Pritam's Blog
Living With OCD
I guess once you develop OCD, there is no way you are going to get better. There is this part of you that, I believe, will always remain unstable and confused. All you need is a little trigger of some sort that will bring back everything. And if not that, you are probably questioning yourself, doubting, trying to assess whether or not the things you do, certain things, can be called an obsession or normal by, you know, normal standards.
For instance, just a few hours back, when I landed in Kolkata, I had to go to the toilet. During my worst OCD phase, I couldn’t even imagine myself going inside a public toilet. If I had to, I would literally wash everything, including my cellphone, after coming back home. But I had improved, or at least, I believed so.
So, I went to the toilet. Until that moment, I was doing perfectly fine. Even though I had to pick up my luggage, which I assume was handled by multiple people at Bangalore Airport, I didn’t feel the need to wash my hands. I wasn’t getting eager to reach home so that I can go to the ‘cleanest’ basin and wash my cellphone which was touched first by the security at the departure gate and then by the guy at check-in, to check my e-ticket. So yes, I was doing well.
But then I went to the toilet. Once done, I was washing my hands, the normal kind. And right at that moment, someone started cleaning the toilet, mopping the floor and all.
And it occurred to me what if a few drops of that dirty water, speeding out of the pipe that the man was holding had bounced off of the floor and landed on me.
That was enough. I washed my hands for almost 10 minutes, all the while looking at others and wondering if I was losing it. And when I was done, I wasn’t the least bit satisfied. I have been feeling dirty since then and I can’t wait to reach home so that I can wash everything.
Living with OCD sucks.