Waiting Tables: The Purest Form of Misanthropy

As my last post was crushingly serious and I was half-drunk when I wrote it, I thought I would change gears a bit with some jaded humor. I just read the ridiculously hilarious book; People Are Unappealing by Sara Barron. Somehow while stumbling aimlessly around Barnes and Noble yesterday, I ran into this book. The title alone was relatable, as I too find people to be generally unappealing. While perusing a few of the randomly selected chapters I couldn't help but laugh out loud. (Sidebar: I've noticed that people really hate it when you laugh at something they can't see, like a page in a book. They tend to get very annoyed either because they are miserable bastards or just really want to be in on the joke. There is sort of an exclusionary aspect to something as intimate as reading. It is something you can do in front of other people that has absolutely nothing to do with them. I think it really bothers people not to be paid attention to, let alone have this other person able to have so much fun without them. That's why I love reading so much, I can be in my head like I am all the time anyway, but I don't have to focus on my problems, I can enjoy someone else's for a change.) I immediately went home and finished the book within a couple of hours. I didn't even want to put it down to pee.

There is a chapter on Ms. Barron's life as a waitress in NYC. This got me thinking about my 5 years of personal servitude in the restaurant industry. I was 18 and fresh out of high school, and I do mean fresh, I started work the day before my commencements. I wanted so desperately to get a job where I could make enough money to have my own apartment. Oh, the glory of having my own apartment. No sweeter words could you have spoken to me at the time. I think if any gentleman had wanted to bed me all he need say is "Here are the keys to your very own apartment," and I would have came right on the spot. Having my own apartment meant a freedom I had never known, no more crippling oppression, no more antiquated rules, no one to answer to. According to every woman from a 90's sitcom, independence equaled having one's own apartment. Alas, I never did get that apartment, instead I got to move into an 8 x 10 cinder block cell they loosely termed a 'dorm', with a a roommate who referred to herself as a "Juggalo." She would spend her evenings getting high on homegrown mushrooms and pawing around on the carpet like a cat, letting out soft meows every now and again. Her days were spent 'sleeping one off', while her boss would continuously call wanting to know why she wasn't at work. Ahhh, luscious freedom.

What I did get instead of an apartment, from all my hard-earned cash working as a waitress, was a scathing contempt for humanity that I didn't even fathom possible. The disdain I cultivated through those 5 grueling years has remained with me even 5 years after the fact. That's one hell of a souvenir. I started out with an amped up level of enthusiasm, as most people do when they start something new. You have an energetic fervor that slowly, but consistently gets diminished as time goes on.

First, it is just a customer that has to wait too long for his well-done steak. I mean that's understandable, he is a very important man, eating at Ruby Tuesday's on his lunch hour, alone, wearing a short-sleeve button down shirt with a miniature tie and yellow pit stains. He has big important things he must attend to. Then it's a mother who lets her kid run around and hide under tables like a crazy person because "Little Jimmy just needs to express himself," which the untethered best friend of hers finds so enlightening. And if I never have to sweep up your baby's stupid Cheerios with one of those manual vacuums again, it will be far too soon. Did he get any in his mouth? Over the years, there were a few nice people, moms that would offer to clean up after their babies messes and at least feign embarrassment at the site of the mashed-in french fries on the carpet. There were those who did tip generously, but they were mostly current or former servers themselves, not wanting to risk karmic retribution. The best you could hope for was just complacency or indifference in a customer, one that acted like you really didn't even exist. Like a robot designed for the sole purpose of bringing you one more "Arnie Palmer."

It didn't help that I am an extremely tall girl, 6'0 feet in flats, so I, in addition to all the regular bullshit, got to also field such thoughtful questions like "How did you get to be so tall?" "Are your parents tall?" "How tall are you?" If I had any balls whatsoever I should have answered respectively a) What the fuck kind of question is that? b) No, actually my parents are circus midgets from the vaudeville circuit. c) Why is my exact height of interest to you? Will knowing my precise measurements somehow make your life a wee better or are you just being an asshole? At least these were direct questions, then there was the not-so-muffled whispers of "She's tall." or such creative gems as "Wow, she's really tall." I'm tall, not deaf, you morons. All still better than the degrading comments from, what a shock, really short men. "You're a tall drink of water," "How many times a day do you hit your head on the chandelier?" and the timeless favorite "How's the weather up there?" Thank you 70 year old man, I will never forget your wise words. After these comments about 80% would try to ask me out. What the fuck? I have a theory about these types of men, they were born with pencil dicks and need to take it out on any women who might actually suspect it.

