I had to Clorox wipe my laptop before I sat down to write this. My screen was dusty and my keyboard felt gross, and one thing I cannot deal with is dust. Or gross keyboards (I guess those are technically two things I can’t deal with).
After I use Clorox wipes, I have to wash my hands. I don’t want the Clorox chemicals (as well as whatever I just cleaned up) to stay on my fingers and get into my food or my hair or someplace and possibly make me sick. Plus, I have rules about hand-washing. Washing them after cleaning something is just one of them.
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I’ve always been a neat freak. I make my bed every day, I lint-rolled my dorm floor last year when my vacuum broke (probably from excessive use), and I consider Clorox wipes to be right up there with the light bulb in terms of some of the world’s greatest inventions. Excessive clutter makes me anxious, and I’ve cleaned friends’ dorm rooms in the past because their messes were bothering me.
The semi-obsessive hand-washing, though, is new to my list of neurotic habits. It started just last year, when I was dealing with some family issues that were way beyond my maturity level. I was stressed, anxious and downright crazy all the time it seemed, and whenever I would feel particularly uncomfortable, I would go to the nearest bathroom and wash my hands to calm myself down. It made me feel better — and cleaner as well.
Then I started creating the aforementioned rules about my hand-washing. I have to wash my hands before and after meals, especially after eating foods that I touched directly with my hands — burgers, popcorn, pizza — you get the gist. I have to wash my hands after I clean something, whenever I learn that one of my friends is sick, if I touched my ear or nose or face or foot (or especially if I touched someone else’s ear or nose or face or foot), if my hands feel sweaty or icky or smelly, and if I can’t remember the last time I washed my hands.
I justified these rules by telling myself that washing my hands, is, simply, a very calming experience. Putting the right amount of soap in my palms, lathering up, turning on the water so it’s hot, but not too hot, scrubbing my hands together, rinsing, then finally drying off with a towel — it’s consistent. Sure, sometimes the water might be too hot or too cold or there isn’t enough soap, but at the end of the washing ritual, I always know that my hands are cleaner. At one time, my hands were dirty, and now, after only 15 seconds, they aren’t anymore. If only every trouble could be vanquished that quickly, right?
There are, unfortunately, many downsides to having this compulsion. This amazing Chicago weather plus washing my hands at least 10 to 15 times a day means that my hands are always dry. I’ve used up two tubes of lotion this quarter alone — lotion companies should be paying me to use their products, I swear.
And, of course, I am not always near a sink where I can wash my hands whenever I feel the urge to do so. I don’t usually just get up in the middle of class to wash my hands. And if I’m in a car or on the El, there really isn’t anything for me to use but the (inferior) hand sanitizer I carry in my backpack. So I sit there, feeling anxious, waiting for the next moment when I can wash my hands. I play with my coat button. I draw a pattern on my forefinger with my thumb that I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember. I think about how sweaty my hands are getting. And if I’ve recently touched food, I obsess over how my hands smell weird now.
I’m trying to stop the compulsion. I tell myself that it’s ridiculous to keep repeating this hand-washing ritual when my hands are probably perfectly clean without my rules. I’m slowly getting into the habit of seriously considering every urge to wash and evaluating if it’s really necessary to do so. My roommates applaud me when I do this — it’s one of the simultaneously silly and sad things that occur in this apartment on a regular basis.
I may be happily neurotic in other areas of my life, but this, like my compulsion when I was young to count the stairs at my house every time I walked up them (13 stairs, by the way), needs to go away.