I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Yes, it’s true. I’m out. Honestly, I think tinges of it run through all our veins. I kind of consider it my “inheritance.” I have a rather slight case, and almost look up to my Grandma June, who I think, might have been the one who started it all. (I’m not sure though, because I never had opportunity to have insight into the cleaning and neurotic habits of other ancestors. Not exactly something you can check on Ancestralfile.com.) I remember her climbing up on counters to clean the top of the refrigerator, and having a special toothbrush in the bathroom designed to scrub the grout. I also remember the distinct lack of dust on her thousands of collectibles. Part of going to Grandma’s was watching her clean and organize and store and clean some more. Her universe was order, and cleanliness, and love.
When I was younger, I had a harder time with OCD. I started to have some of the less common symptoms, anxiety links to certain behaviors. I remember that it was pretty painful when my Mom noticed that I always turned the TV off on channel 2, and she made me start turning off on 37 or 14. When my house didn’t burn down as a result, I learned to tell the difference between ACTUAL fears and the crazy ones. In college, I was still a little neurotic. I made the mistake of telling some of my friends that my occasional high-stress personality was due, probably, to this tendency in my personality. I say mistake, because then anytime I was moody or just needed to do laundry, it was an “Is Erin being OCD?” moment. My mission was kind of singular experience. I lived in a lot of dirty flats with people who had absolutely no desire to clean up after themselves. I let go even more, and relaxed into a more “go with the flow” mentality. Every once in awhile, I feel the anxiety rise in me again. Usually, I recognize what’s going on because John asks me why I’m “cleaning frantically.” I think cleaning is the way I deal with other chaos, chaos that I either a) can’t control or b) don’t want to clean up yet. I’ve found another way to gage my current level of Grandma June-ness. When I go to clean the lint filter on the dryer, it’s incredibly hard to scrape off the metal screen. In my mind, I think “Why is this so hard to remove??” when what I should be thinking is, “Obviously, I have cleaned the lint trap far too often, and this little bit of fiber will NOT cause a fire when I throw our whites in to dry.” Here’s the real question though: If you gage your crazy level with a crazy method, does that counteract the sane-ness? I don’t know.
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