And then there was the management. Oh my, you give a high school dropout a little taste of authority and all hell breaks loose. They think they have reached demigod status. "I got my GED and a 3 week training course in Cleveland, worship me." "Hey babe, I just made assistant manager, I guess all my hard work paid off. Yeah!" Translation, "Want to fuck me now that I think I am somebody?" Then there is always that one token, way too enthusiastic manager that tries to get everyone "pumped up" for their back-breaking, degrading, dehumanizing shift. What a joke. I'm sorry you live in a shitty low-income townhouse and your wife left you, I really am, but for once can you just act like a normal fucking human being. Your manufactured cheerfulness gets to wearing thin. Instead of being 'pumped up,' we are all even more depressed than before.

Don't think that I forgot about you, corporate managers. These guys are some self-important douche bags, aren't they? Oh, I am so impressed by your white button-down with the Ruby Tuesday's logo and your name embroidered on it, Scott. Oh, you over see 5 stores in the metro area, you are the man. That business degree from the community college is really paying off. I was once asked to get in a line with the other servers like we were in the military and pull up our pant legs so this asshole could check our socks. Of course I was wearing regular white athletic socks when I was supposed to be wearing weird men's black dress socks apparently and got a passive-aggressive talking to. The saving grace of it all was when I actually said, "Would you like to check the color of my underwear too?" It wasn't appreciated. That was pretty much the last straw and on to the next bullshit corporate serving job I went.

Another highlight of a corporate serving job, the belittling spiels we were forced to recite, unwarranted to customers who couldn't give a shit less. "Hi and welcome to Bullshit Corporate Restaurant, have you ever dined with us before?" Obligatory pause for response. "That's great, welcome back. I just wanted to mention some of the great specials we have this evening like the Bourbon Street Chicken Fingers Platter or the fall-off-the-bone French Quarter BBQ Ribs." (Now at this point, anyone who wasn't certifiably retarded might interject- What does Bourbon Street have to do with chicken fingers or the French Quarter with BBQ ribs? Beats the hell out me, but corporations sure do love putting cutesy names on everything. I often wonder in big conglomerates who signs off on these decisions. How many absolute idiots does it have to go through before it makes it to the public? How many brown-nosing fuckfaces does it take to get to the center of a shitty idea?) By this time the customers are either laughing hysterically at this rehearsed drivel or want to punch me in the face because they are hungry, crabby and just want to eat already. Either way, its hard to feel more like a piddly out-of-touch corporate drone than right at that moment.

And we haven't even touched on sexual harassment yet. Yes there was the occasional leaving of a phone number on a grease soaked napkin or the sexist slur by a drunken bar patron. I even once had a grandma ask for my phone number for her grandson who was at the table, by the way and like no joke; 5'2 and kind of a prick. These instances were par for the course at Any Shitty Nameless Restaurant USA. But the most disturbing sexual harassment came from within. I don't know how many times I was propositioned for sex. The line cooks were notorious womanizers. After a while you hardly noticed it. It became like someone asking "How are you doing today, want to fuck?" I was ogled, rated, scored, and all around treated no different than the slabs of ribs in the walk-in. It was just another ordinary day in Hell. But the indisputable worst had to come from the rotund little salad bar prick who would start off each shift with the exact same question "Where my hug at?" (Where intentional.) Yet, there was still more sexual harassment to be had. The chauvinistic comments weren't just reserved for the line cooks or lowly salad bar guy, oh no. Management got in on the act too. Countless times I was called "Beautiful" by a manager named Tim. Now you might be thinking, well that's not that bad, better than the crass explicit remarks of the line cooks like "I betchoo a freak in bed." or a personal favorite, "I want you to bodyslam me." But no, this was worse. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if he didn't look like a slack-jawed pedophile. Or maybe if he didn't juxtapose "Beautiful" with "Can you go clean the ladies bathroom?" Or use phrases like "Hey beautiful, what can I do you for?" in his ambiguous southern accent. There can't be any more, you say. If only, if only. On top of blatant sexual harassment, and more subdued creepy sexual harassment, there was Blitzkrieg sexual harassment. These were comments made by inconspicuous sources, like a middle-aged manager named Greg, that was always actually pretty nice and seemingly normal. This is a lesson I learned the hard way. If they work at a restaurant, they is no way they are normal. Once, when I was cashing out in the office, he told me unsolicited and out of nowhere that if I "lost 10 or 15 pounds I would be smokin' hot" and what followed was like some sort of primal grunt, like "Ooooohhhheeeeee, boy." I was literally shocked for a few seconds, came to, gathered up by money, said "Fuck you." and walked out. At least with the filthy mouthed line cooks, they put their cards out on the table, not acting like some high-brow poser secretly fantasizing about your would-be body.

