Things I heard or said today that delighted me:
‘Where’s my phone?’
‘In the pantry.’
‘I was his chef. I don’t know if he ever ate anything I made him […]’
‘What are you looking for?’
‘A can opener(!),’ she responds, searching hurriedly through drawers.
‘…Is there a specific reason you don’t want to use the pull tabs?’
Regards tops of easy-open cans, ‘…I am just so tired.’
Post-a-day 2018
‘Will you open the compost bucket? I need to put this in there, and I have it all over my hands already.’
Hesitation. And inward tug of panic. A sigh. I walk over, and hold open the bucket, then close it after she has dispensed of the boiled vegetable (from dying eggs).
‘Can I wash my hands?’ She moves over a little, so that I can use the running water to wash my hands (with soap, of course). The water is hot, but I’d rather get my hands washed than mess with anything else.
I only had to wash my one hand, so I air dry it easily enough, and wipe it on my clothes for good measure, as I walk away from the sink and kitchen.
‘Crap. Will you just move the whole thing over here? This is all just going to drip, if I try to move it over there.’
A shudder runs through my insides, and a brief sense of paralysis overcomes me.
‘Oh, come on. I just cleaned it.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I snap. ‘I’m still going to wash my hands again.’ And so I walk back over, move the bucket to the sink, where I know she wants it set, but about which I purposely do not think, and I step away again quickly. She blocks the sink, and asks for more paper towels on the plate. I can barely breathe, but I carefully pull off two layers of paper towels, without touching anything else but those specific paper towels, and I drop them on the plate. As I rush away, she fusses that they aren’t placed correctly. I almost begin to cry, but manage to return and to lay them the way she wants them lain. Finally, as I can feel the panic and the tears brimming, she moves to the side, and allows me to wash my hands.
I leave immediately afterward, because I don’t want her asking/demanding my help her do anything more. I need to get somewhere where I can breathe. Somewhere clean.
The kitchen is a dirty place, and I dislike being in it. Even thinking of it is a source of anxiety for me, so I do my best to avoid letting it spend any time in my mind. Now, as I share this, tears caress the edges of my eyelids, and I swallow with difficulty, unintentionally doing my best to breathe as little and as lightly as possible.
But then I remember that I am somewhere clean right now, so it is okay to breathe. I do breathe, and it is comforting. I will pause from this for a moment, so that my heart rate can relax some.
…………..
I think my mom just thinks I’m being dramatic, or that I’m making a big deal out of nothing. I know that, for her, it actually is nothing. For me, however, while it can be nothing at times, it usually is one of the most overpowering, overwhelming things I have ever experienced.
I saw a Facebook Memories post from last year just recently, of the time I was trapped in the bathroom at school (work). Well, one of the times, anyway. I’d said something to the effect of, “When you’re stuck in the bathroom, because your OCD saw her not wash her hands.” I eventually washed the door handle, then washed my own hands again, and then used toilet paper from the stash on the countertop (there are no paper towels) to open the door. It took me a while to get to that point, though, because I was mentally battling the situation.
You see, it made no sense that I couldn’t open the door and walk out. I regularly do so. I know that most women in Japan tend not to use soap to wash their hands, and many do not even bother with the water at times. So, whenever I grab the handle to walk out of the bathroom, I can easily assume that it is covered in whatever germs get on people’s hands in the bathroom. It took me a long time to be able to push the thought enough out of my mind to be able to touch the handle ever, let alone often. But, I typically succeed in not letting the thought arise, so long as the bathroom is reasonably clean-looking, and so long as I do not actually see someone not wash her hands and then grab the door to leave.
Once the thought has arisen, there is nothing I can do about it (most of the time, anyway). If it doesn’t occur to me, I am completely fine grabbing that door handle and walking out. I don’t even need a paper towel, the way plenty of women in the US tend to do. So long as the thought doesn’t occur to me. If, in any way, something draws my attention to the possibility of contamination of the door handle, I can not touch it. Ideally, I stand and wait until someone else opens the door, and I sneak through then. If, after a while, no one has come or gone, I’ll find a way using paper towel or toilet paper. However, using toilet paper has its own issues, because the toilet paper comes from inside the bathroom stall, which is where I know hands are not clean, because that’s where they are exposed to the whole dirtiness of the bathroom in the first place. And, if someone has touched the toilet paper already, well, then, those germs are on that paper. not to mention if something else splashed onto the toilet paper or the dispenser, and made its way onto the toilet paper. Plus, I’ll have to touch the stall door in order to get into the stall. All of these are factors that require me to wash my hands again.
