This one time a mental health care speaker came to my high school. She mentioned the usual... depression, bipolar disorders... but then this one I’d never heard of before came up. I guess it was kind of disturbingly ironic because she was describing me. It was Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I didn’t think I was doing anything strange, I of course realised, that say, maybe washing my hands ten times after touching one little something was perhaps a bit much but I also thought that was what everyone else did.
As it turns out, I ‘learned’ this behaviour from my mom. We never talked about it. It just wasn’t done. Yeah, she’s in a bit of denial about it but now I’m older, I can see through that and realise that she knows. She just doesn’t want to admit it... just like me and that sore gum that eventually turned out to be wisdom teeth. As soon as I knew they were wisdom teeth, the pain crashed over me like a wave and later I marvelled at the sheer force of my mental willpower. I was afraid of it being the wisdoms, so I kept telling myself that it wasn’t. Every now and then they would twinge but as soon as the truth was inescapable – perhaps a year or so later, I couldn’t sleep without painkillers. Fortunately the extraction followed soon after.
Anyway, I wonder if my mom learned this behaviour from someone else. Maybe I’ll never know. It’s not like we aren’t functional human beings though. We both shield this behaviour from everyone else. I panicked when I first realised what was going on, I didn’t talk to this specialist about it, just asked for a brochure and mentioned it to my then boyfriend. He, much like the previous toothpaste on face at school episode – overreacted and made a huge drama of things – and ran off to tell his folks. I got the feeling that they thought I was just a stupid little school girl wanting attention.
Well, of course I was, but not about this. I wanted support from this dork, instead I was told to forget it while he kept regaling me with his ‘I’m a schizophrenic! Give me attention!’ routine. That sounds harsh but it’s true... He was always very suggestible – wanted to be a killer, racer, rapper, fighter, prophet or an army man whenever the next hit movie came out featuring something like that and it was always forgotten when the next big hit arrived.
I know, we all have crazes and fads will always be around. I stressed if I was the same, but deep down I didn’t think so. That little pamphlet explained to me *why* I kept doing these things that otherwise made no sense. I’d just never stopped to really wonder why it happened. In a way I felt relieved, that this wasn’t my fault and I wasn’t a bad person or a weirdo at all.
