There is this socially accepted idea of OCD.
This is the idea that it is about being a clean freak. It is about perfection. It is often marketed by society as this quirky, hard-to-deal-with perfectionist personality. It is a stereotyped personality trait.
In reality, it is a mental health condition. It is so much more than cleanliness and perfection. I can’t speak for everyone’s OCD, but I can speak to mine. It is oftentimes debilitating.
My head, for some reason, can deal with a little dirt, dirty dishes, and mess sometimes. What OCD looks like for me is having to have things done a certain way. If it isn’t, the intrusive thoughts start.
“I didn’t vacuum yesterday, so I have to vacuum five times today, or we are all going to get sick and die of the flu, cancer, or the plague.”
“We got pinworms, so it had to have been from outside, so we won’t be going outside in our backyard anymore. Only outside other places is safe. The playground isn’t safe, or we will get another more dangerous parasite and be hospitalized, and my kids will get taken away.”
It looks like one minor illness ending in everyone washing their hands every time they touch anything. Doing all the laundry 3 times before putting it in the dryer. Not because I forgot, but because the first two times didn’t kill the bacteria, the bugs, the danger. It looks like washing a stuffed animal 6 days in a row because it touched the floor again.
To some people, these incidents might seem inconsequential. But for my brain, if I don’t do these things, something so much worse is going to happen. It is somehow going to lead to some life-ending medical condition that would have been prevented had I just washed the laundry one more time.
In therapy, I once heard myself respond to the question, “Ok, but what happens if your husband loads the dishwasher the wrong way?” with “Well, my brain tells me that they won’t get clean and we’ll all get sick and die.” I know that’s crazy. We all know that’s crazy. The therapist said, “But do they get clean?” Yes. Of course, they get clean. A small voice in the back of my crazy head knows this thinking is absur,d but I can’t stop myself when the OCD takes over.
I’m terrified to go to the mailbox at certain times of the day because the thoughts tell me that if I go at that time a car with drive by, swerve into the mailbox and kill me. I don’t take the kids with me to the mailbox, no matter what.
I find it hard to enjoy life sometimes and live in the moment. I try so hard to let my kids be kids, but the stuffed animal is on the floor again, and I can’t do anything else until it gets washed. But now there is a shirt on the floor, so I can’t do anything until that gets washed. I have to be here to wash it a second time. And a third. The shirt hit the laundry room floor as I was switching it to the dryer, so I have to wash the shirt again. If my house isn’t clean enough and this happens again, they’re going to take my kids away for getting a cold, pinworms, lice, the flu, or any number of treatable illnesses.
On the outside, looking at the chaos and mess of my house, it probably doesn’t look like the image everyone has of OCD. It isn’t picture-perfect clean. It isn’t spotless. But there is a quiet turmoil happening that prevents it from getting that way because that stuffed animal is on the floor again. I sometimes can’t enjoy doing the things people do with their kids normally because I have to spend this day fixing the things. Like that stuffed animal on the floor again. Why is it always on the floor?
I want to be the fun mom. And sometimes I can be the fun mom. I can push aside the feelings and work hard enough on my mental health to venture out and do other things. I sometimes make progress. Then, some relatively small thing in the grand scheme, like the pinworms we all got that are “so common in children,” sets everything back. Suddenly, I’m back in the place where I’m afraid of the outside. I’m afraid of letting things slip at all. I’m bleaching my floors and counters. I’m wearing gloves to empty the vacuum. I’m washing laundry three or more times. I’m thinking that we shouldn’t have animals because they’re getting us sick. I’m crying in the ER because I let it slip, and now my kids have pinworms.
OCD is not cute. It is not perfectionism. It is not quirky. It is not fun. It is not so great to have because at least your house is clean. It is debilitating. It is horrible. I hate it. I want to be normal. I want to have a house that looks like kids live there. I want it to be vibrant and messy and fun. I just want to live a normal life. Where a minor setback doesn’t feel like I failed and takes over my whole life. I just want to live.