OCD and Me

7/6/2008
Many people may consider being obsessive compulsive a bad thing, however
I enjoy it. If I wasnt OCD, I wouldnt be who I am. Sure negative things come with
it, such as narcissism and irrational fears. However, it makes me strive to do better,
learn more, and remember things in an organized way.
I have a real nostalgia problem because of this; one thing that really
devastates me is losing things I collect and/or work on and consider art to me part
of my past. Once I lose something, I usually dont attempt to remake or repurchase
it, because the original has been lost forever. Such was the case for my computer
hard drive, which was fried, causing me to lose a lot of what I considered priceless
art and nostalgia. Three years of work down the fucking drain. However, some was
salvaged, but it fucks with my OCD to know that some data is gone and now the
rest is unorganized. I trusted data to be a safe storage for my life, because unlike
this paper, that data can live forever. I want to be remembered forever, and with as
many details of who I truly am as possible.
Im really not about living for the moment; Im about making a great piece of
art, and being able to go back any time I want to enjoy it. Instant gratification is
fleeting, I want history. And though I may remember it, when I die I take it to my
grave. I may be able to recover some of it as I post it on the net under the moniker
Greg dratsab Huffman however it wont stay up forever and the quality will be
ruined. Most of my great pieces of satire will be lost forever. When I die, the
essence of it, as well as its existence will be destroyed forever. That is one of my
greatest fears, if not #1, fear that this world when Armageddon hits will be
forgotten. The art, songs, figures, all its history maybe aliens will recover some.
-Greg dratsab Huffman

(1/1/2015) My Life with OCD: Just a Little History

It is currently 1:44am and it has just turned 2015. Amy and I celebrated over
at her friend Gay Chris house. The very timing of my writing this is an act of
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I considered writing it last night as my final writing
of 2014, but I already had made many writings in 2014, so I decided to bring in the
new year with a new note on this article I had not touch on since 2008, and was so
small that I felt it needed some expansion. I had actually collected the notes for
this story back on November 11 of last year, but was waiting for the right time to
deploy them. Even mentioning some quotidian detail like being over at Chris house
is probably my OCD in me wanting to mention every banal detail. I even decided to
make the title of the note a rhyme. Sometimes I refuse to change up something I
write. For example, even if it wasnt written as best it could be, I really hate to
change things up and lose the spirit of the moment in which I wrote it. Hell, even

right now, Im half asleep and probably not writing this to the best of my ability, but
fuck it I doubt I will edit it (except for typos etc.) I like to think I am capturing my
personality in my run-on sentences and such. My little idiosyncratic though
processes. Even if not technically correct psychologically interesting. But I
digress!
I think I first realized I had OCD in 10th grade. I was in Gibbs High School
(quotidian details, aha!) at the time. Maybe my brother Cody was there with me? I
think he took that class as well. Anyway, it was a health class and they were
discussing disorders, such as social anxiety which I already knew I had (Ill write
about the history of that one day as well). I remember talking to some guy after
class a friend of Codys, I do believe and I told him I thought I had OCD and he
replied that he thought that was the only disorder he didnt have.
The obsession with hand washing was mentioned, which I can identify with.
But I assumed I was crazy with an idiosyncratic habit of counting my bites of food,
which I had done ever since I was a young child. I remember counting every crunch
of cereal. This was elucidated in the class, which shocked me, and I was glad to
finally understand a little bit more about myself. Avoiding the cracks in the
pavement? Yes, and moreso. Sometimes I purposely plan out my steps. For
instance, step once in one square of the pavement and twice in another square, and
then maybe mix the pattern up.
Patterns have always been a big thing for me. I do these in various ways,
sometimes via vocal tics or by blowing air out of my nose or tapping on things etc. I
will change up the pattern. Sometimes right, left, left, right and then the reverse
order: right, left, left right. Or left, right, right, left. I dont do this as much as I used
to do, but I would also sometimes pull the first letters out of words in sentences and
memorize the word it made. Or I would then rotate the letters around and play with
them. Take this sentence for example: TTSFE. How about TETFS? Or maybe FTETS
to make it more symmetrical looking. Speaking of symmetry, I always like the way
my alias dratsab looked how beautiful. It is one of the reasons I always hated
when people capitalized it: Dratsab. Ugh! Repulsive! How vile and rustic! No the
d and the b are like bookends. The t intersects the middle beautifully: dtb. How
majestic. Now notice the heights of the letters: ra and sa dip under the towering
t and stay lower than the bookends of d and b. To break it down again: d-ra-tsa-b. Just look at it, wouldnt you? Yes, I have digressed yet again an improvised
rant well, not so much a rant as an observation or something. Man, I am so
sleepy. I should go to bed, but I shall complete this prolix note first!
Yes, so I also wash my hands repeatedly. Currently, I prefer to always keep a
lotion and a sanitizer nearby to me, but I apply them in the reverse order. I always
hated having dry hands, and certain textures annoy me. Felt ugh! Chalky or
powdery substances? Sickening. I used to wash my hands frequently, but then be
perturbed by how dry they would always be. Until I was around 13 or 14 and my

