Octopus Soup and OCD

What's gray, floats, and (probably) ISN’T a baby octopus?

Winter 2008, San Jose, Costa Rica

“You touch it!” 

“No, you touch it!”

My mom and I nudge the inky black soup concoction back and forth across the cafe table.

I swallow down the bile rising in my throat as I tentatively poke the grayish blob floating in the soup we’re meant to share. 

“Quisiera una sopa negra,” I had told the waitress confidently, smugly, with my least-gringa accent possible just ten minutes before when we ordered the Costa Rican classic: black bean soup. 

The hole-in-the-wall restaurant was our first stop after my mom and I arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica. We were embarking on a week-long trip celebrating my college graduation by going back to the city where I spent a semester abroad. 

My mom studied French in college and had never been to Central America: she was at my mercy.

“What’s the address of your host family?” she had asked. “What bus number do we take?”

I couldn’t tell her. I had studied abroad in 2006, before smartphones. I only remembered the verbal directions my host mom gave me. “Walk three blocks down the avenida (avenue) from the downtown square, walk past Pops, the ice cream and chocolate banana store. Wait there for a bus. Pull down the cord when you pass the yellow and red rinconcito dominicano so the driver can stop in time. Get off the bus and turn when you see a church that looks like a birthday cake. Walk until you find the house.” 

My mom took in these directions with understandable apprehension. 

“I’ll know it when I see it,” I assured her. 

So here we were stopping for a much-needed meal before attempting to find my host family. My host mom, Mami Sandra, cooked a delicious black bean soup, and I knew my own mom loved soups. 

When the waitress (who was already eyeing us like the dumb foreigners we turned out to be) set the bowl in front of us, it didn’t look like Mami Sandra’s soup. 

A gray, amorphous blob floated in the sea of black beans, tentacle-like ribbons coiled and bobbed. 

“Is that an octopus?!” My mom asked, looking to me to make sense of the meal I had subjected us to. 

I honestly couldn’t say. 

We poked and the blob dipped under. This wasn’t what I remembered. Is it tentacles? A brain? 

My stomach churned and I picked at my nails, avoiding eye contact with the waitress. 

We poked and waited. Poked and waited. 

Here’s a riddle you probably haven’t heard: what’s gray, floats, and (probably) ISN’T a baby octopus?

Give up? Please note your guess before scrolling down. 

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This gorgeous picture by Costa Rican artist, Priscilla Aguirre of Holalola offers a hint:

A frickin’ poached egg. A Benign. Ordinary. Poached egg like in the egg drop soup we ordered almost weekly at our favorite Chinese restaurant with the other youth group kids when I was in high school.

Masked gray and ghoulish by the black bean broth, but (most likely) a poached egg. 

I don’t remember which one of us figured it out. A poke with the spoon must have revealed the “tentacles” were not attached or maybe from a certain angle the yellow-ish yoke shone through the translucent white. 

But the damage was done. 

The doubt was planted and the soup was abandoned. I paid with our newly exchanged colones (Costa Rican currency) and my mom and I left the waitress who grinned with I-told-you-so-glee. 

I could never be certain it wasn’t actually an octopus. Even now, years later, I could not swear in a court of law that it WASN’T an octopus. 

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Warning, I am about to beleaguer a metaphor (which I’m allowed to do because this is my Substack and I’ll force a metaphor if I want to). 

OCD is like ordering black bean soup and getting a baby octopus. Like the “octopus” in our soup, intrusive thoughts occur when your brain perceives “danger,” often based on real stimuli or “evidence.” The what if is planted. You can’t unsee the octopus. The physical response is real: the bile rising up in disgust, the sweaty palms and pounding heart.  

Maybe it’s just a poached egg, but what if it’s not? What if this time it is a baby octopus? What if I ordered the wrong thing? What if my Spanish is worse than I thought? What if they changed the national dish to include octopods in the two years since I studied abroad? How can I be certain it’s not what I fear? 

In OCD recovery, I’m learning that I’ll never know. I’m choosing not to play the game. I’m deciding to eat the soup anyway. 

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What metaphor would you give OCD? Also, I would love to hear any ridiculous food travel food stories/blunders! 

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And welcome to everyone who is here from D.L. Mayfield’s Substack! Thank you for being THE BEST COMMUNITY to be vulnerable with.