I think I would like to conclude this jaunt down memory lane by regaling you with stories of some of the stupidest customers I ever had the displeasure of waiting on. The illiterate, the whiny, the con artists, the slobs, the shamelessly cheap, and the self-entitled. Some general, some specific. If the world were flat, these are the people I would like to send off the edge of the earth or maybe we can round them all up and shoot them up into space, to float around randomly, still complaining about how they shouldn't have to pay for extra Alfredo sauce because they are morbidly obese and need the extra calories to survive.

One of my favorites was this self-important business asshole. He looked like he was fresh out of college and just scored his dream job of ass kissing some executive that made 200 times the money he did. He came in for lunch by himself, (what a fucking shock) and ordered the Peppercorn Chicken Salad. Now I must admit, I think men who feel no shame in ordering an entree salad are kind of off anyway, but he proceeded to tell me he didn't want any corn in the salad. So my first instinct was to laugh hysterically in his face about what a moron he was, but I restrained myself. I was a professional after all. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt and asked if he meant he didn't want any pepper on the salad, but like a typical dumbbell he didn't get the hint. "No, I want the pepper, I just don't want the corn," in a tone like I was the idiot here. Now there is no polite way to tell someone "A peppercorn is one pepper berry you grind into pepper and has nothing to do with kernels of corn, you fucking jackoff." So after like 5 full minutes of trying to explain the nuances of pepper milling, I gave up, ordered the salad as is and waited for my 8% tip.

Who could possibly be worse than arrogant pseudo-businessmen? The old fucking ladies. If you see the Red Hat Society come in, run the other way or at least walk briskly. Get ready for 15 crabby, old spinsters who all want water with lemon and hot tea, separate checks, and the soup to be blow your face off boiling. They make a laundry list of substitutions, special orders, and outlandish requests, followed by an even longer tirade of complaints. "Can I have my fish steamed instead of grilled?" "How spicy is that?" (If you have to ask it is too spicy, lady) "I want my burger well-done, but not burnt, otherwise I am sending it back." "I asked for just broccoli, there is broccoli and carrots here." Fuck lady just eat around the carrots. "Is the tip included? By law you have to tell me if the tip is included." If it wasn't for automatic gratuity, I would have beat myself senseless with one of the faux-antique metal signs that adorned the walls.

Then there were the people who couldn't read. Illiterates are always good for a laugh. I don't know how many times I heard 'queso' pronounced qwe-so or quesadilla, qwe-sa-di-la. Nobody knew how to say tilapia and sometimes they would even fuck up regular words like barbecue or steak. Other times they would just point to what they wanted on the menu, like a 3 year old looking at a picture book. And I am not talking about people who looked that they grew up on the streets or were down on their luck, uh no, these were middle-class suburban adults with jobs and kids. Where the hell do these people come from?

Next on the totem pole of the descent of man were the con artists. They were constantly looking for ways to cheat the system. "How can I get this slightly over-priced, mediocre at best burger for free?" they would ask themselves. Here's how: order the biggest burger on the menu, preferably one with 2 patties, a double decker, eat half of it, and then complain that it wasn't cooked to your liking. Essentially you have just eaten one whole regular sized hamburger, and now you don't have to pay for it. Full belly and full wallet, and no tip, what fun!

I had this one old lady that came in, ordered a plate of buffalo wings and she wanted them "well done, but not burnt," of course. After eating about 6 of the 10 wings, she decided they were too burnt, and she wanted a new batch. So I hauled off the remaining 4 wings and picked off carcasses and brought out a fresh order that I thought she was satisfied with because she polished them off without a hitch. Ah, but then it came time for the bill. I only charged her for one order of wings even though she ate 6 of the first batch and her drink. The bill was like $9.00. She then calls me over and tells me that she thought the chicken wing were to be free because the first plate was burnt and she had to wait so long for the second plate. Even though she ate 16 wings for the price of 10, she shouldn't have to pay at all for her trouble. But then came the piece de resistance. The reason she couldn't wait for the second batch of wings before scarfing the first 6 was because she was a diabetic and couldn't afford to wait any longer to eat. Her blood sugar was dropping rapidly and the only cure was sub par buffalo wings. No diabetic needs an $8 plate of chicken wings to keep from going into shock, how about a glass of orange juice or some crackers? What a shithead.

