While I am stepping back and reassessing my OCD, I need to still live my life. In this world. Part of having OCD that exists primarily in my own head is that the world I observe—and must live in—causes a lot of negative emotions. We’re not talking depression and feeling lost—that is something separate, and something I have felt.

Rather, my obsessions are rooted in what I feel is right for me. OCD is terribly selfish—I happen to do a good… enough… job of keeping that selfishness to myself. I’m not an outwardly angry person, one would not characterize me as angry. I have a social blindness of sorts, but I can surmise the basics of what people think of me. Angry isn’t that.

But I am. Often. Sometimes I am burdened secondarily with guilt for my anger because I grew up learning—the hard way and the rote way—that anger is bad. Sometimes I am burdened by this guilt, but I have learned over many years that I am me, and my anger about things not being right should be an ok emotion. I feel it, I didn’t ask for it, it is, therefore, really, just nature.

My anger is natural and the guilt about it is the excuse part. So screw the excuses for now.

As I write this I am battling with a vision of someone else reading this. I am in their head, and I can just see the eye-rolling and judgment on my pompousness. I try to not be in the head of amorphous non-real people, but… well… someone other than myself is going to read this (that would include you.)

So you see the way I skirt around the issue—an architect I play, building others’ thoughts through side points and justifications. Let’s stop doing that.

I’m angry.

I’m angry that stores don’t sell clothes that are exactly how I need them for my OCD. You see, I want simple and inexpensive. For example, I need things to be of one color only. Only. That is all that looks good. I could go on about my obsession over clothing, and it would seem absolutely diva-esque. Thing is I shouldn’t feel guilty because I want less complexity

I’m angry that people would rather talk on the phone instead of over the internet (and I’m available through every digital means possible.) I need to be able to edit my words over and over before sending them. I can’t do that while talking—I would seem crazy. Or like a politician. (Feel free to conflate those two.)

I am angry that people don’t respond immediately. Especially in the aforementioned digital world. There’s no reason not to at least acknowledge that what I conveyed or requested was at least understood. You see, with my OCD, while I wait for a response, I think of all the worst case scenarios that could come back at me. The longer the response takes, the more I want to take back my initial contact because I have now built a whole set of circumstances of the horribly negative that are brewing and ready to come back at me with a vengeance. This could just be a message about what time one would like to go out and do something.

These are mere examples of the things I am angry at. For the most part, I am angry at whatever put me in this world and not the one I feel I am supposed to be in. Because for sure this one is not it. It can’t be. It is so much more wrong—in my mind—than right. And that is really something I can’t apologize about being angry with.

I’m not meant for this world, but I’m not leaving any time soon. So I have to deal with things that my brain does not have the capacity to deal with. This lack of capacity is not a short temper or salivating greed. No, it is my OCD, my obsessions, which force elements of the real world to enter my mind with so much more detail and baggage than for what I’d consider a “normal” person.

If a thought is worth a value of 1 for a person that is not me, it has a value of 1 plus 10 for me. Every thought and observation, to someone with obsessions, is multiplied. And usually not for the better. When I become overwhelmed by things not being right I become angry.

Anger is ok. There is nothing wrong with anger. It, for me, is just natural.