Twenty-nine pumps from the soap dispenser before I can finally go to bed. After seven more I turn the tap off. Another seven, tap off. I quickly shuffle to the bedroom. Back to the bathroom. Another seven, tap off. A single pump from the dispenser. And then another seven. This is the third time I wash my hands and now it's slightly longer; I rub my hands even a little longer than the times before.
When I finally lie in bed, my only hope is that I don't have to get up again, because I have nightmares that force me to shower again, or that make me wash all of my bedding.
Explaining people what my life with OCD is like is difficult. Because I have no idea what it's like not having OCD. I have no idea how other people manage to finish their day without having showered right after work. Without having washed their hands dozens of times or having crossed things off an imaginary to-do list. Every single day, without an exception.
Everything started when I was a child
The urge to wash my hands hasn't been there all my life, but as far back as I can think, I've always had odd habits, like having to get up every 10 minutes or standing in the hallway for hours late at night, not knowing where to go. As a child, I had no idea that these things could become something so much worse and I also had no clue that I was different than anyone else. There were no other children I could compare myself to. Until I was 6 years old and went to school, I had no contact with anyone aside from my relatives. And I had only four of them.
As a child, I also had no clue that I could've grown up differently. Only when I was 20 I understood that it wasn't OK that my parents constantly told me that something's not right with me. That neither the "smack" here and there, nor the letting me trip over their legs when I was running around and therefore annoying them was OK. Only when I was an adult I realised that it wasn't my fault that these things happened to me and that I wasn't like all the other kids.
Let's go back to 1993 when I was in my second year at school. I was a bit of a loner and felt like the other children in my class didn't like me much. I had never been to kindergarden and never played with any of the children in the neighbourhood, because their families didn't want anything to do with mine. Whilst everyone else in my year had become friends at kindergarden, I was sat at home. My parents hadn't bothered trying to find a kindergarden for me. We lived in the centre of my hometown, without a playground close by. My mother worked from home, so she barely had time to play with me.
Thinking back, I was pretty lonely until I started going to school. When I started school I had no clue how to deal with all the other children. It didn't help much that in the endless hours I'd spend sitting in my room I'd taught myself to read and count with the help of children's magazines. I was ahead of everyone else but that didn't make them look up to me – it turned me into an outsider. On top I wore clothes that weren't in fashion and I felt fat and ugly.
One of my parents’ decisions that would influence my whole life
It all would've been half as bad, if there hadn't been another difference that made my time at school tough: My parents didn't allow me to shower more than twice a week. For money reasons. We lived in an old flat where the only way to get hot water was through an old boiler. That used a lot a lot of energy, so one full boiler had to be enough for three people.
So I wasn't only bullied for my weight, the fact I was a "swot", and my clothes, but I was also constantly bullied for not being as clean as the other kids. Like the one time when a kid asked me if I wore gel in my hair or if it was greasy. Or when the pretty, popular girls stood behind me during PE and sniffed my armpit and pretended to gag. "She stinks!" they yelled and I was so embarrassed I wanted the floor to swallow me up. I was 12 and still a girl. I wore T-shirts with teddy bears, but puberty wasn't far. The things they said, and which hurt too much back then, influenced my entire youth; I still can't forget about them today. But I'd have never thought so back then.
In Germany there's a saying, "If you rely on someone, you're lost," and based on my childhood, that's 100% true. Since I was 7, I was home alone during the afternoons, because my mother had stopped working from home. The TV became my babysitter. My days were all the same: I went to school, I walked home in the afternoon, and I ate sandwiches with Nutella while watching TV. I was the most well-behaved child in the world because I was scared being told off. And that happened all the time, because of the littlest things, like when I left crumbs, made a mess with my Legos, or laughed too loudly. The result was that I avoided causing a fuss. And that's why I never dared showering secretly.
There weren't any friends who gave me comfort either. There were some kids I called friends, but they weren't really. They made me feel as if they tolerated me, nothing more. But that was enough for me. I started saying "yes fine" or "that's OK", even when they were mean and nothing was fine or OK. The main thing was that I wasn't alone.
One day I injured my ankle doing long jump during PE. While I hobbled away, I heard a classmate mock me for my dirty sock. If all I was gonna get was mockery instead of sympathy, then it would be better to hide all the bad things in my life, I thought back then. And this is a rule I still follow today.
When a habit turns into a compulsion
As a teenager I found my love for indie rock and started turning up to school in corduroy blazers on a daily basis. I had fought my parents and was at least allowed to wash my hair every day now. That meant I was being bullied less, but I still had problems with this concept of being a girl. I felt like I was constantly being watched and everything I did was being commented on – both from my family and my classmates. When I braided my hair all I got was a sarcastic remark. When I wanted to wore a dress or skirt I was told I was too fat.
At some point during my puberty I started washing my hands a lot. Of course people commented. My parents said that it was a compulsion. I didn't wanna hear that word because it meant that was another thing I would be bullied and told off for. So I concealed what I did.
Even before I moved out, I started washing my hands more and more often. I was sneaky enough now that sometimes I managed to shower secretly. Slowly but surely my compulsion became stronger than me. But I can't say how that happened.