I still think the absolute best was this lady who was eating with her husband and her older kids. She was seated at a booth in a long line of picture windows that overlooked the scenic parking lot. They had gotten there food and were munching away as happily as anyone could be in a shitty chain restaurant on a Wednesday night. One of my co-workers was leaving for the day, and as he was backing his car out, he hit what at first seemed to be the side of the building and it made a pretty loud crashing sound. This could all be seen from the aforementioned, huge picture windows that might as well have been neon signs pointing to this kid's mistake. Everyone looked, mostly laughing once they realized what it had actually happened. It turned out he really only hopped the curb with his back tires and ran into some helpless shrubberies. The damage was minimal, but he was totally embarrassed and I felt for him. But what happened next defies all logic and all hope that human beings are basically decent and good. This lady at the table in my section, who just 30 seconds prior was absently chomping through her shrimp Alfredo went berserk. She demanded to see the manager. She wanted to know why her meal was so rudely interrupted by such a reckless employee. How could she possibly ever enjoy her meal after such a debacle as a stranger hitting some bushes with his fender? Her entire meal experience was ruined, she said. She wanted everything on her bill comped. As if this already wasn't horrific enough, she then tried to rally all of the other tables in my section to jump on board this freeloading bandwagon. "Don't you think we should get our meals for free? Wasn't your evening ruined?" she goaded. A few people lacklusterly agreed, but their hearts weren't in it. In the end all she got was a free dessert and the shame of 5 lifetimes that she will never feel.
There are countless other stories such as these. The drunk man who argued with me that 'soup du jour' meant cold soup and not soup of the day, until he got so irate and obnoxious he had to be escorted out. Or the teenager who hid under one of my tables to hide from the police that were on his tail because of a stack of video games he stole from The Best Buy across the parking lot. Then there was this peach of a woman, who had this incredibly tiny baby with her. It looked like she just gave birth to it under the table. I was shamelessly babytalking to the little bundle when she told me it was her baby's 1 month birthday today. I said, "Happy Birthday little baby, even though you can't understand what I am saying." She responded matter of factly with, "Oh he can understand you, he's very smart." Not if he came out of you, psycho.
That was pretty much the last straw for me. You can only take so much abuse. You can only collect so many 5% tips on meals that people paid with a $100 bill. You can only be ordered around like a servant, getting countless extra dressings, extra cheese, extra bread and extra napkins all one after another, so many times. You can only be treated like a mindless android whose only reason for creation is to take your order, completely devoid of the capability of feeling emotion, evidenced by your sensitive barks of "Burger. Coke. Now." before you go completely insane. You can only be made to feel single-handedly responsible for all the bad things in their lives so much before you want to strangle every last one of them, even the nice ones. I simply couldn't handle it anymore. I have never lost my hatred for the average restaurant patron. I still find myself eavesdropping on fellow diners conversations about how much to leave for the tip or what they thought of the service. I can't help but snoop on how much a friend left for a tip if I have been taken out to dinner. I am not above feigning I have to go to the bathroom, just so I can come back and leave more money on the table after they have left. I ridicuously overtip and throw out please's and thank you's like they are going out of style. It really is one of the shittiest professions, dehumanizing and disspiriting, but the corporations try to make up for it with Hawaiin shirt day or tantalizing gifts like an off-brand cd walkman you can win if you sell the most booze. So to all you overworked, spit-on-by-the-world, sadomasochistic servers out that haven't lost the will to live, I salute you.