So, I have even gone into the stall I had just used (so the toilet seat is cleaned off still), carefully pulled off a full round of toilet paper, thrown it away or into the toilet, gone and washed my hands again, returned to the stall, pushed it open with my shoe sole, removed fresh toilet paper without interacting in any way with the dispenser itself (and not letting the toilet paper touch it either), backed up out of the stall, used the toilet paper to open the door (without touching any bit of the door, and not even through a single layer of the toilet paper), held the door with my shoe sole (ideally what had held open the stall door, so as to wipe it off), thrown away the toilet paper, and then rushed out the door. I can’t take the paper with me that held open the door, because that’s too much time for the germs to have been able to travel on the paper that is still in my hands. I must dispose of it at the bathroom door.
It doesn’t matter that the germs are either there or not, or that I sometimes grab the door handle and sometimes cannot. No matter how I think it through, no matter how I reason with myself, if I think about it while in the bathroom, I quite likely will be unable to touch the door. Period. If I don’t think about it, I’ll grab the door fearlessly, and continue on happily in life. (Unless, of course, I think about it as I am already opening the door, or have just walked out of the door. In such a case, I usually’ll have to find a way to wash/sanitize my hand then, sometimes even by returning to the bathroom to do so, because I don’t much like hand sanitizer – it leaves the germs on you, even if they are now dead.)
And now I am going to stop sharing about this for now. It is exhausting to consider, and it makes my chest tight. As I mentioned, bringing it to mind is the trouble of it all. When I don’t think about it, I’m fine and dandy, breathing freely. So, I want to forget all of this before I next go to the bathroom, because I want to be able to use the bathroom with ease. However, the fact that I am even considering how I want to forget this and why, that is possibly going to prove troublesome later, because I’ve already made the connection between the two in my head. Now, when I go to the bathroom, I am likely to think of how I wanted to forget this before I next went there. This is why I usually do not even allow myself to finish thoughts. For example, this paragraph normally would have ended at that “And now I am going to stop”, because that would have been enough into the thought process of what I shared afterward. I’ll share some more about other parts of the OCD stuff another time, though. Just, I’m finished for now. 🙂
Post-a-day 2018
What’s the point of getting sick, if there’s no one around to take care of you? Or, at least, to check in on you, and possibly bring some hot food for you… Sure, I get to take a break from going out into the world, but I hardly have the will to procure myself food when I’m healthy and well. Get me sick, and, though it is the time at which I most need quality nourishment, I hardly have the energy to get out of bed, let alone cook food to feed myself. I think this is what I want most out of a partner in life. I want someone who will take care of me in those times when I most need (or really want) to be taken care of. It isn’t all the time, but sometimes being held closely and having someone rub my back genuinely lovingly is the perfect remedy for any ailment.
Post-a-day 2018
We went to an opera showcase tonight, and, as we commented on the style of box seats in the hall (or was it when I was listening to the host say something about Mozart?), I recalled the night I first saw “Die Zauberflöte” (“The Magic Flute”).
You see, it was a regular night in my life in Vienna, and I thought it would be nice to go see a show – that was kind of an incredibly easy thing to do while living there. I arrived to the theatre and purchased my ticket for the show using the fabulous discount that Austria offers to young adults and students, and headed toward the coat check. At this point, I recognized a friend of mine ahead of me, and called out his name. Apparently, we had both spontaneously decided to come to the show that night, and, with my having bought my ticket directly after he’d bought his, our seats were together. It was my first – and possibly only, actually – time in a box seat. The show was truly spectacular, and it was wonderful having someone to share the experience with me. When I later relayed the tale to my mom, we were utterly tickled by how crazy the whole thing was, especially with how snobby it could come across. ‘Oh, yes. I had spontaneously decided to attend an opera one night, ran into a friend upon arrival, and we enjoyed the wonderful show together from our box seats.’ 😛
Post-a-day 2018
Apparently I have little to comment and share this weekend… I guess the rodeo has me worn out like crazy already, leaving me with hardly any energy to write up more than a sentence of heartfelt nonsense by the time I make it home and to bed each night. 😛
Post-a-day 2018
A morning prayer can really save the day. ❤
Post-a-day 2018
I had forgotten until recently that I used to play street hockey with one of my brothers. We just would rollerblade together and pass the ball or puck to each other, or practice rollerblading with the sticks as fast as we could and then with the sticks and ball/puck. It was fun. And, you see, I remembered this, because I was trying to figure out how I had been so good at floor hockey in gym class in ninth grade, even though I had never done it in school before then. And I thought of that memory, because I saw at the YMCA the other girl in that freshman gym/health class who was really good at floor hockey (and definitely more intense about it than anyone else), which had been our first sport of the school year. Her name is Kristina. It was really good having someone else in that class who enjoyed sports for the sport of them, and who was naturally good at most sports, and who didn’t get an attitude about any of it. We didn’t really become friends outside of that class, but she’s always held a little sweet space in my heart and memory because of our initial floor hockey awesomeness bond. 😛
Post-a-day 2018
One of my favorite memories from my childhood is the time my brother, sister, and I bonded over shaving legs in the living room. You see, our dad’s house used to be a duplex, and so the upstairs and downstairs had the same floorpan, giving the girls – the upstairs lots – our very own living room. It was normal circumstances for us girls and maybe a girlfriend of one of theirs to hang out on lazy afternoons and evenings there. Occasionally, our bother would join us. On one particular night, my eldest sister had decided to allow me to shave her legs for her, while we watched some television show. I was around eight or ten years old.