At age 19, just after finishing school, I moved away from home and thought everything would be better. But I moved from one hell into another. In my flat share I felt bullied all the time. My flatmates criticised what I did or didn't do and at some point I didn't dare leaving my room anymore when I knew they were around.
I started showering whenever I had the chance to. Never for long, but sometimes five or six times a day. I used every opportunity to wash my hands. My schedule was very different to those of my flatmates, so I was able to hide it. Every night when I wanted to go to bed, I'd keep getting up to wash my hands just because I had thought of a "bad thing", which could be something like thinking of my flatmates. Sometimes I got up 25 times until I finally fell asleep, and sometimes I stood in front of the sink until 4 in the morning and counted how often I'd wash my hands. Ten times, twenty times, a hundred times, three hundred times. Every week I used up to 10 bottles of soap. I hated myself.
During this time I briefly started hurting myself. I wanted to punish myself for being such an idiot and wanted someone to see I was suffering so much. But no one saw my cry for help.
I tried a different way and called a clinic, asking if I could come in. The answer was something like: It was down to the doctors if I was a case for the clinic, not me. This sentence was so scornful I hung up and cried. Then I showered.
During my last two semesters I started jogging, because one of my "acquaintances" now also jogged and I thought, If he can do it, I can do it. I began to lose weight. At first I ran only twice or three times a day and never longer than two kilometres, but considering that before I hadn't been able to run 200 metres without being out of breath, this was a huge thing for me. Quickly the jogging became a compulsion, too. I had to go every single day, even when I felt like shit. I started controlling what I ate. Not how much, but what. Instead of buying what I felt like, I would stand in the aisles for minutes, taking things from the shelves, just to put them back five minutes later.
Somehow I still managed to get my master's degree, and that with a really good grade. Within three months I found a job and moved to the other end of Germany. From the outside, it all must've looked as if I had my life together. Maybe this is why no one saw how much I needed help.
In 2011 my OCD suddenly became better. The simple reason: I finally lived alone. I could move freely in my flat and wasn't scared of my environment anymore. Work kept my brain busy, so I wasn't able to think about my problems much and I earned enough to not have to constantly worry. My life finally seemed OK.
At least for four months. Then my job became the problem. I worked for a huge online retailer. Aside from a few nice colleagues I had the feeling that everyone else just saw me as a competitor. I felt huge pressure that quite literally broke me when I spoke to my manager as part of my annual review and he read out everything my colleagues had anoymously written about me. "I never thought your character would become such a problem," he said. Then he laughed and added that he should've brought tissues. He got up and we walked through two floors of offices. I was sobbing my eyes out. The moment he disappeared in his office I ran to the loos. I cried more, washed my hands, and tried to get through the day somehow.
I felt like how I had felt back in the flat share: broken inside. I went home and lay on the floor for hours, crying. I showered, but the smallest thought of my boss made me wash my hands again and again. The next day, a Saturday, I called a colleague, who took me to emergency room. She was one of the first who had ever listened and understood how bad I was feeling. In the clinic a doctor spoke to me for 10 minutes, then he gave me three big pills. "If you ever feel this bad again, take one. You will fall asleep within 15 minutes and sleep through for 10 hours." From then on I always had one of these pills with me.
He sent me to a psychiatrist and a psychologist. The psychologist assessed I suffered from depression and also something called magical thinking. This leads to the fact that I don't allow myself to eat, do, or think certain things, because I think it will lead to bad things. That I'll be unlucky.
The psychiatrist spoke to me for five minutes before prescribing me little pink pills, which I took every day from then on. I noticed how my emotions were numbed out – happiness and sadness all the like. But I still had to wash my hands very often, so often that during winter, when the air was cold and dry, my hands would hurt like hell. I had open wounds, which kept bleeding. I couldn't put cream on them because it would've meant they were "dirty" again. Sometimes my entire hands were covered in Band-Aids. I always had excuses ready why that was the case. Even though I didn't really feel any better, I kept taking the pills. Until one morning, when I forgot taking them and started panicking that my day would now automatically be awful. I became scared that I wouldn't be able to live without the little pink pill anymore and stopped taking them altogether. It was such a relief being able to feel properly again, even if it meant crying more as well.
That was the time when I took up a routine I still have. I come home, shower immediately (I won't even allow myself to sit on my sofa until I've done that), wash everything I've worn – sometimes even my shoes – and shower again before I go to bed. At the end of the day there are the 29 pumps from the soap dispenser, then I go to sleep. In the morning I can live with just washing my hair. Unless I had a nightmare.
A new start with old routines
When I couldn't stand my job anymore and I was offered another fixed-term contract, I knew I had to quit. I have no idea how I plucked up the courage, but I walked into my boss's office and said, "I'd rather be unemployed than do this for another day." I still finished my last month and the first day of unemployment I felt relieved like hardly ever before.
I decided to give myself a day off, doing things that would do me good. Not thinking as much. I started being able to fall asleep quicker. I'd get up only four or five times – and not 25 – after I'd already gone to bed. My OCD improved again. But it didn't last long.
