Abby Asks

I’ve started doing an absolutely foolish but necessary thing.  (Not base jumping; that was last year.)  I’m cleaning out my crap.  Miss Manners would probably call it clutter, but let’s be real.  Crap by any other name…..is still crap.  This is a fool’s errand because it’s just so emotionally exhausting.  See, I’ve come to see the state of my home as a reflection of the state of my brain.

I have OCD, which means there’s a lot of clutter-crap in my brain.  Over the past year I’ve started to work on renovating my neurons.  The thing about my OCD is that it’s mostly invisible.  All my rituals are done in my mind.  So you can talk to me and I look normal (socially inept and awkward are my normal).  But in my head I’m envisioning the Tom Cruise version of War of the Worlds where everyone gets incinerated.  Or turned to dust.  Or whatever the fuck happens.  (Incidentally, my mom believes that the aliens did not die from a virus.  Dakota Fanning’s screaming killed them off.)

Similarly, a lot of my clutter is invisible too.  Well, not all of it.  But lots of stuff is stowed away in closets and boxes and drawers and slow cookers and the microwave.  Just like my OCD.  Deep in the folds of my neurons there’s crap.  Deep in the folds of my pants there’s crap.  Not real crap.  That would be gross and a sign of a very different mental disorder.  So there’s metaphorical crap and literal crap and all kinds of crap flying around.  (Not like monkeys do with their poo, however.)

So I’m cleaning out the crud.  And Freud would probably conclude that I’m anal given all of the crap imagery.  Crap by any other name……