mother introduced me to the miracle of lotion. Now my hands are always super soft
even though I have done some construction work with them. I am obsessed with
having moist hands that dont produce friction when ran together. I would say I
enjoy the oiliness of lotion, but I fucking hate Vaseline and grease texture on my
hands as well so that is overkill. I once asked my friends mother for lotion and
she said I was the first guy that had ever done so. So it goes.
Lets speak about time. I am obsessed with time in many ways. Sometimes I
wait to take an action until a certain specified time. Like until a day rolls over, or
the month is over, or a significant number on the clock appears. My original video
camera which I received as a gift from my mother for my Xmas slash Bday gift,
but didnt get my hands on it until like March of 2007 had a timecode on it. And I
would wait until say 4:20 or 3:16 or 6:19 or 11:14 appeared before I would record
sometimes. Or if I felt I had too much footage in one month, even if I wanted to
record a certain activity (also in itself OCD) I would wait to do it the next month, so
that I had a more even distribution of footage. Speaking of that, its also a shame
that when I had my data converted from my Mini-DVs that I lost the timecode on
them I mean, they did take up space on the visual display, but it was nice to know
when they were taken like a videolog, ya know? And also, I knew I had a lot of
writings I did in 2014, so I am excited to finally start my 2015 collection. Yay!
Clocks! My lord clocks! I must turn them away from me when I sleep. Lest I
stare at the clock and watch for it to change numbers. When will it rollover? I take
my bets is it 15 seconds till or 20? Or maybe now! It will change now! And it
does! And on till the next minute rolls over and the next. If I roll over to face the
other way, I will then roll back to check to see if it has rolled over yet. So, best just
to push the clock away from me and have it face the other direction. What an
annoyance. Im surprised that my laptop doesnt annoy me. The clock is displayed
in the bottom right corner, but it is rarely a deal for me. But, like I said, its mostly a
thing that bugs me while I try to slumber more than when I am busy and engaged.
I, do, however, differ from the norm when it comes to OCD time settings for
my alarm clock. It seemss that society has a collective OCD in that they prefer even
numbers and multiples of five. This doesnt apply to me, because I frequently set
my alarm to something like 5:23 or 7:11 or maybe 12:02. I like the idea of waiting a
few minutes after the hour to do something. So, say last night if it was noon I
would prefer to wait until 12:02 PM so that I could say to myself (or others) that it
was now LESS than 12 hours until the new year, instead of saying it was exactly 12
hours till. Something about being able to say that LESS THAN is nice. Also, when
adjusting the volume on the TV I will purposely put it on something like 17 or 23
instead of it being a nice even number. I like hitting all of those untouched areas
that other people ignore so that they dont go unused ya know? Someone has to
pay some attention to those unused options.

