Tanya Marshall stood in front of the full-lenght mirror, something she did obsessively to the point beyond reason and screamed into it, "You're ugly!! You're a fat, ugly cow with a faceful of zits and eyes too close together! God you look like little ferret, Tanya!"

Such outbursts were, similarly, a normal part of the fourteen-year-old grade nine student's day. But Tanya rarely made it to class on time, if at all. She would stand before her reflection---pretty, actually, with her long, curly blonde hair, light blue eyes and lovely, long lashes that were the envy of her female classmates. So why did Tanya think she was so repulsive that she had to brush her hair ten times per day for an hour at a time, scrub her attractive face until it was red and raw and change her clothes at least twenty times before daring to walk out the door?

Tanya was suffering from a condition known as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or, simply, OCD. Tanya was not alone. As she remained, a prisoner chained to her self-loathing and overwhelming feelings of imperfection, she wished sometimes that she could just die in her sleep and thus achieve some peace.

Tanya grabbed her black eyeliner and applied it once, ever so carefully, with beads of sweat dotting her furrowed foreehead. She then grabbed a kleenex from the box nearby, smoothed it out for about five minutes until virtually every visible crease was out of it, then wiped the make-up from her eyelids in awkward, frenetic movements.

Then she re-applied it, stood back and noticed that her top had a small piece of thread hanging from the left sleeve. Panicked, Tanya ran for the scissors to rid herself of the unsightly blemish on her favourite cashmere sweater. Suddenly, as she stood in the kitchen, rooting about in an untidy drawer for the tool she needed, Tanya was stricken suddenly with another panic at attack.

"Oh my God, this drawer is all wrong! It can't look like this!" Her mouth devoid of saliva and feeling like a desert in a blazing hot windstorm, Tanya took each and every little item from the drawer: first the elastic bands, then the measuring cups---what were they doing in there together? Tanya despaired, noticing that as she slaved away at the "Fibbber McGee Cupboard", as her maternal grandmother called the tangled mess, how on earth was she going to have time to apply her make-up. Afer all, it was a five-hour job.

Eating was something Tanya dreaded, as along with a propensity for neatness and looking perfect, Tanya Marshall was terrified of germs and of getting poisoned from all her food. She ate with rubber gloves on, taking a mouthful as if she were swallowing lye and then chewed each morsel one hundred times, exactly. She sipped on ice water, and would only use the bottled stuff imported from a company out of town. It was an expense for the Marshall parents, but they were so distressed at their daughter's bizarre rituals that they would not, or could not, understand, that they pretty well catered to all of her funny little whims.

For instance, her bed had to be made, re-made and then stripped conmpletely, while Tanya, puffing from the exertion, ran down to the basement with her linen to wash it all by hand in the sink near the washing machine.

"Dear, you just washed all those bedclothes this morning!" her frazzled and bewhildered mother, Rita, exclaimed in exasperation. "Is all this my fault? Did I do all this to you, the standing in front of your mirror alone for hours on end, the cleaning and cleaning and the washing?? And, Tanya, you don't get nearly enough to eat because it takes you so long to finish even one slice of bread! I'm truly at a loss".

Tanya did indeed take two hours to eat a piece of cracked wheat bread. She held it carefully between her left thumb and forefinger, then broke off a tiny little piece from near the crust. The crust itself was deemed by Tanya to be completely inedible and thus no part of her hand or mouth could touch it. She then put a small morsel of the food into her mouth, opened wide as it would go, so that no bit of bread, or any food for that matte, would touch her lips or tongue until it was placed at the back of it in her own sad version of Holy Communion.

What was Tanya to do to break out of her self-imposed prison? Thinking back to when it all began, Tanya remembered the day her brother ran away from home and joined a street gang. He had not tried to contact his family in over a year and was feared dead.

That began the horrible, ritualistic behaviour, as Tanya's way of gaining control over SOMETHING in her shattered life. She and Bobby had been very close and the though of her big brother lying dead in some alleyway in Los Angeles or New York was too much for Tanya to handle.

Once it was determined what caused Tanya's OCD, after her mother finally sent her to a therapist, she began to work through her grief at losing Bobby ilke that and having her parents wait up every night still, in the vain hope that he would triumphantly return, smiling that silly grin of his and saying it was all for a joke.

What finally got Tanya the help she so desperately needed took drastic measures, as the Marshall family had rather old-fashioned ideas about psychiatrists and didn't want to have to admit to their friends at the country club that their daugher was seeing one.

But one afternoon, Tanya became locked in a terrifyingly frustrating world that had her "spinning her wheels", as it were, and going nowhere.

She was on her way home from school, on one of the sporadic days she put in an appearance, and when she reached a certain portion of sidewalk that had some chalk residue from some childrens' hopscotch game, Tanya had to go back and re-trace her steps. She would not and could not let herself go any further than the chalked sideawalk slab, so it was well after dark when Tom Marshall, Tanya's father, found her while out driving about. He feared she had been kidnapped and was extremely angry.

"What the hell is the matter with you, Tanya!??? It's nearly eleven PM and I have called 911, your mothers been in touch with all the hospitals and, God, girl, didn't you stop for a minute to THINK??? What are you DOING out here anyway???"

That's when Tanya broke down and talked all about the myriad of rituals and obsessions that totally consumed her life, not just the ones at home with the mirrors and the eating.

"They have a name for what I have, Dad", Tanya said, looking sideways at her burly father as she sat beside him in the front seat, "It's called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder".I saw a show on this illness on Oprah last week and suddenly I don't feel all alone!! I thought I was the only one in the world who lived this kind of hell".

"Well, if you went somewhere----you know, got some of that professional help stuff, can you get over this and be a regular kid?"

"That's what they said on the show---that they use drugs like Prozac and talk to us about things. I'm so sorry I am such a screw-up, Dad. You have enough to worry about with Bobby. That's why I never talked about this much. You and Mom always seem so unhappy all the time".

"We're never too pre-occupied to help you, sweetie. I know you have had a terrible time of it. But you'll get all the help you need. That you can be sure of, my dear".

"Thanks, Dad. Being liberated from this hellish prison would be just wonderful! Even if it takes a long time. I won't give up."

When father and daugher got home, Tom Marshall helped his daughter prepare something that she could eat, trying not to wince at her compulsiveness about even eating an apple. "Yep, you're gonna just mow down on a big pizza one day and not even care if you get tomato sauce on your chin", he said, chuckling.

"Well, let's not get TOO carried away. But thanks for caring, Dad. It means everything".

"I can't lose another child", Marshall replied sadly, a tear forming in the corner of his eyes, the eyes Tanya had inherited, "We lost Bobby to drugs and the street. And we don't want to lose you to perhaps doing something to yourself someday when this all becomes too much. Bet you didn't figure I thought about that, did you?"

"Frankly, Dad, I didn't think you wondered about me at all. I thought all your energy and pain went into Bobby".

"I think we have lost him, and we could very well lose you too if we don't swallow our foolish pride and help you">

"Dad, I love you".

"Now if you could only be happy inside Tanya".

Yes, if only Tanya could be freed from her prison. But there was now some hope to cling to.