Reconnecting

It's 3:30 AM as I write this so it might be a little rough. I've been thinking a lot lately about my past relationships, romantic and platonic alike. I've had this sudden urge to reconnect with old friends. I know after high school there is a natural phenomenon to loose touch with the very people you once thought you were inseparable from. I of course made this empty promise to myself that there was no way I was going to let that happen to us. We were going off to different colleges, but the furthest one was only an hour away. In the beginning, of course the trips were frequent, but as the months went by, they became less and less so. Then we only saw each other in the summer, then as the summers rolled on, we only so each other a few times a year, maybe around Christmas or Thanksgiving when everyone was home for the holidays. These too became less frequent and moved into nonexistent. There was no big falling out, just sort of this quiet drift, a slow, but steady devolution. This was compounded by the fact that for long stretches of time I would become completely reclusive and withdraw from just about everyone. I literally wouldn't go anywhere or see anyone. I know subsequently, I alienated people, friends from my life. A few of them understood, maybe not until years later, but they understood. Yet, a few remained unaware of my plight. I cut a lot of people out because it hurt to much to think about them and the way things used to be. I wanted to try to make a new life for myself because it seemed that everyone else had. I convinced myself I didn't need any friends to be happy or fulfilled, that they were just occasional, pleasant extras. But that wasn't really me thinking, it was my insecurity and fear of rejection all leading back to my OCD and how I got that in the first place. I became very judgemental and believe me, it's lonely at the top.
Just today I called a friend to congratulate her on her engagement that I heard, like third hand, on a Facebook post, which is actually pretty huge for me. I get very anxious calling people on the phone, more than even talking in person. I think it has to do with this sort of anticipation while you're waiting for them to pick up and you can't see their reactions to your conversation. She used to be one of my closest friends growing up, we hardly ever fought, we always had fun, even just doing nothing. She was smart, funny, pretty, a talented artist, and really had a good grasp on the world. Oddly enough, she was the shortest in out group and I was the tallest, (there was almost a foot between us) but somehow we connected more than others I think. I haven't seen her in 2 years, but God it doesn't seem like it. It feels like just a couple of days. My memories are so vivid. I didn't realize how meaningful this friendship was to me until I got the distinct feeling it didn't exist any longer.
I called a few times, to no avail and finally just left a message. I tried about 8 months ago to contact her, but couldn't. I told myself, maybe she is just really busy or got a new number, but I can't help but feeling that's not what's going on. Sort of automatically I began to make it about me, like 'Did I do something?' But then I got to thinking, as I so often do, that maybe she is going through something similar to what I went through, where you just sort of want to recede a little into the background. Maybe I am just thinking what I want to be the case, so I don't have to feel so rejected after putting myself out there in a way I am unaccustomed. Or maybe I just want to be able to be there for someone who needs that reaching out, like I so desperately did. I don't know.
What I do know is that out of all the people I have alienated out of my life, I think this one hurts the most. I really do want to reconnect with some of my old friends, in a way to get part of my 'old self' back, but especially with this particular person just to get my old friend back. I think sometimes friendships are harder than romantic relationships because you never quite know when it is okay to express your emotions. I think getting a date is far easier than making a new friend, but I wonder if reconnecting with an old friend is harder yet.