In order to get unemployment money I had to do a job centre course. It was actually meant to help me find a job but sometimes we'd speak about things I didn't want to speak about. Another participant once said, "I always thought that my life is shit, but when I hear your story, I feel better." I felt horrible. And my OCD became worse again.
For months and months I looked for a new job, but all I got was negative replies. I'd be too young and well-qualified, that's what I'd constantly hear. My unemployment money was just about enough to cover rent and running costs and I still spent too much on soap and cleaning equipment, because my OCD made me. I felt left alone. It didn't chance when my parents would call. They told me I was arrogant and it was my own fault that I was in this situation. And that I was an awful daughter. I couldn't take it anymore. I hung up and never spoke to them again.
Every two weeks I had to speak to someone in the job centre about how I felt. I didn't want to tell a stranger such personal things. But whenever I told her, she kept asking and stirring up all this crap that was going on in my brain anyway. I got the impression that every time I had to go, it became more difficult. Once, I was rushed because I had missed a tube, and she said, "If you turn up like this to a job interview, of course they won't employ you." I started crying and tried explaining. When I got home I threw away the clothes I was wearing and showered.
Two weeks before I'd have had to apply for a new round of unemployment insurance money leaving me with not much more than 400 euro a month, I found a new job. For a while I felt OK, but then I was fired on the last day of my probation because I had made too many mistakes. My boss considered things like typos mistakes. He gave me a deadline of four months. If I made fewer mistakes, I was allowed to stay. I made fewer mistakes. "See, being fired helped!" he said. When I cried and asked if he could even vaguely imagine how humiliated I felt and what it's like being scared of the littelest mistakes, he didn't reply.
Stuck in the past
I only tried doing my work and not causing a fuss. It worked until they found out about my past. My managers found my anonymous Tumblr. It's where I write about OCD and depression. I have no idea why, but they forced me to delete certain posts. After I'd done that it didn't stop. I got a letter saying that my depression would lead to my work being bad. If I didn't start therapy, they'd fire me. I think this threat happened because my line manager's ego was bigger than Kanye's and he couldn't handle that sometimes I was right and he wasn't. But I obliged and looked for another therapist.
During the first sitting I was asked to tell her how I felt. After telling her my story she went, "I'm surprised you're still alive." During the second one we spoke about why I was or felt so alone. "If you'd wear your hair down and would put on a bit more makeup, you would sure find a boyfriend," she said. I never went again.
Shortly after that day I was fired. I wasn't even allowed to tell my colleagues that it was my last day. On the way home I bought cleaning equipment and desinfection spray and cleaned my flat. The same night I put everything I'd ever worn to work on eBay or threw it away. Even the ankle boots I loved so much – I just knew I couldn't wear them ever again. The next morning I was relieved that I never had to go back there again. But I was also incredibly scared that I would never find a job again.
My savings were gone within three months and I was caught in a vicious cycle, because I still spent way too much on soap and other things. I just couldn't stop. In the meantime I'd started getting a postcard from my parents every day, telling me what a disgusting, awful human being I was. Every time I had to shower immediately and wash my clothes.
The only little highlight was my routine of going for a run. But my routes became lonelier. Especially after the one time I waited at a red light: I had worn a bright yellow running tee and other the side of the road two men kept mocking me. "What's that green monster? Is it a man, is it a woman, you don't know!" I never wore the tee again and changed my route. Nowadays, I put on some makeup before I go for a run.
I felt like in a trap again. I washed my hands more often and longer again. I was scared to open my postbox and stopped opening the door when it rang.
A fresh start
At some point I thought that the best solution for my problems would be another fresh start in a new city, even if that would be exhausting. I wanted to just help myself and get out of this trap. After countless applications that led nowhere I put my last bit of hope into one last letter.
It worked.
I packed my things and moved to the other end of Germany. I didn't give anyone from my old life my new address. I sold my furniture and everything that reminded me of these shit times. I started anew.
Nowadays I still wash my hands way too often and shower at least twice on most days. But there are days when I shower only once. And one day my mind will win against the fears. One day I will allow myself to open the door even if I'm not expecting anyone. One day I will no longer believe that my bad luck is connected to doing or eating certain things. One day logic will win against the magical thinking.
Right now I think I don't have the strength to do another therapy, because whenever I speak about these things, I wanna shower immediately, but that's OK.
It's OK because I got used to it. I control myself more. Counting helps. I don't wash my hands 300 times anymore, but 29 times. And during the day sometimes only seven times. What sounds crazy to others is OK for me, because I know it used to be so much worse. When I lie in bed at night and all the "bad things" creep up again, I try to distract myself, read things online that cheer me up, and force myself to stay in bed. I get up only when I feel that I can't fall asleep anyways.
I allow others to drag me out of my routine more often. Every distraction from too much thinking is a good distraction. Some memories fade and that helps. I'm more open about how I feel. I try to explain to people what's bad for me and hope they understand.
I manage to be showered and in bed within half an hour. I use only two to three bottles of soap a week.
And I know that my life goes on despite my OCD and that I'm not a bad human being because of it.
This post was originally written in German and was translated by the author Dani Beck.
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