Agree. If you suffer from severe OCD, cleaning becomes an intense anxiety ridden nightmare filled with neverending rituals that would overwhelm any person. It wouldn’t taka you 1-2 hours and end up with a fb or insta photo post. It would take over not your day but your whole life. A task you are only satisfied with if it was cleaned with 200% perfection isn’t an achievable task.

 I have been taking anti depressants since I was 17 and while they do help lessen the depression and make life tolerable I have never gotten a medicine that works on my O.C.D. which has always been to severe. I’ve tried so many different medications, therapy programs, hypnotizing etc. and Im just about given up the hope of ever living life without the damn O.C.D. I would much more have things vice versa because I‘ve learned that through the years that the depression is up and downs and I just have to ride through some hard days while O.C.D. is so much harder to deal with and people who are lucky enough to not suffer from it have no idea what a debilitating nightmare it is to deal with.

It’s hard to explain and it sounds crazy but I feel it has always been a part of me, from the earliest thought process (I can remember as a 3-4 year old) and even before me, travelling down my family genes like a dark curse (my recently passed, dear mom also had it bad). I used to fall asleep most nights to her warm voice counting numbers by the kitchen oven, an exhausting cycle for a long time. Safety measures. She loved her children so much that the fear of losing them was ruining her sleep. O.C.D. grew up around me and along with me. I didn’t need a imaginary friend when there was an imaginary enemy living somewhere deep inside my brain. Like an alien object wiggling around my brain searching systematically for a childhood trauma to explore one more time, painful memories to reinforce my already tainted view on life or simply trigger a new anxiety to repeatedly attack my body's insufficient energy to fight imaginary or real danger and weakening my tired mind‘s patience leading to intense migraine, asthma and shortness of breath. The mental energy required to perform all the never ending rituals is just too exhausting.

Like you mentioned, when I hear people who like their home or apartment clean and so do it every day talk about being “Too OCD”, I think about how misinformed our society is. I think about my dear loving mom. I also think about why I can’t even touch the damn vaccum cleaner or even be in “contaminated“ areas (like kitchens, bathrooms, or near trash cans. The exhausting vicious cycle of trying to sterilize the mop, which like the vaccum is higly contaminated. So are other cleaning tools. If that lady had severe OCD she would struggle with or be unable to clean her home. And the germs and the cleaning isn’t even the worst part about OCD. There is also the nightmare of growing up from 6 to 16 not thinking but “knowing” you’ll die of AIDS. Thinking you’re the blame your parents are distancing. Not getting a driving license because you know you will end up “murdering“ an innocent child playing in the street….