Organized Chaos - Volume 4
College: Involuntary Exposure Therapy
by Jared Kant
The first day I woke up in my college dorm, around this time last year, I realized that I had to do the unthinkably distressing. I was going to have to shower in the same stall as thirty other people I didn't even know. I did not have the luxury to be in the stall with them at the same time. However I could imagine every microbe crawling around on the tile grout, waiting to anchor in my feet and hands, and kill me before I even start class.
I wasn't going anywhere. What can you do at college? It's expensive to buy your own shower. I don't think it would be worth the money. Besides, it was just OCD after all ... I did it though. I conquered that monolith, and I was clean. I was so proud of myself; I simply brushed off the complaints from my fellow dorm mates. They said I had single-handedly drained the entire hot water supply for the next six hours or more.
When you have class early in the morning, you can't take long showers, clean your room compulsively, and can't go through a full regime of rituals unless you want to frighten your roommate into giving you a single. Having a roommate is a big deal for someone without OCD. I needed to tell my roommate a few things. But I didn't feel like telling him. After explaining what OCD was and what it really was not, he seemed cool about the idea. once I caught him on the phone telling his mother in hushed Spanish that, "Mother, my new roommate is a little crazy." I let it slide though. I waited until he left the room to tell my parents the same thing about him.
The orientation week was easy. I learned to shower in an infested shower stall shared by half the world. I educated my roommate on the lighter side of living with an abnormal college kid. Finally I managed to make some friends on campus. It's too bad that I knew for an fact that every one of them was looking at the "tattoo" on my forehead that said "Obsessive Compulsive." I could see it in their faces. It wasn't paranoia. I'm certain that it wasn't the jet black hair or the half inch spikes on my choker. It had to be the fact that I had OCD. They knew I was weird and that I did stupid things over and over.
I was ruined. So, I just hung in there. I didn't have a choice.
It wasn't like I could just go home and wait for the world to grow up and get educated. I went to classes, and I did my work. Because I don't drink, I found a niche that made me indispensable. I was the "go to" guy that guided people back to their rooms after hours when they couldn't see straight. Finally, I was comfortable enough to ask what everyone thought about how I was, "you know, different." The girl I was talking to was one of my closest friends on campus, and I felt I could trust her to give me the low-down on what everyone thought about me.
She had no idea what the heck I was talking about. She hadn't a clue. I decided that she must've missed the tattoo.
I thought about this. One day I dumped my trash can into the infested, plague-ridden community trash can/dumpster. Then I caught myself holding my nose. More accurately, someone else did. Before I could stop myself, someone asked me, "Hey, what's wrong, don't like the smell of everyone else's filth?"
"Um, err, kind of."
I had made the mistake of opening my mouth near the trash can, letting in the deadly spores of other college kids. I was doomed. I couldn't run for the safety of Listerine while this other kid watched me. Trapped, again. At that very moment, the words of my CBT therapist rang through my head. I started taking deep breaths. I smelled in the fragrant sent of stale cigarettes, coffee stained term papers, stale beer, and the bubonic plague. It felt like my brain was on fire. I almost started shaking in the hallway right there.
I forgot about the kid still watching me.
Maybe it was time to be a little honest. I told him, "Hey man, it's a germ thing. This place is a little ... infested."
He smiled, made a joke about how I was acting like I had "severe OCD or something crazy like that." As he was walking away, I started laughing really hard and yelled: "Yeah, something like that. See you around."
