I am so OCD...

I am so OCD, we all say it from time to time. But are we really? I have gotten to know this disorder up closer and a little more personally than I would have liked. And I can tell you, I am not.

My son has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It kind of stinks. As I was loading the dishwasher tonight I "had to" reorganize the plates because I did not have like plates together. And I thought, as I often do, "Dear Lord, he must have gotten his disorder from me. I am so weird. Then I mentally checked myself. With disappointment I remembered, it is not this simple. OCD is more complicated, more discouraging than thinking things look a little neater in the dishwasher if they are grouped the way I like them.

So how about you? Do you suffer from this? Or do you, like me, like things the way you like them and want things to be your way? Just to be sure, try it out someday. Can you put a blue cup in the cabinet next to a red cup, and then another blue - close the door and walk away. Will it bother you, send you in to a panic attack and set your world on it's rocker? Or will it kind of bug you for a few minutes until you get distracted by something  else.

Our son, before he began taking medication for his OCD could not eat breakfast if it was not in the "right" bowl. A blue plastic was the only thing he could eat out of, until one day it became a white bowl with three black lines, not the one with two black lines, not the plain white bowl. Same with the right shirt, "whatever felt right". And it just could not be any other way. And it went on and on and on. With perfect home work, perfect order, the right color of this, the right texture of that. Medication has done wonders. Still sometimes "the right thing" will rear it's ugly "have to" head. But it's rare and he is learning to cope with the disapointments. He has OCD, I do not!