I was just finishing up with the forbidden practice of cleaning my ears with Q-Tips and was holding the used ones on my hand, ready to put them in the trash.
Let me back up here. I had picked up the Q-tips in a sort of sloppy, confusing way, but on purpose. Because, you see, my brain told me that since grabbing them in that sloppy manner was my first instinct instead of the more efficient way I thought of immediately afterwards, that I needed to follow through with it to ensure that I would not alter the course of events in the universe.
So I decided I needed to straighten them before tossing them into the garbage can but also without setting them back down on the counter, because if I threw them away in the haphazard manner in which I was compelled to pick them up, I would be dooming myself to chaos elsewhere, in more serious realms in my life.
I did this carefully using only the hand that was already holding them, because using my other hand to help would be cheating and not consistent with the messiness of life, similar to why I didn't change course in the beginning and pick them up off the counter in a more sensible manner.
I slowly twisted my fingers around them in such a way as to make them line up perfectly next to each other without dropping either of them. If I dropped either of them, then any future surgery I might need would be performed by an under-slept, uncaring surgeon who would fuck up a delicate procedure and I would die as a result.
If I could do this carefully and succeed in getting them both in line before tossing them away, then the future imagined surgery would be successful.
High stakes!
I succeeded, thankfully, ensuring successful medical interventions I hope I don’t need and keeping my anxiety in check for another half hour or so.
I’ve written about OCD before:
From the end of Tornado Movies and TV Psychics:
Magic words again, telling me this time that I was not magical after all, and neither were my obsessive thoughts or my weird counting, blinking, tapping, and rearranging habits. Something clicked then and I eventually became much better able to reason myself out of nonsensical thought patterns after that. Sometimes they still pop up, but then I remind myself: you are not magical, remember? They aren't exactly magic words, but they do tend to act like it, most of the time.
Well, it turns out these things are apparently so embedded in my psyche that it just happens naturally and I rarely even notice anymore. Now, though, when I do catch myself, I can usually laugh and turn down the anxiety, reminding myself that such things are not under my control, things like how I pick up Q-Tips from the bathroom counter are not analogies for broader future life events, and I am simply not the powerful sorceress I wish I was (or have convinced myself, somehow, that I am during these moments).
I do wish I got the kind of OCD that made me more likely to dust the ceiling fan more than once every 4 years, though. That would be a lot more convenient than hanging out in my mother’s bathroom longer than necessary in order to play a made-up Q-Tip game.
I can feel the tingling, that physical reaction in the hands from your brain telling you to do something that you do NOT want to do, just reading it.
I feel this. Coffee mugs, forks, that sort of thing. I recently threw out all the “bad luck plates” so I would stop having to move them to get to the correct plate for my snack.