Over and Over (and Over) Again
Discover how an everyday routine like leaving the house for school can become the worst nightmare for a teenage boy... Or how numbers can take over a young mind to the point of driving behaviour and influencing unwanted actions… With Danny’s testimony we gain a revelatory insight into the struggles of some teenagers suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder.
Director: Andy Glynne
Voice: Danny
Animation Director: Salvador Maldonado
Music: Alex Parsons
Transcript
When I was about, say about twelve/thirteen my mum started noticing I was doing things over and over again. I didn’t think, didn’t know what it was I just thought I was a bit weird, I just thought I liked things the way I liked them – the worst thing was leaving the house, because I had to check everything before I left. I had to go upstairs, check every window in my room, check all the plugs, then go into the next room, check all the windows, all the plugs. Then go into the bathroom - check the windows, the taps, and anything that could, like, cause a hazard. Then I went into my mum’s room and would do all the same things…and It’d be just the same thing every morning. And then I’d leave and I’d have to stand there for about – it could last about 2 hours – just checking the door. I’d constantly be going like that. Then I’d walk off, and I’d come back, and once I actually got all the way to school, and I was sitting there in my lesson, and I went, “the door”, and I had to got home. Had to go and tell my teacher and go, “I’ve gotta go home, I’ve gotta go home”. Called my mum and was like, “mum, I think I’ve left the door open”. She was like, “you haven’t, you know you haven’t”. I was like, “But…I have to check”. And I had to go all the way back.
Eight, that’s all I can say, eight’s the number. That’s my only number I like, the only number I trust. Numbers like three, like three, number six…even though some of them are, like, some of them are even – I like even numbers – even though some numbers like a six is even, I don’t like it, because it’s made up of two threes. Um, yeah, everything always had to be in eights. I used to tap my teeth as well - *tap, tap tap* - eight - *tap, tap tap*. I went through stages of blinking, and I used to have to blink eight times at a certain thing, then look at another thing and blink eight times. And it was like, at a lot of things as well. It was on the telly as well, I used to have to blink at people’s eyes – to look at their eyes and blink eight times. There was a strong part of me that believed in it…too much. But there was another part of me, in my head, there was the normal me that was saying, “stop being so stupid, it’s ridiculous, it really is, so stupid”. I used to argue with myself, be like, “just stop!”. Sometimes you just can’t, it’s like, it’s not like there’s a little voice in your head saying, “you’ve gotta do this”, it’s just like there’s someone there and they’re pushing you, and they’re pushing you and pushing you. An it’s like someone’s injecting these thoughts into your head – saying, “you’ve gotta do it again, or this’ll happen, or that’ll blow up, or that’s gonna catch on fire”.
When I was younger, through like early teens, and I used to go to bed, I used to be really scared because, even though I knew everything used to be shut and everything, I used to be scared that someone was still gonna get in and do harm to me or my mum.
There’s people out there that don’t want to admit they’ve got it, and don’t know they’ve got it, and they think they’re weird. But they’re not. They just need to, they need someone to help them and they just need to understand why they’re like it, what’s wrong with them and try and cope with it.
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