O.C.D.
Friday, April 25, 2008
O.C.D.
April's nephew is a real piece of work, a young genius who is beyond his years. But like all geniuses of this world, they have temperaments unique to the brilliant minds. It is difficult for ordinary people like myself to understand people like that, why they have to have a certain system in doing things, a specific way of how things should work. Her little newphew isn't even ten yet, and he is already arranging glasses of water to the middle of the coasters on the table. It is a youthful sign of the obsessive compulsive disorder to come, a psychiatric anxiety disorder that is rooted in every one of us in this world in varying degrees. I used to think of myself as a person that is free of OCD though, I used to think that I stood out from all the other people because I was normal. In retrospect, however, there are just things that are blind to ourselves, little things we do in life that are evidences of OCDs. Thankfully, OCD isn't a deadly disease like the bubonic plague or something, and it is rather interesting if we take our time to examine it.
April's nephew is a real piece of work, a young genius who is beyond his years. But like all geniuses of this world, they have temperaments unique to the brilliant minds. It is difficult for ordinary people like myself to understand people like that, why they have to have a certain system in doing things, a specific way of how things should work. Her little newphew isn't even ten yet, and he is already arranging glasses of water to the middle of the coasters on the table. It is a youthful sign of the obsessive compulsive disorder to come, a psychiatric anxiety disorder that is rooted in every one of us in this world in varying degrees. I used to think of myself as a person that is free of OCD though, I used to think that I stood out from all the other people because I was normal. In retrospect, however, there are just things that are blind to ourselves, little things we do in life that are evidences of OCDs. Thankfully, OCD isn't a deadly disease like the bubonic plague or something, and it is rather interesting if we take our time to examine it.
Before I begin on my own set of OCDs, I suppose I should begin by talking about the OCDs that I have encountered in my life. I remember reading about people who cannot tolerate odd numbers in their lives. For example, the volume of the television cannot be changed to a level that is of an odd number - say, 33. Exceptions can be made for numbers like 35 though, because these numbers are divisible by five, but every other number other than multiples of five and even numbers can never be tolerated. If I am not wrong, singer Kelly Clarkson has that problem, and a few other celebrities that confessed to that problem. Perhaps that is why odd numbers are called odd numbers, maybe the person that dictated these mathematical terms in the first place didn't like odd numbers very much in the first place either. I wonder what would happen if a person like that becomes accidentally pregnant after the second child, and having three children just doesn't feel very right. I wonder, really.
There are other OCDs as well, in fact I bet if you were to make a list of the OCDs in this world, it is going to be able to wrap up an entire skyscraper I'm sure. There is no end to a list like that, and some of these OCDs can be seriously life-threatening in the long run, I'm sure. I have read of people who mentally counts the number of corners in the house before going to sleep, and by that we are talking about every possible corners. The corners of the table, the chair, the television, the shelves, everything. These people go crazy over the numbers, and they are never satisfied by the end of their calculations. They always seem to have a problem with their calculations, so they start all over again and the process repeats itself unto infinity. That is not to mention how there are people who are never convinced by the level of cleanliness in their homes. They cannot stop cleaning, something is always dirty in the house. So they spend their day cleaning the house as well as themselves, afraid to contract some kind of deadly virus in the carpets or something. Now, that's very, very serious.
Thankfully, I don't know of people with such serious OCDs. Most of the people I know have OCDs that are more amusing than disturbing, and they are conveniently labeled by others as being "anal" about things. A particular person I used to know very well had so many OCDs that the mood of the day was practically dependent on it. She was the kind of person who didn't like the idea of stepping on cracks on the sidewalks, and she has to step on the tiles whenever she can. She has to step onto a set of staircase on the left foot, she must stand or sit by the left-hand side of somebody else. She has to sit in a particular seat on the bus, unless a window seat is available. She had a certain way of holding hands with her significant other, with the thumb belong his and never above, and the front side of her palm must face forward rather than back. Those were just some of the OCDs I can remember, and it definitely is a big part of her life back then - not too sure about now, not too sure anymore.
