CONFESSIONS OF AN OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE - blog six

Polka dots. Originally, I thought the background design for my blog was a wise choice. Simple, clean and modest wallpaper; it’s not too distracting from the copy of the main blog and the absence of garish colours is refreshing.

Until I notice the sporadic spacing of the dots themselves. At first glance it would appear that the green polka dots, set against the cream backdrop, run in sets of three. Do you see?

I feel my eyebrows knot into one another as my concentration rises and my eyes bore into the computer screen. THERE IS NO CORRELATION IN THE WAY THE GREEN POLKA DOTS ARE POSITIONED ON THE WALLPAPER. The designer has just sprinkled them willy nilly. This is worsened by cruel trickery – because some of the dots are clustered in an ordered fashion, you are given a false sense of security that the wallpaper indeed, has a logical pattern. It is only on further inspection that you notice the sheer sloppiness of the design.

Pfft. I don't feel like blogging now, wretched thing. Why can’t they all run in sets of three??

CONFESSIONS OF AN OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE - blog four

There’s no logical pattern to it. No theme to the madness. No correlation in the bizarre rituals that litter my daily routine. I’m quite blind to the array of discarded shampoo bottles strewn across the bathroom, yet when the cap isn’t placed back on the toothpaste I have been known to throw myself on the floor wailing. The only tea towel I cannot touch is the red one. But the red coffee cup is the lucky one.

The smell of bleach comforts me but I sneeze at the smell of soap. In London I have to get the tube to get from location to location.... I balance myself precariously in the middle of the carriage (my legs have to be fairly apart to do this) without touching a single thing. No seat, no window no surface. Try sustaining that for half an hour, it’s like being on a surf simulator except the ocean is the putrid scum of a grimy city. I can sit quite happily on buses though...?

The obsessive compulsive’s sphere is not penetrable one; it’s laden with contradictions. If you weren’t a fanatic yourself you’d get lost in the paradoxes of it. Yes, even Alice eventually made sense of Wonderland but, as she had various guides, here I am.

CONFESSIONS OF AN OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE - blog one

I dont like crumbs. I dont like dirt. I dont like mess. I like clean floors. I dont like toasters because they create crumbs. I like cif. I don’t like fluff. I like kitchen roll I like cling film I like tin foil. I don’t care about recycling. I don’t like beetroot, soy sauce or tea. They all stain.

It’s about control apparently, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Trying to control something when other compartments of your life are in somewhat of a flux - and taking it to the extreme. If I had anorexia at least I’d be thin right? What does obsessive-compulsive disorder do for you? Alienates your friends and family and fucks everyone off at parties. Whoop! Well you do have surfaces you could eat your dinner off I suppose, but I doubt you’d want to do that.

Now the people I live with aren’t particularly messy or unclean; the battle I have with the kitchen floor every night is solely between him and me. That bastard. Moreover, I wouldn’t want them to get involved, I don’t think it’s safe, dragging them in to our nightly domestic battles... 8pm comes, everyone’s eaten, I’ve washed up and I’ve mopped.

Yet early the next morning I’m like a moth to a flame - I can spot the dirt. One tiny piece of onion shaving (did I miss that the previous might or was the kitchen floor hiding it from me to reveal it later and then revel in my anguish?) a ball of fluff, toast crumbs, pools of coffee. Where? What? How? I can mop it and mop it and it’ll never remain perpetually flawless. “Work with me, for once, come on” I want to scream, as the kitchen floor seems to smile up at me: the undefeated. “Jess it is impossible to maintain a polished floor” my mum recently offered by way of support. Pfft. I’ll show her.

www.patient.co.uk cites Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as “a common mental health problem. Symptoms typically include recurring obsessive thoughts, and repetitive compulsions in response to the obsession. A common example is recurring obsessive thoughts about germs and dirt, with a compulsion to wash your hands repeatedly to "clean off the germs". However, there are many other examples” Heavy. Now I’m not here to mock or poke fun at this debilitating condition. I’m not about to claim I had contracted it full tilt. It’s a serious issue and as a nation we do tend to blow things out of proportion a smidge.

People get peckish around 1ish and declare they are “absolutely starving.” Well, they’re not really are they? They don’t live in a third world country they just need to walk 500 metres to the canteen. Your Aunt Janice will screech at the top of her voice when a spider emerges from the plughole. Hardly an all-consuming fear of bugs now is it? She’ll get Uncle Jez to flush the little fella down the loo and she’ll enjoy a relaxing Radox bath - life continues. Soul destroying arachnophobia it isn’t.

We like labels, they save us, and we use them to rationalise our idiosyncrasies to others and ourselves. The ménage a trios between the kitchen floor, the mop and me, my housemate cites as procrastination and tells me to get started on my contextual analysis work most nights, to which I regress to my 14 year old ‘emo’ stage and whisper “You just don’t understand me.”

In all seriousness I’m an unusual medium. I wouldn’t say I need medical attention on the double, nor would I say this compulsion for order monopolises my life. But I’m not normal, and the obsessive-compulsive tendencies have been the devil on my shoulder since I was about 12.

NB: I DO care about recycling, just not as much as my desire to eschew clutter