I’ve been biting my nails again, and my OCD symptoms are bulging out. My old standby is worrying about things catching on fire, although worry is probably an understatement. This fire fear began in early childhood, perhaps the result of the “great soot disaster.”

We were in the process of moving from one apartment to another, making short trips to drop off boxes. One night after a drop off, my Dad put a box on the stove. Not realizing it, he turned the dial on the stove just enough.

Not enough to start an actual fire, just enough to create a situation in which all of our stuff we’d already moved became soaked with black soot. Only a few things were salvageable.

We cleaned for days and weeks after, blowing black soot from our noses. Over the years, I would spot a piece of furniture or other item that held on to our family tragedy with remnants of black soot that would never completely dissolve.

The reason all this fun stuff is coming up, can be blamed on the fact that I am finally DEALING WITH SOME STUFF. As with everything, it’s process. Over the past year or two, I’ve been working on another layer of junk. The changes are just showing themselves.

I got it down intellectually, made progress with behavior modification, putting my money where my mouth is and walking my talk. The next step from there is bringing it down to the emotional level; that dark, ugly, and paralyzing level.

The very unpopular level most people try to avoid. We go to great lengths to avoid the emotional using alcohol, drugs, shopping, food, people, and sex, to hide behind so we don’t have to feel the onset of putrid feelings that threaten to swallow us whole.

Something I had to keep in mind is that this is another part of the process and it will pass once I’ve allowed it to have its air time.

The final step on the process will be to put it back inside where it lives, just a little bit better than how I found it.