Let me begin by saying that people who have obsessive compulsive tendencies are often mistaken for “control freaks.” While often times we are both O.C.D. and control freaks, the two are not simultaneous, one is definitely different from the other.


You know that feeling when you are wearing boots or another high-back shoe, and your sock starts creeping down at the heel? Part of your heel is exposed to the rough inside of the shoe and part of your heel is still snuggly tucked away inside your sock, but the sock is all twisted and uneven around your heel which makes it unbearable after a while. Eventually you have to stop, take your shoe off, adjust your sock (maybe even change socks), and put your shoe back on. That feeling between the time you realize your sock is creeping down, and the time you get to adjust your sock, is how someone with severe ocd feels all the time. Their mind is constantly running, analyzing, and trying to adjust things around them in order to make them comfortable.


I have never been formerly diagnosed as OCD, and it doesn’t really interfere with my life in terms of me leaving my home, holding a job, or being a good wife, mother, or student. However, most people living with OCD are able to function just fine in the world. “About 1 out of 200 adults have OCD and twice as many have had OCD at 1 point or another in their life.“


I remember thinking to myself as a kid, “I wonder how many people do this?” or, “does everyone do this and just don’t say anything?”. Things like dusting my room every single afternoon when I got home from school from the time I was 6th grade until I was in 9th. When I was little, I had to break off the crust of my pop tart and eat it in proportional lengths on each side of my mouth. If at the end of my pop tart, the crusts were not the same length, I would need to open another package and begin again until it ended evenly. Surprisingly, in 5th grade I met a very best friend (to this day) who did the exact same thing! There are many other things that I have just kind of always done or lived with that I have never really considered out of the norm for me. For instance, I count all the time. When I am sitting, or rocking Lexie, walking/jogging, or driving. But I don’t like to count past 12 and therefore continue back at 1, until I reach 12 again which is when I start at 25. That way I skip all the “-teen” numbers. Don’t ask why, I don’t know why. I think about 13 as I count to twelve, but can’t bring myself to say the number in my head, so I go back to one. Hahaha, that’s really funny when you type it out and read it. I kinda sound like a crazy person.








I have never been able to walk in a parking lot without stepping around all the dark spots, which mean there is or has been gum or some other icky substance there. It never fails that when I pull up to a gas pump there must have been an old redneck man there before me, because there is a big nasty spit spot from where he was dipping… I have always said that one day I would have an invention that when you took your shoes off, it would be like one of those automatic kitty litter things but it would disinfect the bottom of your shoes. This is why we do not wear shoes in the house. The thought of sitting, laying or my daughter playing where essentially someone else’s spit or gum has been makes me nauseous. Seriously. In elementary and middle school, I made sure that on the days we had gym I wore a shirt or jacket with a hood, so I could put the hood out for my head to lay on. (My parent’s probably don’t realize that did these things, now that I think about it..) This was because I couldn’t stand the thought of laying down on the gym floor where everyone had been walking and playing. Don’t teachers realize that is like a health hazzard? All that gross dirt, hair, and bathroom floor grime and then you want us to lay down in it, do push ups on it and then not get to wash our hand until lunch? Makes no sense to me.






Poor J.Tom lives pretty well with all my idiosyncrasies. Usually. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the house can get down right destroyed, like now for instance, and I can live with it. But it isn’t the overall picture that drives me insane, it is all the little things that add up to make me uncomfortable. If he messes up his sock drawer after I have put all the socks in there the way I like them, it must be redone. Towels have to be folded a certain way, dishrags color-coded, my closet organized by shirt type, then color.. his by shirt type and ironed/not ironed. When I smoked, I had to bite the filter 3 times before I could light the cigarette. Certain textures in my mouth totally freak me out (which I think is pretty common) and the sound of cardboard rubbing makes my stomach curl. Just random things.






I haven’t even started on the germ stuff. Maybe it isn’t really OCD. Maybe it is just quirky “preferences.” I don’t really know. But I do know how it feels when things are out of order, it just seems all wrong and it is hard to concentrate, or get to the next step of the day when something else is all wrong. Like that sock in your boot, it just feels all wrong.








I probably don’t need to express how obsessive I can be about germs and gross stuff. It is strange, because when I worked at a daycare, I never minded the throw up, diapers, snot.. it was just what had to be done. But I also got to wear gloves, hold my breath, wash my hands 100 times day, etc. When you sit at a booth in a restaurant, you don’t get to put a plastic liner down on the nasty vinyl seat, or spray lysol on the salt shaker before you touch it. It is not getting sick that I fear, it is just so gross and I can feel the nastiness on my hands before I even touch the shaker or seat..


“The most frequent obsession is the fear of being contaminated – a 2006 comprehensive prospective study of people with OCD found 57.7% experienced this fear. Also common in the study were pathological doubt (56.0%), the need to arrange things in a symmetrical way (47.8%), and aggressive thoughts (45.4%). The study showed that the most common compulsions were checking (68.9%), cleaning (60.1%), and repeated actions (56.3%).“


Do you ever think about all the hands who have touch a gas pump nozzles, picked their nose, or used the bathroom without washing their hands before you touch the ketchup bottle at your favorite burger joint? “In the nationwide poll, conducted from Aug. 19 to Aug. 22 by Harris Interactive, 1,013 adults were interviewed about their hand washing habits. Then observers were sent into public restrooms to see what actually happened. Ninety-one percent of adults claimed in the poll that they washed their hands after using a public restroom. But of the 6,336 adults whose behavior was observed, only 82 percent actually did so.” It is not that I think “oh, no what if I get a disease from touching this bottle of ketchup?!” it is “oh my gosh, would I touch someone else’s snot or poop?!”-the answer here is not no. It is, “are you freaking kidding me? HELL NO!“ These statistics are just specific ones I found to describe my personal feelings towards public places. Most people know the germs are on the food ladle at the buffet, but the nastiness does not keep them from going to a restaurant or enjoying time out with family and friends. I may go, but the thoughts are running through my head most of the time I am there. That, in my mind, should be normal, you wouldn’t voluntarily touch someone else’s bodily excrements so I’d be more than happy walking around with some sort of Hand Sanitizer to make sure my hands are germ-free!


Anyways, I only wrote this because I feel like people (spouses, friends or family) may mistake someone’s obsessiveness for a need to control. Needing to control is like playing a mind game between two people o needing to suppress someone else; however, when someone is OCD, they cannot control the way certain things make them feel, which may result in a breakdown for someone. I do realize I may not really be OCD, because I don’t lock myself in my house and never leave (although I would be just fine with that), but the thoughts are there. Also, certain obsessions can fade and be replaced by new ones.


Everyone has their own “things” that they may or may not can live with. The question is, can the person or people you love and live with, live with your quirky “things,” or the lack there of…