boy. Something about him had burrowed its way into the deepest part of me, and refused to get loose. I cared about him in a way I never knew was possible. It wasn't like with Nadia, where I would jump in front of a train her to keep her safe, or with my siblings, where I wanted to hide them from the world forever. No, this was an all-encompassing drive to hold on to him and never let go. It was this connection I would feel for long after we eventually moved on, this longing inside of me to hold him, let him hold me when the times were tough. He was the first boy I ever loved, and the fact that he was just as broken and human as the rest of us, made me all the more willing to take care of him.