This is OCD

I want to do the dishes.  The sink is full.

I can fill the dishwasher, but only in increments of ten.  Ten dishes.  Ten glasses.  Ten containers.  I can do a mix, but it has to be ten.  Two utensils count as one item.  Large serving items or carving knives, etc. count as one each.

I load ten and go to do something else.

Maybe I'll fold clothes.

Ten items.  Two underwear count as one item.  Sometimes I can do twenty items at a time.  I can also do fifty at a time.  Thirty or forty is not acceptable.

If I forget my count, I throw them back in the hamper and start over.

I take a break between counts.

I can watch a movie or play a game for fifteens minutes before moving on to the next thing.  If I don't have anything else to do, I can watch or play for thirty to forty five minutes.  Never an hour all at once.

It's exhausting and things take forever.


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We've gone out.  To a store.  To get groceries.  To the movie theater.  My hands have touched things that other people have touched.  I panic.  I have multiple bottles of hand sanitizer in my bag.  I wash them as soon as I am done touching things.  I get in my car.  What if I've touched something in the past and haven't washed my hands before driving.  Does my steering wheel have things on it?

Wash my hands.  Wipe down the steering wheel with anti bacterial wipes that I keep in the glove compartment.  It's ok to drive.

Throw the anti bac to the girls.  Make them wash their hands as well.  Don't eat until you've done this!

I am anxious.  I am nervous and panicking.  Wash my hands again.  Temporary calm comes over me.


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I sit in my car.  I am in front of my house.  I should go inside, but then I have to get out.  What if there is something wrong?  What if someone is watching me? Could there be an animal?  Will it start to rain?

Stay in the car.  Check out Facebook and Instagram. 

Two hours have gone by.  I should go inside.

People look at me as they walk and drive by.  Will they think I am loitering?  AM I loitering?

Get in the house before someone tells on you.  Run up the stairs and lock the door.

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I need to write a list. Where is my pen? There are twenty pens in my cup.  I need MY pen. It hasn't run out of ink, yet.  I need that pen.  We need to search.  Girls, please help.  Where is the pen.

I've found a pen, mama!

Not that one!  It's not the pen.

We find the pen.  I am calm.  I will use it until it runs out of ink.  Then the next pen will enter the rotation.  I cannot lose that pen.

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THIS is OCD.

"OMG, I am SO OCD,  I like things so neat."

"OMG, my OCD is going crazy over that picture."

No. No. NO. NO!

THIS?!?!  THIS is OCD.

I am trapped.

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