The Saga of Love and Lust

I don't know if it is an OCD thing, or just a me thing, but I have always struggled with having dual personalities. Like the archaic, but somewhat reasonable findings of Freud, I feel that my Id and my Super Ego are at constant odds with one another. I seem to go through phases of complete extremes. At times, I can be absolutely uninhibited, while at others I am completely prudish and judgemental, bordering on withdrawn. These phases can last for months or even years. It's not like bipolar disorder, where a person would be manic for a few weeks, staying up all night going on benders, then dipping into a deep depression that is hard to crawl out of. It's more within my own personality, a change of view, a change of core principles.
The straight-laced side of me wants to be a not only a good person, but a model citizen for humanity. My Super Ego holds me to these impossible standards that no one could ever achieve, at times they are downright puritanical. I have so many ridiculous rules to live by now. I think this is where my OCD really sprang from. The continuous squelching of my animal instincts, really not even by society, but by something much more close to home, my family, namely my paternal grandmother and to some extent my father who was hugely overprotective. I was held to these rigid and more accurately obsolete folkways of the 1950's. If it had been up to my grandmother, I wouldn't have had any contact with anyone, especially not any boys, even as a child. Once, when I was maybe five or six years old, I stuck my tongue at a boy who was on the other side of a window, just being a silly kid. He thought it was pretty funny I guess because then he too stuck his tongue out. We kept sticking our tongues out closer and closer to the window until we mashed both of our tongues against the glass, which we thought was hilarious. When my grandmother saw that (she was always watching, no matter what) she started yelling at me, saying that I should be ashamed of myself for kissing a boy like that and that my father was going to be so mad when she told him (and she always told him.) Now I didn't know that sticking your tongue out at another kid through a pane of glass was considered kissing, or even anything at all, and I know now as an adult how harmless the whole scene was, but at the time I felt so guilty and so scared that my dad was going to be mad at me. I never wanted to do anything like that again. This story is just one of many that peppered my childhood, a microcosm of how I grew up. Always made to feel guilty or ashamed for things that I didn't even know were wrong, that felt natural or innocent. So with this type of upbringing, it isn't surprising that I started to have acid reflux and panic attacks as early as kindergarten.
My undue guilt and shame ran my life, until I was 15, when good ol' teenage angst and rebellion showed up to set me free. I started to do things I know my parents wouldn't approve of, hanging out with strange boys, meeting men off the Internet, thinking I knew what the hell I was doing. It was definitely an exciting time, but looking back on it now, it seems so insane, so risky. But when someone has been caged so long, been so repressed, it isn't very surprising. From this time on, there has been a constant tug-of-war between my 2 halves. Some event will happen to pull me in either direction.
The impulsive side of me wants to go out and run wild, basically. Be completely uninhibited and have to answer to no one, throwing responsibilities and consequences right out. At least once a year, I start to feel this way. I don't really know what brings it on, I can't really say. Sometimes I have these crazy, vivid dreams about off the wall experiences, some imaginary and some from my past, things I consciously didn't even remember. I don't think that commences it though, I think that is a by-product of the underlying feelings my Ego tries so hard to stifle.
My post is titled "The Saga of Love and Lust" because in my adult life, that is what I have come to equate these dualities with. It's some kind of ambiguous defense mechanism thinly-veiled as maturity. I find it hard to be passionate with things that I "love." It's like I file them away in this imaginary compartment, as if to say "Glad I got that taken care of." For example, I love cooking and baking and am pretty damn good at it so I went to culinary arts school (which took some serious convincing to get my parents approval I so desperately sought), and even though I excelled in all my classes, I couldn't bring myself to finish. I just had no drive. I still love cooking and just do it at home for fun, but there isn't this burning desire for me to take it any further.
On the other hand, the things I am passionate about aren't things that I would say I "love." It's like it is a completely different compartment in my brain. Things that I lust after, even trivial things, like a designer purse or the latest gadget, I just can't stop thinking about it until I get them. It's strange that I can be so nonchalant or complacent about my loves, but so forceful and enterprising about my lusts. And no, my love and lust isn't just reserved for hobbies and material goods, there are many actual persons that fall into this trap I've set. I'm just not ready to write about that quite yet.

Blog Numero Uno

Who am I? Who are any of us, for that matter? Centuries old philosophical questions aside, why did I choose to write a blog? I wanted to get some of my ramblings down on virtual paper I guess. I do have a lot to say, but no real forum to express these thoughts. Of course I have a shitload of thoughts because I am in my head all the time. I have trouble engaging in the moment due to my overly obsessive mind. Which brings me to why my blog is titled "An Obsessive Compulsive's Guide to Clean Living." I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, along with a wry sense of humor. Humor has always been my defense mechanism when dealing with just about any stress in my life. I thinks it's actually the least neurotic of all my attributes. I have had these "disorders" since early childhood, but only within the last five or six years knew they had a name, which I discovered while in college as a psychology major ( yeah I know.) My abnormal psych book even had a warning in it, that a tendency existed for most students to feel like that had the symptoms of the neuroses they were studying and to not self-diagnose, but a nagging feeling remained. I was professionally diagnosed a year later.
Sometimes OCD and anxiety rule my life, but others times I can quell them (with and without medication, but that is another blog post.) I do struggle with it on a daily basis, which really is misleading because it's more like a secondly basis, especially when it is bad. I know other people must struggle with these issues too, but I feel like mental illness is still a little swept under the rug in our society. I do feel with the current media attention from television shows like The OCD Project or Obsessed sheds some light on the disorder, but at the same time it exploits people living with OCD like a turn of the last century, traveling freak show. They only put on the absolute worst cases, otherwise it wouldn't really be entertaining, as if OCD in any capacity should entertain. I know some people may not like the term "disorder", but I feel it ironically fitting for an obsessive compulsive. We try so hard to order our immediate world with our compulsive cleaning, organizing, and straightening, but all it really leads to is dis-order.
This blog is not going to just be about functioning with OCD and anxiety, but a myriad of other topics that I find myself obsessing over, personal experiences, news stories, politics, society at large. Hopefully by writing about them, I can lessen my compulsions, find some humor in all of this nonsense, and maybe even relate to others in some miniscule way.