A Morning Routine with OCD

Morning routines and morning rituals are two entirely different things

This comes on the back of my earlier post, in which I share a little about my experience, my life, with OCD:

Full disclosure, I was planning to do a “Day in the Life” post, but I don’t think anybody has time to squeeze in a trilogy-length read through right now. So I’m sectioning them — much like I often considered doing to myself — into Morning, Afternoon and Evening. Or as I like to call them; the hours that exist around Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. I measure my life not by the passage of time, but the passage of snacks down my throat.

I was never a morning person.

Which is, to be fair, pretty common. As a seventeen-year-old, you’re made to take some kind of Teenager Oath, swearing to never, ever, feel joyfully towards any hour that exists between sunrise and 12:14 pm, at the earliest. But that’s not why I hated mornings.

I was never a morning person because honestly, I couldn’t stand it. With morning came newness; a new day, a new surge of scarring thoughts and a new bout of raging OCD. Ironically, a new morning made me feel so old. My brain ached from the minute it awoke, my limbs just couldn’t muster the energy to move. I was exhausted before the day had even started — all because I knew what was coming. What was already here, just lying in wait. OCD doesn’t sleep, you see. It just seeps in from the night before.

7:20 am

So I’m seventeen, it’s a weekday, I’m slap-bang in the peak of A-Level exam season and for breakfast, I’m having a super-serving of stress. Not even sweetened with sugar. But before that, I need to get up, get dressed, get to school.

For most, it’s a simple process. Begrudging glare at the alarm clock, quick wash, whip on an outfit, brush hair, teeth, beard (hey, I don’t know, it’s a weird age. Puberty affects us all differently), grab breakfast, grab your stuff then head out the door. But for me, it was anything but.

Firstly, I’d have to peel back the very limited amount of quilt cover I had — because a solid 93% of it was weighed down by the entire contents of my room stored on top of my bed, beside me. Climbing out of bed was enough of a struggle, my entire body stiff and sore from sleeping in a compressed ball up against my pillow all night. With a stretch and a groan, I’d plant my feet on the floor and stand. That’s when the first compulsion arrived. If I put a little too much pressure on the one foot when it touched the carpet, I’d have to account for it by shifting my weight to the other foot, then balance it out, then wait. For a count of one, two, three, four. Repeating that four times over.

I didn’t shower in the morning. That in itself was too much of a feat. There wouldn’t have been enough time and honestly, ironically, hygiene was always the very least of my OCD concerns. So, instead, I simply headed straight to the toilet for the first wee of the day. And if I could help it, the only. Because it just wasn’t worth the effort. After the act of actually going to the loo, then began the ritualistic behaviours. Pulling up my pants and pyjama bottoms were the first one, in which I had to hook my fingers into the waistband and hold them there for a specific length of time, all whilst the backs of my knees pressed firmly against the toilet bowl and remained there, holding that pressure evenly between each leg until the time elapsed. Then I’d tap the loo lid against the cistern and the seat repetitively — one, one, two. Three, pause, four — and then shut it completely. That was important. I could never leave the lid up. Not if I wanted my dad’s house to be safe from flooding.

I didn’t wash my hands. I couldn’t. It would have tacked on another several minute of suffering. Gross, sure. But it’s easier to be gross than inherently miserable, you know?

7:35 am

Fifteen minutes for a wee. Imagine how long it took if I was doing the other thing.

Next came the eyeliner application. Granted, before being seventeen I just did not affiliate with make-up. Not for OCD reasons but because I have -4 make-up wielding abilities. Apparently the whole beaten down a darkened alley look just isn’t suitable for the sixth form. But then came the eyeliner. And it came on thick (literally).

Wiping my face with a wipe required a specific path. A series of circular motions, in a set order, no alterations allowed. You mess up, you begin again. Sometimes until my face began to sting.

I had four separate eyeliners, three of them entirely empty. But I could not, could not, bin any of them. So each time I needed to open a new one, it simply tacked onto the end of an already pretty lengthy routine. After having actually drawn on my little cat eye — in which the wing tip had to be so precise it was no more than an atom wide — I would then proceed to tap the eyeliner stick (called a “wand,” but that’s a little unjust. Most of the magic is drawn from my super steady fingertips. I am friggin’ good at it, I tell ya) back and forth between my eyes. But this time, not in a methodical, predetermined pattern — just until it felt right (I’ll come back to this in a moment). And then, if and when it ever did, I repeated that process with the other eyeliners.

Skipping ahead a little (for your own sake. The bloody pandemic will be over before you’ve finished reading this bad boy. And the damn DFS sale) getting dressed was an entirely separate mountain to climb.

There was a lot to it, as you can imagine, but just as a glimpse; I’d have to twist my trousers round in circles for a while, counting along in my head as I did. If I missed a beat or got distracted or interrupted then that was it. Back to square one. Which, let’s face it, I spent so much time at that I’d long since strung up fairy lights and got my own key cut for the place. If you fancy sending me sympathy shortbread, my address is: Square 1, Not-So-Great Britbrain, H8U 0CD. (Or at least, it was. But don’t worry kids, I’m free now! Conceptually, speaking. Physically, I’m indoors, 2 metres away at all times, right?).

8:12 am

I never had breakfast. I know. Me? Skipping a meal? On purpose? That’s how you knew it was bad. Not that mealtime was much of an OCD ordeal — when doing such public activities like eating amongst family or walking with friends, I was mostly able to subdue my urges — it’s just that I didn’t have the time. Any free moment was riddled with ritual.

