Honesty

I value honesty above almost everything else. I hate lying. I don’t even like twisting the truth.

This apparently makes me “honest to a fault.” But I think it helps me, too.

For example, let’s say that I have an embarrassing fetish–peacock feathers, for example. No other kind of feather will do. For some reason, there’s something I find incredibly sexy about peacock feathers.

One day, I see a product with a peacock feather on sale on Etsy. I get really excited and buy it. My roommate notices my excitement and jokingly asks me, “What, you got a peacock feather fetish or something?”

I think about how embarrassing it will be if I told her the truth. And then I tell her anyway.

For as long as I can remember, shame has been my mortal enemy. It has kept me from seeing myself as a human being, with human desires. It has also made me judgmental of those who are less sexually reserved than myself. But what’s wrong, I think, with having a few harmless kinks? It’s not like I’m hurting anybody.

So I say to her, “Yes, Renee. Yes, I do.”

And she teases me a little about it, maybe shares something about herself with me, and we laugh and move on. Or maybe she finds this disturbing, and knows not to make such a stupid joke again. Either way, I think the experience has made me a better person.

OCD and Icons

I change icons every month on any site where I’m active. Some have meaning, and some don’t. Most are somewhere in the middle.

What I choose for an icon has to do with what I use the site for. They are selected by compulsion. For example, I use Livejournal, Twitter, and certain forums for being my silly, fangirlish self. I select characters from the video games I love, and then crop a 100×100 head shot from their official portrait. It has to be female, because these characters are also me in a sense.

On this blog, I feel a bit awkward posting character art, so I do a search on public domain images and choose the first one I see. I crop 100×100 from the thumbnail, since it would look kind of strange if I just zoomed in the closest 100×100 in the full size.

For one forum, I actually do a search on “‘livejournal icons’ suikoden” and pick the first icon I see. In this case, it doesn’t have to be a female. I don’t know why, but with some websites, my method for selecting an icon “evolves” on its own. They’re probably left over from compulsions that I used to employ.

For MSN Instant Messenger, I pic an image that I’ve downloaded–again by compulsion–and crop it to the center 100×100.

And on that Lolcats site, I look for pictures of Chartreux and crop them.

I get sick of using the same icon over and over, and that’s why I change them. It helps me recognize the start of a new month. A clean slate, where I can devote myself to life and compulsions.

Being concerned about dirt

I’m not exactly a neat freak, but I do hate feeling dirty. And it’s not just dirt that makes me feel dirty.

Actually, I like some kinds of dirt. I guess this is kind of silly, but there’s kind of a dirt that feels “clean” to me. You know, that dry, dusty, sandy kind of dirt. I mean, I still have to wash my hands when I’m done with it, but I don’t feel instantly contaminated. I think part of it comes from a video I saw as a child about a boy with OCD. There was a scene where his OCD was getting better, and he was moving his hands back and forth in that kind of dirt that I just described. It looked very soothing.

Flies, to me, are very dirty. I hate them. I’ve avoided all kinds of places because of flies. I see my fear of flies as more rational than other people’s fear of bees, unless they’re allergic. I mean, a bee stings me, what’s the worst that happens? It hurts. But with flies…flies land on feces, and then on you, or on food. Flies spread filth. Flies are dirty and disgusting.

The other day, a fly landed on me. It landed on my shirt, right on my chest. I had to go to the bathroom and wash that part off with soap and water, and then wear a wet shirt for the rest of the day.

It’s not just dirt, either. Certain images and words make me feel like I’m “contaminated.” If I look at a picture of feces–even if it’s just a “cartoonish” drawing–I feel like I have to “cleanse” my vision, usually by looking at a bright light. Sometimes I have to blink several times at that bright light before I feel “clean” again.

I don’t like to censor comments, but sometimes if someone says a word that makes me feel “contaminated,” I will delete that comment or ask them not to use it again. If I see one of those words in an episode or read it in a chapter of some manga I’m reading, I will say I hate that story, even if I don’t. I even feel contaminated using the word “feces,” but I feel like I should always use the scientific word for a body part or function (unless I’m not being serious).

Although it’s hard with some words. I mean, “flatulence” works well, but “flatulate”? Is that even a word?

OCD and YouTube

YouTube has recently made a change to their overall format that ticks me off, even though I know there’s no reason why they shouldn’t have made that change.

They have made it so that the bar displaying how far you are into the video disappears after a few seconds.

Most people would like this change, but I don’t. I like pausing videos at the minute mark so I can divide the whole thing into segments. I always multi-task as I watch the videos. This helps me not become overwhelmed by information, so that I can concentrate on small parts of the message at a time. It also gives my eyes a rest.

But now I either have to constantly move my mouse a little bit, or just watch the movie without pausing. Both irritate me, and I really, really wish there was some way I could keep the bar from disappearing. If only it were customizable!

Obsessive-compulsive character in “Arakawa Under the Bridge”

Recently I have become interested in a manga (and anime) series called “Arakawa Under the Bridge.” I’d give it a PG-13 rating. It’s about a man who has been raised to never be indebted to anyone…and the debt he has to repay after a woman saves his life. She requests that he love her, and he agrees. This, of course, means living in the same place that she does, which just happens to be under a bridge. As it turns out, several strange people live there.

