The Keeper: A Life of Saving Goals and Achieving Them Read Online Free

other team’s parents started cheering and the kids who weren’t in green began leaping all over the field—I knew what it felt like to be fully exposed, all alone at a moment of spectacular failure.
    It was too much. I often started crying right there on the field.
    When I did, my mom got up. She stepped closer to where I stood. Then she caught my eye.
    It’s okay, Tim , her look said. You’ll be okay.
    Mom’s presence was enough to make everything better.
    I took one deep breath and got back in the game.
    I was ten when the symptoms began to appear.
    First came the touching: I walked through the house tapping certain objects in a particular order. Touch the railing. Touch the door frame. Touch the light switch. Touch the wall. Touch the picture.
    The pattern might vary, but there was always a specific rhythm, and it had to be followed. Exactly. If it wasn’t—if I tried to resist, or if Chris knocked into me at the wrong time—I had to start all over again, until I got it right.
    It didn’t matter if I was starving and dinner was on the table. It didn’t matter how badly I needed to go to the bathroom. I had to obey the pattern inside my head. I had to touch these things, and in exactly this order. It was urgent.
    One part of my brain, the logical part, understood that these rituals were irrational, that nothing bad would happen if I didn’t practice them. But knowing that only made things worse. If it wasn’t rational, then why couldn’t I stop?
    What was wrong with me?
    T hen similar things started happening outside of the house, on my way to school. Each day, I walked to school carrying a bag full of books. I remember that bag so clearly: it was an Auburn University duffel bag that my mom had picked up at TJ Maxx. I can still feel it in my hand.
    I spotted things along the way—a rock, for example. There was nothing special about the rock’s shape or texture or color; it looked like every other rock. But suddenly, that rock was special, the most important object in the world.
    Pick up that rock , my mind commanded. You’d better pick up that rock.
    I tried my damnedest not to. I gritted my teeth and stared ahead, trying to convince myself that everything was okay, that I could leave the rock. I might manage to walk a few steps before my heart started pounding.
    Go back , my body urged me. Pick up that rock.
    If I resisted, I became physically uncomfortable. My stomach churned. I might break out into a sweat. I started to breathe harder, feeling like the oxygen had been sucked out of the air around me. Sometimes I wanted to throw up then and there.
    For some inexplicable reason, the fate of the universe rested on this one act: picking up that rock.
    Finally, I gave in, I turned around, got the rock, and dropped it in my bag. I felt a flood of relief.
    Everything was okay now. The universe was back in control again.
    Over the following weeks, my Auburn bag became filled with rocks and acorns and dirt and flowers and grass stems—all the crap I was driven to pick up on the way to school. As I arrived, I waved to the crossing guard, as if having to haul this enormous bag around was perfectly normal— Oh nothing, just my books and things, have a nice day! As if I hadn’t just lost a fierce battle with my own brain. As if I didn’t feel these compulsions to do things I could never in a million years understand, much less explain.
    N ext came the tics.
    Each started the same way: with an uncomfortable sensation in some part of my body—a heightened awareness, an urge . The feeling could be relieved only by some specific motor action. I started blinking, for example—forceful, deliberate blinks that I couldn’t stop. I began to clear my throat over and over.
    Then there were facial jerks. Shoulder shrugs. Eye-rolling.With each of them, it was the same pattern: that awful sensation welling up, the one that could only be relieved, inexplicably, by some action. As soon as I did it, I felt normal again.