April and I also share a few OCDs regarding our pencil cases. I think April is going to spit foam and die if she checks out my pencil case one day, because it is not one that'd belong to someone with OCD. Amidst the mess, however, I do have my rules, rules that are shared with April on certain levels. For example, our erasers can never be black at the tip, it must be rubbed until all the blacks are gone before being thrown back into the pencil case and zipped up. That is probably why I was rather fascinated by my sister's black eraser, because it took away the need to keep the eraser clean in the first place. I cannot tolerate any pen being uncapped, or if the tips of the pen did not properly retract into the pen itself. It's not so much about the possibility of having the inside of the pencil case stained by the ink, but rather the idea of something that is not kept properly that irks me to no end. But then again, nothing is really kept properly in my bedroom anyway, so I guess this is a case of double standards.
Here is a confession worthy of postsecret.com, something which not a lot of people know about. I have a thing for clean toilet bowls, I cannot tolerate one that is dirty at all. I have this compulsive urge to clean a dirty toilet bowl, even if it is one that is not my own. It is the first thing that I do when I use a public toilet, to wipe the edges of the seat clean before using it, though others might find the idea of cleaning other people's urine a rather disgusting thing to do. I remember back in last December when I had the bad case of bronchitis, and I was over at a friend's house when my natural reflexes kicked in and I could feel the vomit coming up my throat. So I made a dash to the bathroom, dived for the toilet, opened the toilet seat only to find that it was badly stained by dried urine. I could feel the vomit swelling up at the back of my throat, I could feel my lips parting for the vomit to come out. But instead of just letting it all go, I swallowed it back while I tore a piece of toilet paper from the roll and started wiping the edge over and over again until I was satisfied. That was when I allowed nature and gravity to take hold, that was when I comfortably puked into the toilet bowl - that sounded strange.
Anyway, that's just one thing. I have an obsession with clean toilet bowls, but I guess people do have a thing for cleanliness too. Here's a little something about me that not a lot of people know about either. I have OCD when it comes to naming the song files in my computer, a certain standardization you might say. You know how it is with downloaded files, they don't usually come in proper forms sometimes. Titles that are not properly capitalized, spaced, or even spelled. Sometimes you get songs that have numbers at the front, underscores, hyphens, random dots, or a ridiculous amount of slashes. It is made worse sometimes if the order of the songs are not properly done, when the album names are not properly typed, everything. Little things like that can piss me off to no end as well, and I really take the time to make sure that everything is in accordance to my satisfaction. That is not to mention the proper artwork for every album, and that is something I am still working at.
When it comes to mandarin songs, however, things become a little more tricky. I don't have a lot of those in my iTunes library, but the ones that I have follow a strict set of standards as well. When it comes to Chinese characters, it is generally divided into traditional chinese and simplified chinese, with the latter being a little newer and more widely used. Most countries in Asia right now subscribes to simplified chinese because it is, well, simpler. Traditional chinese is probably used only in Taiwan (and maybe Hong Kong, I'm not sure) right now, because the rest of the mandarin speaking population have grown lazy when it comes to writing the language. The truth is, simplified chinese just looks ugly as hell for some reason, it takes away the original form of beauty that the language had originally. The language has been officially bastardized by the Chinese government, so shame on them. Anyway, my mandarin song titles have to be in traditional chinese, not anything else. Simply because - it looks better.
The same standards go to my video files as well, the movies have to be properly titled and the live concert videos properly dated. Even my DVDs are in alphabetical order, something which is rather geek but I am really proud of. In any case, I guess each and every one of us have our own OCDs, our little preferences that are there without a rational reason whatsoever. Our lives work better that way somehow, smoother and with much less hassles. As long as it is not life-controlling, I say why not? I guess these so-called psychiatric anxiety disorders make us that much more unique, that much more different from everybody else.
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on Friday, April 25, 2008 at 1:42 AM.
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4:12 AM
That's how we get nicknames!