Packing, obsessing, and compulsing

Moving across the country is a tough thing to do for anyone. It comes with financial and personal stressors, and can be full of unexpected hiccups that are enough to make anyone crazy.

But moving makes me want to curl up in the fetal position and cry. It makes me feel like there's a cinder block on my chest, making it hard to breathe without hyperventilating. It makes me nauseated.

Living with OCD definitely adds quirks to my everyday life, but I most recognize it when life deviates from the norm. You see, the norm is comfortable. The norm brings routine. Routines allow me to act out my rituals in such a way that they become so ordinary that I no longer remember that they are OCD-related behaviors.

They call OCD the doubting disease because it causes the sufferer to constantly (obsessively) consider the worst possible scenario and (compulsively) try to plan for it. Sometimes -- perhaps oftentimes -- those plans don't even make sense to anyone aside from the person with OCD. At least for me, though, that doesn't always matter. In fact, sometimes I even see how silly my plans are, but I still find comfort in creating them. Plans make me feel empowered, like I can take on the world no matter what.

But when life deviates from the norm, so much uncertainty comes about that it is sometimes difficult to make plans. This cross-country move I'll embark upon in a day, for example, comes with so many possible hiccups that there's no way I can possibly plan for everything. And that makes me anxious.

Knowing that I'm going to have a week or so between when my mom leaves and when I start school (and therefore start making friends) makes me anxious. Knowing that my boyfriend could be heading out to fight fires any day now and may not be reachable by phone makes me anxious. Knowing that I won't know my class schedule and therefore won't be able to purchase textbooks until a week before classes start makes me anxious.

I don't know how to fight the anxiety. Talking helps. Writing helps. But mostly I just obsess over everything that could go wrong and make more plans to try to rectify. Healthy? Perhaps not.