This is part two of a series of things I have noticed about the way I carry on normal life that can be tracked back to OCD- but in a much less serious sense as other situations written about on this site. “Fun, fun fun…”
• Imagine walking through the densest fog you’ve every experienced. At night. You can see every droplet (at times, when passing light), and every droplet is clearly preventing you from finding your way. The fog as an entity is one thing, but you know it consists of many thousands of individual droplets. That is finding your way through mental illness- thousands of issues combined into one fog. Moving your hand to swat away a relative few droplets does nothing. This fog of issues to be solved exists inside your brain. You cannot possibly solve all of them. So you just keep on going- somewhere. Yeah, OCD.
• Ok, here’s a fun one1. Think about items in your house that are re-used. Anything: dishes, socks, markers. They all must be rotated when returned to their proper place. First in, first out- like yogurt. So these things wear down evenly2. Yeah, OCD
• Think about your computer for a second. Chances are you have thousands of photographs, files, mp3’s. Add on to that work items. Ok, but let’s focus on, say, the photographs (only because that is the most common massive file store on a typical computer.) Now, without any service or software, I want you to categorize every single photograph based on location, date, people in the photograph, what the photograph means to you… and wait, here is the crux: there are even more categories you don’t even know about yet. You just know these categories should exist. Lots of work? Yeah, OCD.
• Many of us are concerned about our weight. For health reasons, sure. For reasons of looks- totally understandable. I’ve gained weight, and don’t quite like the puffiness to my face compared to years ago. BUT.. if your main concern with weight is the fact that you’d have to replace a specific set of clothing you rely on as routine through the week, no longer being able to wear the same 4 shorts in order… yeah, OCD.
• You are writing an entry on a serial subject of “Imagining OCD” and you promised yourself each entry would have five items. And you cheat to write number five. And you know cheating to have numbers align properly is part of your being and actions. This is item number five. I have consumed all of my energy on so many other OCD-related things that I have nothing for this entry. Except, now I do. Cheating to organize. Yeah, OCD.
1 I know, this absolutely relies on your definition of “fun” here, of which I will not take issue with your stance being on either side.
2 Wearing down, by the way, is a burden I actually deal with separately. If in some line of the multiverse, things did not wear down and everything stayed the same- I would attempt to skip across spacetime to live in that universe.