In my panic of doing it, worried that I would slice open her leg or something, my brother joined in on the adventure, to show that it was definitely doable by me, since he had never shaved legs, but he was able to do it safely. And so, he shaved her left leg, and I shaved her right, while she lay on the rug in the living room. Such beautiful sibling bonding time. 😛
Post-a-day 2018
The following is the transcription of a letter I found this week. (Yes, it was in one of the boxes of papers and folders and such.) I wish I had found it months ago, when I’d first returned from Japan. However, it still did me loads of good when I read it the other day. While I missed out on some bits it mentions, I actually did a really good job of fulfilling most of the tasks prescribed in it… a version of them, anyway.
Anyway, it is a letter I wrote to myself when I was still on my college campus, about to leave to study abroad in Germany and Austria. As per standards of our school’s study abroad program, we all had to write our future selves a letter, which would be mailed to us upon our return from our study abroad programs. I fully acknowledge that mine is full of grammatical errors, but that was part of why I was going abroad anyway – to improve my language skills. Also, the whole letter is written in cursive, because I do that. The third sentence actually caused me to tear up, and the fourth had me crying. It’s amazing how right I was, and I really didn’t know that I ever would be in the current situation in which I find myself.
……………………
10. April 2012
Dienstag
Hannah Leigh, chèrie,
Ich weiss nicht, was muss ich dir sagen. Ich kenne dich nicht, weil du so viel gechanged hast. Welcome home – may it still feel that way to you. You are forever welcome here, so remember that – you might need it some day. Okay, here’s what I want you to do:
1) Go record it. Get on your computer, write up any questions
you would love for others to ask, & then record yourself
answering them. Then you can do what you want with
it all, but you will have that satisfaction, that completeness,
wholeness of having shared what you needed, desired, wanted
to share.
2) Talk to people. Make a quick list of what specifically you already
have wanted to share with whom. Call each person & set up when
& where you will share what you have to share. Share with them.
3) Talk to Opa. No matter where he is, go visit him & talk with
him completely in German.
4) Find someone local with whom you can be open, close, & frank, & speak
only German (or completely German) together with ease.
5) Remember that it’s all right not to “know” who you are. Knowing
makes no difference, anyway, so no good reason to bother with it.
Look yourself in the mirror & see all that has passed, & be open to
all that will come.
6) You are woman & you create the universe with your being. Your
power is endless, & it is selfless love that feels it. Love your
mother & your Mother. Love your self wholly, & your next
step will become available and visible to you.
7) Be at peace. Even if it was &/or is hard, it is all relative.
Take it for the beneficial experience that it is, & enjoy every
bit you have gotten & will get from it all.
8) Now & every time you see that it just might possibly help,
take a deep breath & close your eyes, letting your thoughts
run around & then calm naturally as you breathe deeply.
I love you & I wish you all the best. I am here with you always, though I will now be transformed from the time I wrote this letter. My understanding & my love have only increased & expanded, I promise. You are wonderful. You are beautiful. You are mine.
I love you. Love me, too.
❤ Peace Hannah Leigh
P.S. Pretend I pressed a flower in here to give you a wholesome smile & kiss. 🙂 oxox
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Post-a-day 2018
I found this today. It is from last August…. I suppose I sent it out in an e-mail to people… but I might have just considered sending it out, and never actually did it. I have edited only the name of the town… just ’cause… you know, Japan. 😛
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hannah ananas 