thoughtfulI had a phone interview the other day in which I was asked about my writing process. I explained it—the checklists, the word counts, the editorial process—and the interviewer laughed and said, "So it's almost like an OCD thing, right?"
"Not almost," I said. "I have OCD."
He stopped laughing.
On most weekday mornings, I get out of bed at 5:13 AM. I write this in my planner. On Wednesdays, I get out of bed at 5:30 AM. I write this in my planner, too. On the weekends, I sleep later; last Sunday, I slept until 8:23 AM. I know this, because I wrote it in my planner.
After I get up, I dress, ablute, and check in online. This is done by visiting Gmail, personal mail, Twitter, LiveJournal, and FaceBook, in that order. Always in that order. I pack my lunch. On weekdays (except for Wednesdays) I leave the house at 5:34 AM, to catch the first bus. I know this, because all these things, too, are written in my planner. So is everything else. What exercises I will do, what my assigned word counts will be, what to remember to say to my roommates, whether it's time to brush the cat...everything.
I have been a member of Weight Watchers since late 2004. I like Weight Watchers. It gives me an excuse to write down everything I eat, and turn every activity into a number to be added to a little column. In the times where I can't attend meetings and get new "official" trackers, those same counts wind up going into my planner, along with a record of what time I took my multivitamin and how much water I've had to drink. What shows I watched that day. What books I read.
Tiny columns of numbers march along the sides of the calendar—how many days to book release, how many days since book release, how many days since I did something that I'm waiting to hear more information on. I record the return dates of shows that I watch, the release dates of movies, the official dates of conventions. Birthdays and ages. I celebrate friendship anniversaries and remember strange holidays that, having made it into my calendar once, are now a permanent part of my personal year.
When I see street numbers or phone numbers or the like, I will automatically start picking them apart to determine whether they are either a multiple of nine or a prime number. Either of these is deeply comforting to me. Numbers that are one digit off in either direction can be distracting, if I've been having a bad enough day. I would be perfectly happy eating the same things for every meal, every day, for the rest of my life.
People sometimes ask me how I can bear it; how I can break my life down into schedules and checklists and tasks without going crazy. But the thing is, that's how my brain works. I look at other people's lives and wonder how they can bear it—having to agonize over menus, not knowing where to sit, not remembering the order of the primes, not knowing when all their favorite TV shows come back on the air. I find the framework of my life to be freeing, not confining, and I don't really comprehend living any other way.
And yes, sometimes I have to make concessions in order to remain stable. I arrive at the airport two hours before my flights, period. I don't care if I have to miss things to do it; the rules say "two hours before," and I arrive two hours before. I become uncomfortable and have difficulty focusing if someone takes my chair in a setting where I have defined patterns. Some things have to be done in a certain order, and if I try to do them in a different order, I am likely to become very difficult to deal with. Failure to complete a to-do list is upsetting to me on a deep, profound level that I have difficulty explaining in verbal terms; it's just wrong. My friends learn that if you're going on a social outing with me, you need to arrive on time or deal with me having a meltdown, that I do not want to have adventurous food, and that I will throw you out of the house if your arrival interferes with standing scheduled events. And the beat goes on.
Because I am very functional, and because the standard image of "someone with OCD" is Adrian Monk or Hannelore, I do occasionally have to deal with people assuming I'm exaggerating. I don't compulsively wash my hands or clean my kitchen, I'm definitely not a germaphore, and if I re-type books completely between drafts, well, that's just a quirk. But obsession and compulsion both take many forms, and while I have found peace with mine, and consider them a vital part of who I am, that doesn't mean they don't exist. (Why I would joke about having something that is considered a mental illness, I don't know.)
Remember that just because someone is a functional, relatively normal-seeming human being, that doesn't mean they're wired the way that you are. I have to remind myself that not everybody wants their day broken down into fifteen-minute increments, because for me, that is the norm. The human mind is an amazing thing, full of possibilities, and each of us expresses them differently. I am a cybernetic space princess from Mars, and that's not a choice I made; that's the way I was made. I can get an address on Earth, but Mars will always be my home.
Whatever planet you're from, that's okay. Just try not to assume that everyone you know is from the same place. I'd be willing to bet you that they're not.
April 1 2010, 02:32:45 UTC 7 years ago
AMEN! I have Asperger's Syndrome, which is on the autism spectrum, and have lots of quirks because of it. I'm also a functional Multiple collective, and a lot of people I tell this to have difficulties with it, since the stereotype of a multiple is full-blown Dissociative Identity Disorder, with the "original" not being able to communicate with the others, and there being drastic, obvious switches from one to another. A lot of people think I'm playing a game or something when I say all of the members of my collective are aware of each other at all times, can hear each other's thoughts, and have a common memory. They just don't *get* that there *are* major differences; everyone in the collective has their own distinct personality. But we co-operate the body, all of us sitting "up front" at the same time, and it can be hard for even people in the know to pick out the individuals at times because we don't generally fight over control of the body. We make decisions collectively, act collectively, unless one of us wants to do something of their own for a while. Also, decades of being bullied for not being normal has made us proficient at pretending to be normal.
I remember back before we were aware of anything other than stereotypical D.I.D./MPD, I was often confused, comparing my observations of others to my self-observations. For the longest time I thought it was perfectly normal to have full-fledged arguments with one's self (internally) about what to do, and I thought it was normal to have half a dozen or more different opinions about things, to be constantly seeing things from multiple perspectives at once. When I started comparing my internal workings to other people, though, I started to get confused. *How* is a bit hard to explain without examples... but basically, I slowly became aware that there was more to my thought patterns than mere randomness or having lots of interests, or moodiness.
Giving examples from the present... whichever of us has the strongest influence at the moment might completely forget something, and another of us will remind them. Or a word will go missing, and someone else will say, "Do you mean ___?" Sometimes we'll stop dead in our tracks and have a 10-minute long, detailed argument internally about what to do next. Things that some of us don't mind or even enjoy, others will be annoyed by. Lo, for example, loves the early work of a band called Skinny Puppy, and rocks out whenever it's on; but Alex has a fit whenever she plays it, since he can't stand it. When waiting in line, some of us are very patient, but Alex is not. The only way we can patiently wait in line without Alex's annoyance being there is if he goes down into The Cellar. (A place in the collective mind we can go to disappear for a while. If anything goes on down there, we can never remember it.) There was even a time, once, when Molly was happily singing to the car radio, and Alex was in a rage at the slow drivers... both at the exact same time. That event was the deciding moment, the moment we *knew*. Because we hadn't seen any indication that anyone else ever had such wildly different emotional states about two entirely different things at the same time. Not alternating, even - at the exact same time!
Because of the constant internal chatter, from the 9 minds in here, and also from non-sentient temporary globules of thought that form like galaxies of thought in the universe of my brain, there's always activity going on in my brain. A lot of it we're not even aware of completely until my brain has come up with something it simply MUST show us. Entire poems have composed themselves down in the parts of my brain we're not consciously aware of, and surfaced ready-made, startling us.
There's far more, but I'm a little tired right now.
April 1 2010, 14:53:51 UTC 7 years ago
That's epic. I applaud your realization.
April 2 2010, 03:57:56 UTC 7 years ago