This is part of a series of ongoing OCD episodes, which I will post as they happen. This is live, stream of consciousness. It happens. Often. Sometimes the subjects are different.

These bouts with mania aren’t supposed to be part of my OCD. OCD isn’t supposed to be like this. OCD is a disorder, a constant snake-eating-its-tail in my brain. But, no, my OCD is coupled with low-lows and high-highs. Do I have a separate disorder? I refuse to diagnose myself, even with my mistrust of the whole medical universe. (Of course that mistrust, it must be said, is actually a part of my OCD across the board. So that’s to be taken as a complicated statement, not a simple one.)

Mania. And currently, the highs. If that’s the word I’m going to use. The highs, what I am feeling right now. You see, I battle through the murky filth of a world that is not right for me, and I obsess over it to the point where all of the mechanisms in my brain that control emotion are burned out. That’s quite common. But this, the opposite.

Everything seems right at this moment. Oh, there are reasons. I obsess over shopping, as an example. I’m at the mercy of others for things I need to live my life. And it never turns out like I want it to, and that is how my OCD works. But for some reason, not today. Ok, is this merely one example, or the whole of why I feel ok?

That’s interesting, because I don’t think I did much to change the way I interacted with the stores I had to deal with today. Fine, I found cheap t-shirts that were the exact color I’ve been obsessing over needing. Friggin’ green: the most difficult color to get right. That color can go in so many terrible directions, and—well I didn’t conquer it. I mean, the right color appeared in my mind and I obsessed over it. But that color was there for me to purchase. In my size. For next to nothing. (Seriously: $3/each.)

I’m going on and on about a simple set of t-shirts (again) because I have OCD. I have OCD and that is what I do.

I do know one thing I’ve done, I’ve allowed myself to springboard this seemingly trite win into an overall feeling of good. There’s a lot of good to feel, I just generally don’t have the energy to feel it because I am lost in obsession without a compulsion to act out with.

Not now. Right now I feel… a high. Not a medical high, not a drug-induced high. My medication doesn’t do that, and I don’t touch drugs of any sort (including alcohol) beyond my medication.

I can look around me and see a lot that is wrong. There’s a shitton of mess around me. Physically and everything else. But I’ve compartmentalized it and I’m ignoring it. I’m winning that game for now.

I don’t want to think of coming down from this. My highs and lows don’t have the same appreciation of calendaring as I do as a person, you see. It’s been weeks of lows up until this point, oh but not tonight.

So I ask why. Why is everything right and happy?

Because it always is, I just can’t often access it.

That’s it, really.

That’s not really good for all of life. But for tonight, all of life isn’t the concern. Just the now. For whatever it may be worth.