One of those people is nicknamed “Shiro.” “Shiro” means “white” and it was given to him by the village chief because he always has to walk on white lines. Sounds like most media portrayals of OCD, right? Except this compulsion has an actual obsession behind it: Shiro believes that if he steps off the white lines, his wife will turn into a chicken. He’s so adamant about white lines that he pushes one of those things you use on baseball fields to draw the lines around everywhere he walks. It makes for some interesting moments.

You can find out more about the series at: http://starchild.fm/special/en/arakawa/

Who knows? Maybe the entire series is some sort of commentary on mental illness.

When we don’t live up to the stereotypes

There are three different chores my co-workers and I take turns doing at work. Which job do you think I hate the most?

a) Cleaning the bathroom
b) Taking out the trash
c) Vacuuming

It’s C! I despise vacuuming. I hate the noise that vacuum cleaners make. I also hate that it’s one of those jobs where you can never be certain you got everything. It doesn’t have a clearly definable end, because you can always go back over the same spot, and there’s no visible way to track your progress.

Someone who doesn’t know a lot about OCD might assume that I hate cleaning the bathroom more than anything else, because of the possibility of contamination from “bathroom germs.” But I wear rubber gloves when I clean, and I always wash my hands afterward. Furthermore, there’s no sound from the vacuum cleaner (except at the beginning when I have to vacuum the floor) and the smell of disinfectant soothes me. I don’t love cleaning the bathroom, but I don’t hate it like I do vacuuming. I do get a bit anxious when I clean the toilet, but it’s nothing compared to when I’m vacuuming and someone so much as talks to me.

Another characteristic that some may find surprising is that I don’t feel the urge to straighten or adjust things. In fact, both my living space and my work space are extremely unorganized. In fact, one of my most reoccurring compulsions is what I call the “Leave things as they are” compulsion. It means that, unless I have a reason or somebody tells me to, I must not adjust or touch anything set out on a desk or the floor, even if I’ve already touched it. This is true not just with objects set on desk or tables, but things like volume on the TV or the air conditioning in the car. I get extremely anxious when I think that somebody has changed something because of what I said, so I try not to complain about the temperature or volume or point out that something’s out of alignment.

This “Leave things as they are” compulsion even extends to my reluctance to interfere with whatever an animal or child (especially babies and toddlers) is doing. Because of this, I do not like being in charge of children. Of course, if they were doing something obviously dangerous, I would stop them, but otherwise I’m afraid to.

Like with many of my compulsions, I can’t put into words what I think will happen if I influence someone to do something. I think it comes with my fear of something being my fault. But in the case of children, I’m much more likely to be blamed for not interfering, so my compulsion isn’t based on pure logic.

But really, compulsions are almost never based on pure logic. They start out with a logical idea–to use a tried-and-true example, the idea that you should wash your hands before eating or after using the toilet to avoid contamination–and spin out of control to the point that it interferes with daily living. In our hand-washing example, the result is washing one’s hands to the point where they become cracked and bleeding.

Because of popular portrayals of OCD, many people think it can be boiled down to mysophobia (the fear of germs or contamination) and possibly anal-retentiveness. These are indeed characteristic of many people with OCD (including myself), but OCD is so much more that. Every person with OCD is different. Some of us count, and some of us don’t. Some of us love to clean, and some of us can’t stand it. Some of us have to check the stove multiple times to make sure it’s off, and some of us forget to check the stove and sometimes even leave it on.

The only things we all have in common are our obsession and compulsions (and possibly not even that–I’ve heard some people have “purely O,” which means they have obsessions but not compulsions). Everything else varies from person to person. And really, how is that different from any other disability?

Why I hate obnoxious parodies

I really, really don’t like parodies or silly songs that use gross-out or sexual humor. I know that a lot of my friends, either in the past or in the present, enjoy these kinds of songs and think I’m a total killjoy for asking them not to sing or play them around me. I mean, I can appreciate the occasional raunchy joke, and I swear like a sailor, so why is it so bad when such things are put to music?

I’ll tell you why: It’s because they’re catchy.

Songs, especially silly ones or parodies of well-known tunes, are designed to stick in your head for a while. This is part of their appeal, of course–it makes them easy to learn and spread to all different kinds of demographics.

But that’s exactly what makes them so unbearable to me. See, obsessions, as many of you know, are thoughts that just won’t go away. And when those thoughts are gross, inappropriate, or offensive, that makes them extremely aggravating, even painful. Some members of my family have seen me get upset and yell at some poor chap who didn’t know that what they said or sang was going to offend me. That’s because I’m going to hear what those words over and over again. In my head. And I can’t just turn it off or go somewhere else.

I know that I’m going to encounter OCD triggers in my life. It’s inevitable. But it’s for that very reason that I ask that those who know me show a little consideration. I’m not asking you to read my mind or remember this all the time. Just please understand when I tell you I don’t like nasty, gross-out songs. And I might appreciate a dirty joke, but that doesn’t mean I can handle you singing it.