I experience the C in OCD

I’m aware that I haven’t talked at all about my OCD on this blog yet.   The main reason for this is that I really don’t have the words to explain it.  The things I feel compelled to do might seem mundane but to me, these intrusive images, compulsions and the feelings of anxiety if I can’t carry them out are very upsetting.  I feel the less I talk about it, the less I think about it, the better.  This is important for my diagnosis, mind you.   People with OCD are aware of the unreasonable nature of their thoughts and actions, separating this from being just another feature of Asperger syndrome.

So within this just-ignore-it-and-it-might-go-away tactic I live by, not acknowledging my compulsions means that I do indulge them with in reason to settle the violence in my head. Usually this doesn’t cause me too much grief.

Then this morning I lost my tape measure.

Allow me to elaborate…I have many compulsions, one of which is to measure my waist.  I might do this between five to fifteen times a day, when I get up, when I’ve been to the toilet, after my conditioning regime, before and after I eat…basically, any time I feel (unrealistically) that I’ve done something that may make a difference to my waistline.

Anyway, when I woke up this morning I opened my bedside drawer to find…no tape measure.  I sat there, confused.  I measured myself last night, didn’t I?  Then what?  Did I throw it on my desk…no.  In my underwear drawer…no.   Or did it disappear into the black hole under my bed?

My reasonable self was telling me to get on with business so I started to tidy my room, hoping it will show up.  But one tidy room and no tape measure later, I came to the conclusion that I will have to do without it for the foreseeable future.  A bizarre but not unfamiliar uneasiness is growing in my mind, but I had assignments that had to get done somehow.

In the end, I didn’t accomplish a lot that day.   I can’t even talk about the things that were going through my head but let me assure you they weren’t pleasant. I couldn’t concentrate on my studies.  Every time I sat down and opened my books, I would spring up five minutes later and start pacing.  I did a lot of pacing.  My roommate noted that I looked ‘wired’ and offered me a beer.  I burst into tears, first because I couldn’t measure its effects, then at myself for having such a moronic thought.

I found my tape measure cleaning out my craft shelf that night and silenced my thoughts by measuring up a storm.  I can’t describe the cleansing feeling this had on my head – suddenly I was thinking clearly and logically again. I laughed with my roommate about my emotional blowout that day, which I blamed on ‘womens troubles.’ (I’m not kidding – he totally bought it too!)  It’s ridiculous that I continue to let these compulsions control me, I know.  Unfortunately with OCD, as I said before, knowing this is part of the problem – not the solution.

Voyager