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Posts Tagged ‘ocd’

Here’s a super-belated birthday post I wrote last year but never posted until now. As of March 17th, 2011 I’m back to an even number age:

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I turned thirty-seven years old last week and am SO glad to be back on an odd number.

Some people have “issues” with numbers, often with a serious preference for even or odd numbers (and a lot of these people are OCD and/or autistic or Aspies). I’ve always preferred odd numbers which is unusual since most people with this obsession prefer evens, but I’m adamant that odd numbers are more “perfect” with more symmetry.

I know, I know, most people think an even number is more beautiful because when you split it in half, it’s balanced with equal amounts on both sides. These people will do anything to avoid odd numbers, but I myself am uncomfortable with EVEN numbers and feel like something’s missing. Aside from just finding odd  numbers more aesthetically pleasing (the way they look, the way they sound, the way they are in all of my important dates and numbers) I figured it out that for me I always need one left over in the middle to be the anchor. Think of an old-fashioned scale: there has to be a lever in between the two pans. There always has to be that one left over in the middle for me to see/feel everything in balance.

I’m not totally OCD about it . . . I have forced myself to accept even-numbered things and results and times and dollar amounts and can tolerate them without pain (and am often not even aware of whether a number is odd or even), but I always feel a bigger relief and sense of rightness when things come out odd.

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Another OCD symptom I was wrapped up in as a pre-teen was weird sympathy for inanimate objects. The biggest daily issue concerned the dishes and how I placed them in the dish-drainer after washing them; I avoided letting any of one type of dishware be “lonely” or forced into a group/family of dishes it didn’t belong to.

We had a lot of tupperware cups. Some had flared rims and cool colors, some were newer/smoother and made in warm colors. I tried very hard to group the new warm ones together and the older, more-sensitive cups with each other. I would feel sad and guilty if one of the old ones had to be lumped up against a gang of stiff new ones all by itself. In that situation it would be better to find the old cup a place apart where it would be safe even if lonely.

From one of my fave funny blogs, UnhappyHipsters.com

This wasn’t a game I played with myself to make doing the dishes more interesting, it was just an uncomfortable given. As I got older I tried to reason with myself, and there have been times in my life where I don’t pay attention to the dishes’ feelings and identities at all, but sometimes I do still find myself wanting to put them in the “right” places and giving myself permission to arrange them in a way that feels good to me. I remind myself that these problems are all in my head, but I will still rearrange the dishes sometimes if things aren’t right. It’s not always about the dishes feelings, but just about building the perfect pile.

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One of the presents I gave to myself was time to play with my Magic: The Gathering cards. Not to play the game or really “play” in any sense that most other people have of playing, but to organize and sort parts of my collection. Like arranging rocks and colors on my altar. That is often how I find peace/bliss/relaxation. I sat on the floor surrounded by my cards and enjoyed putting them into stacks by expansion, by colors, by rarity; who would want a birthday party when she could be alone sorting uniformly-sized small cards with artwork and a bunch of special designations indicated by symbols and special text on said cards? Not I!!

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There’s a three and there’s a seven.

January thru March 16th of 2011 will be (oddly) even better!

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It wasn’t, but I know you can’t win at life through lucky numbers and proper sorting alone . . .

9/3/2010 Cabin Day #1: 0 (zero) words

Loading stuff up in the van to take to the cabin I worried that the neighbors would think I was moving out and leaving Delia. Maybe that worry was just a projection of my own discomfort over making time alone/away a priority. Because there aren’t good models affirming pursuing time alone away from home unless it’s to do regular work that regular people do in the midst of whole bunches of other regular people. People who desire as much time alone as I do are widely regarded as unhealthy freaks or suspected of having other motives besides a simple need for solitude. Whatever the reason, I wanted to keep running back inside to hug Delia and get reassurance that whatever I‘m doing it‘s not what it might look like to the neighbors.

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At the cabin the wind blew and I wondered how come the skinny tall trees here don’t fall down. I amazed myself by not being annoyed that there’s a daycare with kid sounds a block away. I felt the sun on the back of my neck. I gazed at the crescent moon with breakfast around noon. I scratched up my arm and the back of my thigh on blackberry bush thorns. I figured out where I can stand and lie in the cabin with the blinds open without being seen by the girl in the big house or the people next door. I made a note to buy a couple of curtains to further hide myself when desired in those couple of places where I can be seen. I caught up on all of the pooping I didn’t get done while we were away from home for three nights.

I started to stop thinking about how to get down the ladder from the loft  (how do I mount it under the slant of roof? Do I turn around and climb it back down or just walk straight forward like I’m going down stairs?). I lit a candle. Then I blew it out when we left to get gas, but only $15 worth because we’re almost out of money until Tuesday so we didn’t reset the mileage on the odometer because our fuel gauge is broken/stuck on full.

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Things didn’t go exactly as planned, meaning I didn’t have time to plan to make things perfectly prepared.

Want to read more about Day One at The Cabin? I’m hiding the minute details after a break so as not to bore or overwhelm folks who don’t want to read about my zero word count day:

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