People like to say, “You seem so calm these days.” And I am. I am calm. Serene, even. I’ve evolved. I’ve grown. I’ve matured past the era of alphabetizing the contents of my sock drawer by emotional tone and pantone number. I no longer spiral into a dissociative state if someone opens a cabinet and doesn’t close it with the force of a thousand suns. That’s progress, folks. Personal growth. A healing arc. Namaste or whatever.
But let’s not get it twisted. The Obsessive Compulsive Disorder didn’t vanish. It just learned to wear glasses and mind its business—until someone folds a towel incorrectly or hangs a frame 1.4 degrees off center. Then, much like a shark smelling blood in the water or a Target shopper sensing a 20% off seasonal bin, it activates.
When I was younger, OCD was my armor. It was how I coped when everything around me felt untethered. I didn’t get to control how the world treated me, but I could damn well control the angle of my notebooks, the arrangement of my shampoo bottles, and the precise rhythm of my lock-checking rituals. It wasn’t cute. It wasn’t quirky. It was survival. And let’s be honest, it worked. It gave me structure in the chaos, a blueprint when everything else was written in flames.
Now? Well, I’m older, more grounded, and thanks to therapy and a partner who doesn’t set his cereal box on fire just to watch me twitch, I’m… functional. Not free of it, but functional. Case in point: if I clean the bathroom, it must be done a certain way. I have systems. There are designated zones, specialized rags, preferred products. There’s a rhythm to it, a sequence. If I do it, it’s immaculate. If Matthew does it? That’s fine. That’s totally fine. Do I sometimes “revisit” a spot he missed when he’s not looking? Who’s to say. Love is acceptance. And stealth disinfecting.
See, the real breakthrough is that I’ve learned to let other people do things their way—as long as I’m not the one doing them. I don’t expect others to meet my exacting standards. But when it’s me doing something? Oh, we’re going to the moon, baby. I’m not just going to do it—I’m going to perfect it, organize it, color-code it, and possibly laminate it. You asked me to do something? Great. I now own this task like a Victorian ghost owns a cursed mirror.
I throw things away immediately. Not in a day. Not next week. Now. Clutter in my space is like static in my brain. Old receipts? Gone. Packaging? Gone. Instructions for a product I already figured out in two minutes with rage and YouTube? Gone. If I wanted to live in a scrapbook of useless trash, I’d join Congress. Everything in my house has a place. If it doesn’t have a place, it goes to the place for things that don’t belong—which is the trash.
Let’s talk about visual balance. If someone—say, an enthusiastic but tragically unsupervised employee—hangs something on a wall and it’s crooked or misaligned, I will notice. I will fix it. I don’t care if you measured. I don’t care if you used a level. I am the level. If it bothers me, it gets realigned. If you ask me why, I will lie to your face and say “Oh, it was just slightly off and I had a second,” while internally screaming, “HOW WERE YOU ABLE TO LOOK AT THIS WITHOUT CRYING?”
I notice light switches. Chairs that aren’t pushed in. Pillows that have been fluffed incorrectly. The fridge magnets. The alignment of text boxes in a PowerPoint. The way a document loads with one heading slightly lower than the rest. That spreadsheet you proudly made with merged cells and uncentered text? Burn it. I will remake it. You will never see the original again.
And here’s the kicker: I’m so much better than I used to be. I can ignore things now. Little things. Mostly. Sometimes. Okay, occasionally. But if something gets under my skin and it keeps whispering to me like a haunted doll? I’ll fix it. Silently. Swiftly. Like a ninja of aesthetic justice. You’ll never even know it happened—until everything suddenly feels… better.
It’s not about being controlling. It’s about peace. I find peace in clean lines, even spacing, aligned elements. Some people meditate. I sort things. Some people journal. I label drawers. My brain is a relentless architect, constantly editing the environment until the outside matches the inside. Spoiler: the inside is organized as hell and labeled in Helvetica.
Matthew gets it. He knows when to let me have my moment. He knows that if I zone out in the middle of dinner to stare at a misaligned frame across the room, it’s not personal—it’s primal. He knows that I trust him to clean, but that I still have “bathroom follow-up energy.” And most importantly, he loves me not in spite of this—but possibly because it means our spice rack is impeccable.
So yes, my OCD has gotten better. I’ve learned to loosen the reins. I’ve learned that the world won’t explode if a throw blanket isn’t folded into thirds. I’ve learned that I don’t have to control everything. But when I do have control, it will be flawless. Organized. Streamlined. Styled. And aligned to the pixel. Because while I may not control the chaos of life, I will absolutely control the sock drawer.