So I’d finally finished my getting ready routine, which ended on the act of slipping the same pair of socks on that’d I’d been wearing all week. And by all week, I mean all month. And by all month I mean — let’s just be thankful I never had to take my shoes off at school. Sigh. I don’t know why. Other than to protect the lives of all that I love, I do not know why. Is that not enough?

Next up; packing my schoolbag. And by that I mean, hauling the tiny abyss of Crap™ that I’d accumulated throughout the year on my back like a cosmic donkey. And man did I feel like an ass. It got to the point where my bag was merely a prop because it was unusable, redundant, nothing lost to that void would ever be retrieved. Every wrapper, every receipt, every dried-up pen and balled up note, every crumb, every 2 pence piece, everything that I’d retained throughout the year resided in there. To this day, I honestly have no idea of its full contents (I only recently unearthed that shoulder-strapped Satan and lobbed it straight in the bin without a second glance), but I distinctly remember carrying around a knitted purple scarf with a stray slice of banana mushed into it, and moulding.

Not even my school books survived in its grimy grasp. I’d given up trying to take notes in lessons. I wanted to, don’t get me wrong. I was desperate not to fall behind. But it was just too much, too fierce, too excruciating. Writing each sentence backwards, from the bottom right of the page back up to the top left, starting each word with its last letter, it wasn’t easy. And yeah, I know it doesn’t sound that hard either, in the context of global pandemics, intergalactic warfare and having to face your life knowing you made the detrimental choice of being Team Jacob when you were thirteen — and that’s because it isn’t. We’d all opt for that any day of the week in comparison. Even me, Team Edward Extraordinaire.

But, at the time, it was insufferable. More so because even whilst surrounded by other people, I still had to act upon these compulsions. Trying to sneakily hide my urges, staying undetectable and seemingly “normal”, whilst still carrying them out — well let’s just say I’m waiting for that OBE award, asap. Just so I can finally have obtained a nicer set of three letters to label myself.

ANYWAY.

I’ll save the school-time section for another post, perhaps.

The Walk to School

I’ll keep this brief (I can practically hear your eyes rolling).

• Every crack in the pavement — an enemy.
• Every branch or wall or another person that might have grazed my arm as I passed them — a torturer.
• Every car zipping by — an eyesore. Quite literally. I would have to glance at them a certain number of times before they disappeared out of sight

The entire journey was based around my senses, the pressure of the Earth against my skin and every item that crossed my vision. If something touched my right elbow, I would instantly have to find something else to press my left elbow against and hold, indefinitely. You know; until it felt right. I had to look at people in even numbers (which was ace if there was a cute boy passing by. Got to check him out at least twice).

But otherwise, it was friggin’ tiring I tell ya. The amount of times I had to lie to my friends to justify why I was late; “left my phone in the bathroom, sorry! Stepped in a huge pile of dog crap again, whoops! Dropped into a wormhole and wound up in that Pop-tart dimension from Rick and Morty and it was real tricky to flag down a toaster-taxi that wouldn’t sear my skin off! Won’t happen again.” But then, it happened again.

I felt bad. I felt horrifically guilty. But I also knew that if I didn’t do as my OCD brain demanded, then I’d feel worse knowing that my inaction might have just killed them all off.

Feeling “right”

I think it’s similar to when Grown Ups™ tell you when you’re in love, you’ll just know. When you’re fulfilling your true purpose, you’ll just know. When something isn’t quite right, you’ll just know. Like trusting your gut, your intuition, your instinct. Assuming, of course, your gut, your intuition and your instinct all despise you.

And it was never that obvious, you know? It wasn’t this clear-cut, well-defined, tangible feeling. The closest it ever truly felt to “right” was this hazy, abstract moment. But it was only brief. Fleeting. It popped up unexpectedly and then hopped out of existence almost immediately after. If I’d missed that tiny window then I was screwed, left to linger in place — purgatory, if you will — waiting for the next scheduled “feeling right” instance. Which was more infrequent than the damn buses here in Britain. I was forever searching for this singularity to release me from my compulsions, only to know that it wouldn’t be long before I’d be seeking out the next.

I guess I wasn’t so much waiting to “feel right.” Simply just to feel less wrong.

I’d choose that kind of morning over any kind of mourning

And so would you.

It’s so bittersweet. Because all of this, everything, it all stemmed from one specific place. My heart. No, not my mind — that was simply the inadvertent detour that my heart too, leading it down some dingy backstreets in which my brain got beaten up trying to protect it. But the place of origin is my heart. My infinite love for those I will infinitely love. Every urge, every action, every ritual, it was all for them. And yeah, I knew it was all irrational. I knew it was all in my head. But knowledge doesn’t always mean freedom. I still couldn’t turn away.

Which is why I’m doing this, I suppose. Because I know that the only difference between those of us who have it and those of us who don’t is a tiny glitch in the system. Like whilst the universe was making us, she popped off to make a cuppa and her cat jumped up onto her laptop, accidentally adding those tiny yet torturous three letters into the code. And here we are. Because we all have loved ones we’d do anything to protect. It’s just that my anything included not being able to type out the word “and” in full. Amongst others.

But now?

Well. Let’s just say; now the morning is my favourite time of day.