My dad often says, “A place for everything and everything in its place”, a phrase through which he possibly wants to convey that everything ought to have its own, devoted space where it can be reliably found if misplaced. But, for some reason, this phrase got imbibed so much within me that I can’t even tolerate an extra icon on my desktop screen and so, I immediately get set to put it in the right place.
Such tendencies make me ponder whether I exhibit a bit of obsessive-compulsive disorder-like behaviour or have habits of excessive cleaning and sorting, although the two conditions are mistaken to be the same.
It usually isn’t a revelation to see people snub me on this very much observable truth. Although I was never diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, I will never shy away from breathing about my “irrepressible” obsessive tendencies.
It can be anything from relentlessly arranging books in the shelf, cleaning a room quite often, frequently sorting files on the laptop, or constantly wiping that speck of dust off my spectacles.
While my mind would mostly be out of business, my brain would be persuaded with the fact that everything is going to go wrong and what happened already is bound to happen in the future. For example, the fear of getting betrayed by my new friends forces me to distance myself from them.
And that’s when my brain starts telling me, “Hey, we have already checked on that. Don’t you just remember how your best friend played you false a couple of years ago?” And the mind is fixed upon the fact that all friends betray.
No more reason is needed for people like me to get engaged in paranoid thinking. At times, when my fellow mates at hostel used to sit and enjoy their youthful days, I would encroach into the most uncultivated corners and almost certainly think, “What next to clean?”
I would flush my intrusive thoughts, drain my glum and be put to constant worry about random things. This is why I have always found it hard to decipher the connection between overanalysing and “over”-cleaning/arranging.
Nevertheless, on the bright side, isn’t recurrent cleaning of a messy desk an indication that you are a neat person who wants things at their place and not a sign that you are having a troubled disorder that people should make fun of? Am I not abnormal in a good way?
Email: jank@hotmail.co.in