The O in OCD

Now let’s look at obsession.  Frankly, it’s the scarier part of OCD.  And the most useful, too.  In my opinion, obsession is one of the main things that separate OCD from, say, Tourette’s (which is not always classified by someone who randomly shouts swear words.  My mom, and my uncle have Tourette’s, and I have never in my life heard either of them cuss.  Tourette’s is basically compulsive behavior.  My mom is constantly twitching and tapping things, she can’t sit still.  My uncle has a facial tic, where his face twitches.  He also has to run sharp corners over his face, from a folded up paper or dollar bill.  I have something kind of like that, but with my nails.  I’m constantly scratching some part of my skin.  It’s worse when my nails are long, so I usually keep them short.  End parenthesis.).

So, back to obsession.  The easiest way to explain this fundamental characteristic of me, is showing me with a book.  My family would always say that the house could be burning down around me, and I wouldn’t notice. Which isn't true: I would notice if my book caught on fire.  I have the ability to focus all of my attention on one thing, wholly and completely.  This would be a bad thing, if the center of my attention was, say, on killing the president. But I don’t. Thankfully.  I don’t obsess over people.  It's not my thing. (Correction, I don’t obsess over people anymore.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I, just like every teenage girl ever, was madly in love with Nick Jonas when I was fifteen.)  But other than that, most of my life has revolved around reading.  Ever since I can remember (up until college, when I had to do grown up things, like homework and whatnot), I always, always had a book to read.  I’ll say this now, and I’ll keep saying it: this is not a bad thing. Obsessiveness isn't always a bad thing.  I had a wonderful childhood, full of adventure and learning.  I traveled to distant lands, met people of all different kinds, learned about life, and love, courage and sacrifice.  And I had a wonderful vocabulary.  It’s the reason I became a writer: I don’t just love stories, I live for stories.

Absolutely love this picture by Richard Johnson

The thing is, when you can put all of your attention into something, it worries some people.  I could sit for hours, not saying a word, drinking in a good book.  When it was really good, I didn’t bother looking up from the page to do useless things like “walking,” “going to the bathroom,” “eating,” etcetera.  I’m not saying I didn’t do those things, I just didn’t stop reading while I did them.  I read fast, too.  When I was eight, I could read a Cam Jansen book in an hour or two.  When I was twelve, I read Harry Potter five in about four days, and then Harry Potter six in more like two or three.  When I was nineteen, I read Hunger (by Michael Grant), which was almost 600 pages, in about a day.  In other words, I like reading.  A lot.

But I wasn’t just fast, oh no.  My brother always bugged me about it, asking me how I even absorbed anything when I read like that.  But I do.  I drink it in.  I remember stuff from when I was fresh out of diapers, reading Amelia Bedilia, and Frog and Toad.  I remember these stories.  Same thing with Cam Jansen and Animorphs, Harry Potter, the True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, the Chronicles of Narnia, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and on and on and on.  I don’t remember every single detail, nor can I quote it word-perfect (I don’t have an eidetic memory), but I remember everything I pay attention to.  I remember stuff like what I know actors from (I can usually guess in about 30 seconds, depending), but not their names.  I remember song lyrics, who it’s by, and what I know the song from (radio, YouTube, movie or series) or who introduced it to me.  I remember things people said to me, and things I have said, since I was five or six.  I still surprise people with the things I remember that they don’t, not to mention the kinds of things I was thinking when they happened.

So, up until I was twelve or thirteen, all I did, every day, all day, was read.  And I loved it!  Then, everything changed when I was introduced to the internet.  Anyone remember Neopets?  I do.  It was fun, it was addictive.  It got harder and harder to leave the website: I had to earn more neopoints, I had to build a house, and play games, battle other pets, solve puzzles and read stories.  I even put in some short stories, and pictures for contests (never won, but I did learn how to do art on a computer for the first time, and that was exciting).  I stopped doing school work, I stopped reading, I just played on Neopets.

Does anyone remember Ella Enchanted?  I mean the book, not the movie (which was nowhere near the book on any level.  No offence, Anne Hathaway).  In the book, Ella, the main character, has a curse, where anything she is ordered to do, she must do, no matter what.  There’s a part where Ella, on her birthday, receives a big, beautiful cake, and her caretaker says “eat.”  It was an order, she had to eat.  She wanted to anyway, at first.  She dug in, stuffing her face, swallowing that sweet, delicious frosting.  At first, it was just pure joy.  But after a little while, it wasn’t so wonderful.  It stopped being delicious.  It stopped being fun.  But she had to keep eating.  She was incapable of stopping.  Pretty soon, she had eaten half the cake, stomach hurting, tears running down her face, but she still wasn’t allowed to stop, because that was her curse.

That’s what it’s like.  After a while, Neopets wasn’t fun anymore.  But I couldn’t get off.  I wasn’t allowed to.  I needed to keep earning points, doing battles, collecting pets.  I couldn’t stop.  After a while, somehow I got off.  I can’t remember how, but I did.  It may be because I had to stop for final exams, or maybe I got in trouble for putting off homework, but I was kept off long enough to forget my password, and I decided that I would never get back on again, ever.

But that was only the first time I saw negative effects from my obsessive behavior.  It’s happened, over and over again, where something starts out as fun and exciting, but eventually turned sour, worsened by the fact that I’m not allowed to stop.  

There are more characteristics of OCD, but I think I’ll let you go for today (I think I write too much).  This only just barely scrapes the surface of what we go through, how we think.  I’m not writing this to make you pity us, or fear for us.  Everyone has their own struggles to go through, their own demons or handicaps or whatever.  That’s not what this is about.  I wouldn’t give up being OCD for anything.  The way I see the world, it’s like nothing else.  If I didn’t think the way I do, then I wouldn’t be the person I am.  There are things I can do, things that I have, that I wouldn’t if I wasn’t me.

And, despite the hard times, and the obstacles my own mind has built around me, I actually do like being me.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Penny