Lots of mental health issues have had their moment in the sun, so today I’m here to campaign on behalf of OCD, clinically known as Ostentatious Cyclical-[entrapment] Demons. Get ready HypochondriTok, we’re gonna self-diagnose and second guess and self-diagnose and second guess and self diagnose and…
Thanks to Nicholson’s ~delightful~ representation in the 90s, most folks aware-of-but-unaffected-by OCD liken it to germaphobia, extreme cleanliness, and counting to the same number over and over again and OOOH AM I HERE TO TELL YOU IT’S NOT ABOUT CLEANLINESS
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I wash my hands so frequently they bleed daily, but that’s not the whole thing. And sure, I count, everything has to be even. Except when it doesn’t, which is usually when even would mean four and four is bad because it’s TOO even, I mean 2×2/2+2? Who came up with this shit!
So anyway, today I went into a store. And I was in that store, according to Spouse, for over an hour. I had gone in to buy a lamp. Spouse stayed in the car because Dog was traveling with us (CAR RIDE!!!1~~)
I sent photos of lamp options. Then I found two small lamps, neither of which was likely to work for our intended purpose. These two small lamps spoke to me.
I mean, literally. They were talking to me. The first started all sultry-like. “I am cute, take me home.” Cool, lamp, I’ll do that. But then—then! Another lamp, almost identical to this lamp, HE started speaking to me. “Don’t take him. I’m cuter.”
Okay, Second Lamp. I hear you. You make a solid case. But then First Lamp is all “That guy’s cursed, yo. Don’t do it.” And holy shit, lamp, you’re probably right. I’m falling for Ye Olde Cursed Lampe Trappe again.
In the time this conversation took place, I had found a lampshade that would fit both of these lamps. It would not fit the purpose of my lamp-search, but it it fit them. Every time one spoke, it got the Shade. Like a little hat. Or a talking stick, when you’re in the Bad Kid Group at a sleep away camp you never wanted to go to in the first place.
So these lamps are going at it, with me trying to decide which one to buy (neither of which suited my needs). I would choose, then the one I was leaving behind would cry. I would correct my errant choice, and learn of another curse!
Around this time I decided that I’d made so many cursed choices, that perhaps I’d been listening to the Curse Itself this entire time, choosing the real cursed items just because they told me they were the one untainted by curse! Both lamps assured me I was being absurd.
Spouse texted me: “Are you coming out?”
He is a patient man (after all, he married me). He does not often rush me (unless we are leaving the house and he has had the nerve to not check that the stove is off and the windows are locked and there’s nothing that can melt under the snake’s light and that the stove is off). This message, this simple question, jammed a stick into the spokes of my brain. I had been in my lamp loop for an hour. An hour. One entire sixty-minute hour.
The small, talking lamps knew they were in trouble; they reduced their debate to hushed tones. I managed to leave without either of them. Instead, I purchased an ugly grandma lamp that remains silent (and is correctly sized for the living room location that needed light in the first place). But I can still hear the Small Lamps muttering and threatening, hours later. For I am Cursed.