Ohh, and speaking back to significant dates. August 11 was a big one. Id
frequently try to capture some video or picture from that date for my memory
archives. Why that date specifically? My only hint is that you can find the answer in
one of my other writings. But it wasnt the only date I would try to capture. Ohh,
and Amy and I went down to Austin, TX on August 11, 2013 and I even brought my
camera. However, I forgot to bring it out of the motel we were staying in when I
grappled this dude in his apartment, so his friend captured the footage on his phone
instead, but he could never upload it so its (probably) lost footage I took on a
significant date that I would like for my collection, but shant get to blarg! But,
more on that story when I write my tale about my adventures with Amy.
Amy speaking of her. She picks up on my little habits. In fact she is sitting
next to me right now, with her (read: my) headphones on, watching a documentary
about Carl Panzram (quotidian affairs mentioned: 3). I asked her for some help
remembering my OCD tics, and she was quite helpful if not complex-inducing. She
noticed that I tend to blow nose air on my left hand, and then my right, and then
sometimes back the other way in that pattern. She asked me why I did it, and I
never noticed it until that moment. I also keep trying to clear my throat, which
produces an obsessive vocal tic because I keep feeling like my throat isnt perfectly
cleared and there is an eternal lump. Ohh, I just remembered, one time in my
senior year at Southwest High School, I would blink my eyes until they were sore.
She is also annoyed when I chew on my cheeks and bite my nails. I have
bitten my nails down extremely low, and then I chew on the skin around my fingers,
to the point where my nails look abnormally small, possibly deformed (a condition
Amy once referred to as meth fingers). I have my DNA all over my steering wheel,
because I spit out the chewed up inner-mouth detritus and it lands there in a nice
little stucco pattern (I hope Im using my painting argot properly, I do recall a few
talks about it when I did construction). She also points out I spit a lot, but I have
known that for years. If a build-up of fluid in my mouth forms, I prefer to eject it
instead of swallowing the gross concoction. When we are outside and walking, this
can turn into a machine-gun ejaculation series from the mouth.
I also tend to have one-word replies to things: interesting, cool, sexy, nice,
fun, true, touche (or mixing these last two to form truche, but I think Ive mostly
only done that online), etc. So it goes. But Amy said this might be because Im
disengaged from the conversation. This could relate to my schizotypal, so maybe it
isnt really an OCD thing I dunno. Besides this, I do have a few vocal tics, which I
didnt think to label myself with until I got a psychological diagnosis and it was
listed on there. I make these little sounds with my mouth, and when people hear
them they sometimes ask what that was as they seem to not be able to locate the
source of it. This has happened to me driving with friends and even grappling
people at my bjj class. But, the details for how to describe these sounds are
ineffable to me, so I will end there on that affair.

I use to run back and forth reading the labels on things and such. For
example, lets say I read the ingredients on a food item or soda pop. I would close
the refrigerator door, then walk away, then realized I forgot one of the names on it,
then walk back to the fridge door and open it, and check again. Then as I was
walking away, I would forget the placement of something else on the coke can or
box and keep coming back until I had memorize every detail.
Sometimes I have to keep re-reading the same sentence in a book over and
over again. It almost becomes a form of semantic satitation, and I wont be able to
understand what I just read, and will have to force myself to move on. Other times,
I will finish a paragraph, and then go back up and re-read an old paragraph because
I feel I didnt remember what I had read. Now, I frequently keep notes on facts I
have picked up from books, and feel irritation when I have forgotten them.
In fact, when it comes to books, I currently have a system where I must read
50 pages a day or I feel incomplete. Like, I feel like my day hasnt been productive
if I dont read to a certain page. I must know that I have learned something new
that day, or what has that day been? A waste. Allow me to quote Ayn Rands book
Atlas Shrugged:
"It is not proper for man's life to be a circle, she thought, or a string of circles
dropping of like zeros behind him - mans life must be a straight line of motion from
goal to farther goal, each leading to the next and to a single growing sum, like a
journey down the track of a railroad, from station to station."
Yes, I prefer for my life to feel like a straight line of progress and knowledge to
compensate for the death that is approaching. And, by the way, I keep notes on
every book I read, and I pulled that quote out of a folder on book notes. But I have
felt that way before Ayn Rand brought me that quote, but I had never heard anyone
else explain the thing that I felt until that moment.
Well, it is (waiting) now 3:00 AM. I shall end this small talk on my OCD
here. Being half-asleep means this writing is probably written very clumsily. I can
feel that to be the case, but at least it will be an interesting case study of what it is
like to write while half-asleep. Did I miss mentioning anything? Being an OCD
means being a completionist after-all. Ohh well, I can add more notes later if
necessary. The end End the end The the End.