This is a story about the girl who cried "Hah."
Much like the story of the boy who cried wolf, there is a moral. (I'm going to spoil it straight out and tell you that the moral is the same as the original; that there are some things that should not be joked about, and once the joking goes past a certain point, no one will believe you.)
The girl was conflicted--her anxious, very possibly obsessive-compulsive temperament clashed on multiple occasions with her desire not to draw attention to herself or raise her family's concerns. Said family was a well-meaning bunch, who taught her from a young age that humor can make the best of a bad situation, that everyone's life needs a little levity. This is good in theory. However, this lead to the girl repeatedly saying, "Oh, I'm so OCD about that. Heh." in a nonchalant manner when her truly irritating behaviors came to light around them.
One situation in particular has come up, and made itself a well-loved punchline at the dinner table: The girl dislikes being touched. Not for fear of contamination, just the sensation of being touched and the texture of another person's skin on her own. Any such sensation must immediately be counterbalanced by seven quick scrapes of the girl's fingernails against her own skin. This isn't as bad as it sounds; the compulsion only presents itself as being necessary when her bare skin is touched, and she will accept gestures involving physical skin-to-skin contact in appropriate situations, including high-fives and as comfort when she is ill or in pain.
As a sort of taunt, though, she is occasionally, unacceptably, lightly stroked on the arm or face without reason. Most people would consider this an invasion or annoyance of some sort, but would probably not flinch or jump with a small whine as she does, fighting the urge to start clawing at the touched spot.
It is unpleasant, and only one flavor of the girl's compulsions, but because the most forceful way the girl can express her desire for this game to stop is, "Ajsldjslakfl stoooop. I'm so OCD about that." It continues.
The girl who cried hah has made herself a punchline, all possible plausibility removed from meaningless repetitions of "I'm so OCD about that."
(Said girl also refers to herself in the third person. This blog post was too intense for her to even bear you reading without some kind of humorous conclusion--strengthening what she has revealed in this story--so she leaves you cowardly with smooth jazz nyan cat.)
3 comments:
Sometimes (all the times) we're such twinsies. Not with OCD specifically, but with similar things. However, in my unqualified opinion, I feel that you should only be concerned with labeling such quirks/problems if it interferes with your life. Like, if it's just a Thing but you are perfectly happy regardless of said Thing, don't worry about it unless the Thing gets worse. But if the Thing is messing with your ability to live a happy/fulfilling life, that is when you should get help.
Also, with mental disorders, I find it difficult to tell if one really has a disorder and is merely able to be aware of this thanks to the topic becoming more public and slightly less taboo or if the new abundance of information on said disorders simply triggers the dormant hypochondriac in many of us.
The way mental disorders have become slang is kind of shit. Like, you would say, "Ugh, I'm having such an ALS type of day." if you didn't actually have ALS. But "depressed", "OCD", "retarded", people have no problem with. I think it has something to do with self-diagnosis (nobody would self-diagnose ALS, I'd think.), but I think a line is crossed when it goes from, "special snowflake is quirky/sad, that's just me being me" to "I really would prefer it if I didn't have to deal with this crap anymore." I personally would get a lot more/higher quality sleep and just be a more relaxed person in general. (Who wouldn't want that for themselves?) The stupid thing is, it's so much easier in the short run to not fight the current of anxiety, but what I do to combat it is so repetitious (haha) and time consuming it's more a moderate pain in the ass as opposed to debilitating most of the time.
By the same token, I'm glad we live in an era where these problems can be discussed relatively openly and properly diagnosed, as opposed to, "Well, fuck, you're cray-cray, off to the institution." or even worse, "What is this demonic force possessing you? SEND THE LEECHES! EXORCISM!"
I think anyone who suspects they have such a disorder has nothing to lose by going to a doctor to get diagnosed. At worst/best, you don't have the disorder and can hopefully figure out some other way to deal and at best/worst you do have the disorder and then have something more concrete to fight against. I mean, any normal doctor isn't going to get mad at you for being concerned about your health.
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