What it’s like Living with OCD

If you ever wondered what it’s like living with anxiety combined with OCD, I’m going to appease your curiosity. BUT. I am not going to tell you my whole day because we’d both go crazy lol. And after reading what I do mention, you’ll probably understand why it’s hard existing.

First, I get up and untape the paper from one of my windows because I taped up all of them to hide myself from the sun, but my cat (Zulejka) needs sun, so…

After untaping one window in the bedroom, I check outside the window on kitchen side of the flat to make sure my neighbor isn’t smoking out his window; if not, I open both of the kitchen windows and also make sure no one is smoking in the pub below, and if not, I leave the windows open for a while (or until someone shows up smoking).

I wash my hands twice.

I take an iron supplement because I’m diagnosed anemic and drink two mugs of water. Taking the iron means picking the EXACT RIGHT tablet from the package. If I pick a ‘wrong’ one, I have to throw that one away and pick another. No, they aren’t different; the anxiety just randomly decides to assign doom to certain ones–although if I pick one and swallow it fast enough, I can avert the anxiety doing this.

After using the toilet always comes the same routine:

• close the lid and flush
• raise the lid
• wash my hands twice
• wipe the toilet seat with toilet paper
• wash my hands again

I throw away the uneaten chicken from Zulejka’s (my cat’s) chicken dish, rinse the dish with water, then wash it with baby soap and set it down in its place in the bedroom.

I pull the jar of prepared, cooked chicken from the fridge and open it.

Leaving it open on the counter, I wash my hands again, and with clean hands, I pull her chicken into little biteable bits into the designated dish.

I wash my hands two or three times again after serving the chicken, then close the still-open jar of chicken on the counter and put it in the fridge.

I wash my hands again and give Zulejka some multivitamin paste for cats.

I wash my hands again after that. I brush her, play with her, wash my hands again and stretch. I pet her during stretches, wash my hands again, and close the window, wash my hands again, and pour walnuts into the cup by my computer. I wash my hands again after putting the package away, and eat with one hand while typing with the other. Same thing for chocolate chips, which are the second half of my breakfast.

If I have some sort of anxious thought during my morning routine, once I sit down at the computer, I must immediately research the sudden fear.

If the sun starts shining on spots I walk across in the flat during the day, I tape the windows back up.

If I go outside, I always wear long pants and long sleeves no matter the heat. I wear a hat and sunglasses, and I always face away from the sun.

Before I leave the flat, I check the taps (off?), the fridge (closed?), the toilet (not making odd sounds?), the stove (not on?), the plugs (are things unplugged?), the laundry rack (not too close to the heater? Yes, I check this even in the summer when the heater is not on…), my cat (still blinking at me?), and sometimes other things, several times. Sometimes I have to come back and check things again. After I lock the door (presuming I don’t lock it ‘wrong’ and have to relock it ‘properly’), I push on it several times to make sure it’s actually closed. During this all, I know it’s irrational.

Outside, I sometimes have to go back several steps if I go a ‘wrong’ way and redo it into the ‘right’ way.

Some days, I can’t wear dyed clothes; other days, I can. Some days I can use dyed towels; others, I can’t.

I can’t eat certain foods unless my anxiety says it’s okay today. If I’m in the middle of eating something and suddenly something strikes me as off, I can’t finish eating it. I’ve gotten better at eating around it, though, because I do hate wasting food.

Am I a germaphobe? No. In fact, I rarely sterilize anything. I use baby soap to wash my hands and vinegar to wash my hair and dishes. I vacuum my floors and wipe them up with water and toilet paper because the really scary thing can’t be killed by any antiseptic, and actually being exposed to germs strengthens your immunity.

Am I a hypochondriac? No, I am afraid of getting sick, not that I am sick. This is why the anxiety forces me into so many obsessively protective measures: to keep anything deadly from happening to me.

Do I ever feel calm?

Yes. The instant I sit down and get into writing or editing my stories… it’s quiet. There is wonderful silence from the fear and anxiety, and I’m utterly immersed in the story. And when I emerge, I can’t even express the pure joy, how uplifting it is. How I sometimes run and dance, giggling, around my flat, pick up my cat and smooch her and just am amazingly like a different, normal person. I am just free for a time after I edit / write on my own books and stories.

You can understand why I sometimes don’t even want to get up to eat or use the bathroom or go out or anything because that starts the intrusive DOOM-thinking and the stress and hand-washing, and who knows when next I’ll be able to sit down and be calm again? This is why I go mad when people try to tell me, “Write less! You’re obsessed!” They literally are trying to tell me to take away the ONLY TIME my mind is focused on something good?

Sometimes doing videos or something graphic like images or book covers also occupies my mind, but after I finish them, I don’t have the lingering joy as I do after writing. Work (testing for my dayjob) also engaged my brain, but after finishing, my stress levels were only higher than before. It just got worse the more I tried to work and the less I wrote. I have been slowly falling apart for decades while putting aside my writing, and I am literally a wreck of a person now.

My anxiety has a very clear source, and I know what it is. I was born to write books and give them to the world. Even when people read my palms, they say that my life has a single course, which is unusual (usually people do different things over their lifetime). Some people feel they were born to be doctors, teachers, artists, musicians, mothers, and I was born to write. If I can’t do that, why am I even here?

I’m not sure what point I’m even making with this post. Maybe that I think every person has a passion, and no one should have to live without it. It’s cruel to belittle that.