OCD Episode: Patience, as Defined

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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.

9:01 AM, Thursday

I epitomize patience, I am patient. My whole being is an exercise in waiting… waiting for things to be right. For off-handed promises to be fulfilled—such promises still being promises. I live in a world of promises, they are what surround everything outside my brain. The outside world—all promises. There is a schism on the concept of “promise” it seems. I define the whole of a promise much differently than others it seems. I don’t care how unhealthy it is to worry about others—they’re in control here, not me. I’ll get to that thought later. The schism: either people don’t realize they’ve made promises by saying they’ll do something at a certain time, or they do realize the promises they make and just willingly—for whatever reason—don’t go through with them.

9:05 AM, Thursday

One of these things is true, maybe both—but what I end up with is forced patience. You see because I live in a world where things require a type of organization of action. The future is just as organized as what you’d consider the past—tangible things, events from the past, everything that has existed or happened. I have that down. The future—rather unfortunately—relies on others. I cannot organize others actions until they happen.

9:11 AM, Thursday

So I wait. I am the face of patience, to me, in a way. However, contradictorily, I am of course going through an episode of a complete lack of patience. No, both exist. At the same time. Which is why my body is clenched, and I am checking. Waiting for the promise to be fulfilled. The action which was promised to occur when promised. I give or take an hour, maybe. I don’t like it, but I do. Not much more than that.

9:20 AM, Thursday

I have a brain battling the forced still of patience—I cannot do anything until this action happens, as it has breached into the obsessive—and the desire to find some compulsion of my own to take to make this happen. There is nothing I can do, so I wait in this contradictory state.

9:41 AM, Thursday

The exhaustion of all of this can be measured as a cup slowly filling up. I started with anger and I’m slowly moving into practically comatose. Patience. That’s what patience is. To me. Comatose. Not a virtue, not something I can ignore and wait softly for things to happen at whatever pace they’re going to happen at. No, it is an active thing, patience. For someone with a penchant for the obsessive, once it goes there, it does not leave.

The compartment of obsession has a one-way opening inward. Once something is there, only the actions of others can neuter the thing being obsessed over.

10:10 AM, Thursday

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

10:16 AM, Thursday

This person is wrong for not doing as he said he would at the time he said he would. Why? Because he said it. And one does not use—should never use words—that when put together comprise a promise of something happening at a specific time. Why? Why would you? Why even say it?

10:17 AM, Thursday

There are people like me who trust words! I don’t care how many times I’ve been burned—I have hope in society, in people, in promises, in words, in actions on time. Do you—I’m asking the whole world here—do you think I don’t make promises? I do, when I mean them. And that which I promise happens. I see to it, I’ll force my promises to happen. So others don’t need to rely on patience. I would never force someone into patience. It is—well, it can be—hell.

10:18 AM, Thursday

I’m thinking of myself as perfect again. I’ll stop that. I don’t matter here. I shouldn’t matter here, but I am projecting my own… values? Methods? Whatever, just me—the way I insist on doing things for others. I guess I won’t stop that.

10:19 AM, Thursday

Dangling.

That is my problem with all of this. The completion of future events I’ve been told about now hold a space in my mind. And empty space. I abhor emptiness in my world. Things have a space to be filled, I’ve been told that space will be filled, it is not—it remains intangible and dangling. On purpose? I don’t differentiate “on purpose”, “on accident”, or any other reasons for things not happening as they should. I don’t have that capability.

Not-yet tangible things just dangle as ideas waiting to be tangible actions or… things.

10:25 AM, Thursday

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! [—Continue, ad nauseam]

4:02 AM, Friday

Wait.

It’s done. I got it. The action has been taken. I’m… pleased.