Just Checking by Emily Colas
Emily Colas, a young, intelligent, well-educated wife and mother of two had a secret that was getting in the way of certain activities. Like touching people, having a normal relationship with her husband, socialising and eating out. Soon there was no interval in Colas' life when she was not just checking everything around her. This raw, darkly comic series of astonishing vignettes is Emily Colas' touching chronicle of her twisted journey through the obsessive-compulsive disorder that came to dominate her world. In the beginning it was germs and food. By the time she faced the fact that she was really 'losing it', Colas had become a slave to her own 'hobbies', from daily hair cutting to incessant inspections of her children's clothing for bloodstains. A shocking, hilarious, and enormously appealing account of a young woman struggling to gain control of her life, this is Emily Colas's expose of a soul tormented, but balanced by a buoyance of spirit and a piercing sense of humour that may be her saving grace.