OCD and Me

I am taking a break from writing about 2020 for a few days because somehow talking about my divorce and mental health is less depressing than that cod bollocks (that’s the saying, right?) of a year. So what shall we talk about? Lets spin the wheel and find out. [If you could briefly imagine a Wheel of Fortune esque contraption spinning all showbiz like that would be awesome, ta in advance]. Oh, it has landed…. drum roll please…. on…..

First a bit of bad news to start 2021, I mean 2020 was such a train wreck this year might as well follow suit. My cleaning company has gone bust. It is a crying shame but not entirely unexpected. It was mainly due to bad reviews and me not having an actual clue what I was doing. Here are some extracts of said reviews, though I feel they may been overexaggerating some what:

“It is somehow even fucking dirtier than when he began”

“It looks like someone has dragged their greasy bollocks across my kitchen surfaces”

“I could have strapped a hoover to my cat and got better results”

“I sat outside and just cried after opening my front door to what can only be described as a nuclear wasteland”

Ok, that final one was my bad but I legitimately thought the quickest and most efficient way of cleaning her carpet was to bleach it, turns out they were supposed to be brown. So it seems having OCD doesn’t automatically qualify me as a cleaner. Oh wait… rather coincidently, completely unplanned you understand, this might be a good topic for conversation.

I guarantee that for the vast majority of you OCD means someone who is a neat freak obsessed with cleanliness and organisation. It did for me too until 2020, that was when it’s definition was rewritten in bold as fuck capital letters for me. Let me explain dear reader what the actual fuck OCD is to the best of my capabilities.

The NHS describes OCD as:

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common mental health condition where a person has obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours.

Note the lack of mention of clean in that definition. Yes it can be a issue with contamination and cleanliness but it also can be alot more. You see OCD is a diverse condition and touches on numerous themes. It is a bit like ice cream. Yes, ice cream is the name of the food but it comes in a host of different flavours.
Similarly OCD comes in a host of flavours. Awful flavours though mind like: chocolate shit, vagisil vanilla and minty minge. Quite literally put any letter or combination of letters in front of the term ocd and you will have a form of this horrendous shit fuel of a disease.

OCD comes in two parts. However, this is not the good type of two parter like an epic narrative of your favorite TV show that cannot simply be contained within an average run time. No, this fucker has two means of fucking with your mind.

OCD tends to start with a thought. Can you believe that? A lifelong of pain over a singular thought. Those in the know call these intrusive thoughts. We all have these daily. Thoughts that fire off in your little wanker of a brain that you simply say “what the actual fuck on the mountain top are you on about?” and then carry on with the rest of your day.

These can be literally anything from a fear of your house burning down, murdering a loved one or walking up to your boss, slapping them and saying “you sir, are a cock womble”. Usually these are shaped by our worst fears, worries, concerns or what we consider morally wrong. I describe my OCD as a bogart from Harry Potter, an entity that keeps shifting form to mimic my current worst fear to terrify me.

Would we do any of these though? Fuck to the no. However, those with OCD, instead of moving on with life, obsess over these thoughts like a chubby child at a birthday party eyeing up the chocolate cake. Sure, we can pretend to have a good time and maybe get our wobbly ass on the dance floor for five minutes but we know there is cake in the room. It becomes our every thought, we sing “happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear…cake”, play pin the tail on the… cake and dance to that childhood classic Cotton Eyed… cake. Occasionally these thoughts become so much that we collapse on the dance floor in a flood of tears and shout “I know the cake is real and I won’t feel better till it is forcibly shoved into my throat like that scene in Matilda”.

So as a defence, sensing a threat, our mind creates rituals and compulsions to avoid these thought caused cake breakdowns. What are these? Well again this can be anything from not wearing a particular colour shirt as it is linked to a bad experience, reciting your day in your head to stop something bad from happening, itching as a form of release, cleaning everything so you don’t become diseased or constantly checking your body for life threatening illnesses. The ritual becomes a habit to relieve or lessen the stress that the obsession stirs. It is almost like an itchy nut sack that the more you itch the more it needs to be itched.

One form of OCD, the one I am predominantly lumbered with, is named Pure OCD. This is when there are no physical or visual compulsions but the rituals occur inside the mind instead, for instance, rumination of the obsession and a need to seek reassurance. The best way I can describe it is having a constant argument with yourself with, what I call, your inner OCD voice who very much is determined to win this argument by any means possible, even playing incredibly dirty (not in the sense of whips and chains either).

So that is my brief description and overview of OCD. I hope it cleared some stuff up for you and potentially was even educational.That would be fucking rare of this page to be intelligent and teaching the public something but hey miracles do happen. After all i am still holding out hope that Alan Sugar will want to invest into my cleaning business, after all I did break into his house and wash his really nice expensive shirts for him, oh and a random red pair of men’s pants. That reminds me has anyone seen him wearing all those pink shirts lately… is pink back in fashion?