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When Your OCD Gets The Best of You, Go with It.

I don’t really have OCD, and if I do, it’s undiagnosed. I think having an undiagnosed disorder can have its benefits, because then when you are diagnosed with it, people will finally understand why you’re so very strange. I need all the help I can get in this department.

Last night, I worked a night shift. Normally, you won’t find a bigger proponent of working at night than me. Especially at my job – it’s 10,000 times less stressful (not a lot of people, and relatedly, not too many problems), and all you’re really responsible for is data entry. I didn’t expect to find it oh-so-very-busy when I walked in last night, and unfortunately, there were a couple snags. The major one was that I never quite got caught up (the entire night)  – the phone never. stopped. ringing. I had a vendor come to deliver a product at about 6pm, 5 hours after our receiving hours were over. He said he’d take the product off the truck, so I let him, but he was backed into a dock that wasn’t very conducive to unloading the product he had. I stood by and watched, and imagined what would happen if all that product fell because I agreed to get an order 5 hours after receiving hours were done. After about 25 minutes of inner torture, nothing happened, and the guy left.

I also went back and forth with a customer the entire night who called and said that his fax wasn’t working so I had to call him to get his order. I did this, only to find that their phone line was the shittiest phone line in all of history. I could barely understand him. I told him to call back from another phone and place his order. This he did, calling twice every hour – from a different phone each time – telling me that his fax was broken and that I needed to call him. As much as I loved playing, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” I couldn’t keep up with this game of espionage, much less decide which fucking number to call back. So, I didn’t. And not only did I get a fax, but I also got two messages with the entire order called in by a different person – and, you guessed it! – a different number. Tricksy.

All of this is to say that, at about 11p.m., I realized that I had not yet written a blog post. Going into work, I figured I’d have time to put something together, but I forgot all about it. And so, as I’m putting in orders and the phone won’t stop ringing, my brain starts churning into overtime. After all, if I didn’t post yesterday, that would mean that ALL OF THIS WOULD BE FOR NOTHING!!!

Every time I encounter an OCD moment, I think of this doctor show that was on when I was a kid. It might have been “Chicago Hope” but I might be making that up. Anyway, there was this woman who came in because one piece of hair was longer than the rest of her hair, and she needed it to be cut. (I think that she would freak the fuck out if she saw some of the hairstyles we’ve got going on today…) So, the doctor took some scissors and cut it for her, but then he got chastised for it.

As the only one who could chastise me for anything about this was me, I watched as the clock reached the last 10 minutes of Monday, all the while working. I started to think maybe it would be ok if I missed one day, which was quickly followed by, “AMANDA IT IS SO NOT OKAY” over and over again. It was obvious that I had to quell the thoughts, but what the hell would I write about with three minutes left?

At 11:59, I wrote a single sentence, and posted just in time. Amidst all the chaos, I breathed a sigh of relief. My proverbial hair was now all the same length.

This is to say, friends, that if you’re washing your hands a zillion times a day til they’re raw, or if you can’t leave your house because the oven you just checked 3 times over the past hour might be on, then maybe you should go to your doctor and start cognitive behavioral therapy immediately. However, if a little compulsion forces you to stick to something you said you’d do, just go with it.

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