Continue if You Dare

Warning:  Some of the following material may be a little exaggerated for entertaining purposes.  Maybe a little embellished…  A little staged…  Just go with it.  I just have to put this out there so you don’t think I’m a total weirdo.  J  By the way, the key word is some because most of it is most definitely true.  Sadly and shamefully.

After taking the trash out, sporting all of my bracelets and watches galore, I realized that I need to address the serious problem I have.  Now it’s not diabetes, because that’s a problem I can do absolutely zippo about.  Sucks, huh?  But this problem is something I can change (I just looked at my nails right then.  Super cute!).  This problem is something that started in, I don’t know, maybe fourth grade?  Fifth?  That doesn’t matter, because the biggest hint I have for your guess of my problem is that it involves hands, soap, and water.  Don’t know what it is?  Keep thinking.  It’ll come to you, and if it doesn’t, I am sorry but I will refer you to a funny farm (what’s so funny about that?)  Continue rolling those wheels in your head, fishing that brain for ideas, searching through your maze of memories… 

Yep, you got it.  I have OHWD.  Obsessive Hand Washing Disorder.  (I totally just MTURN!  Made That Up Right Now!  I did it again!  Yikes!  I think I may have OMOAD.  Obsessive Making of Acronyms Disorder.  Somebody stop me!)  So many years of washing hands, so much time gone by with me constantly thinking and obsessing over the fear of having unclean hands!  This is a serious issue that I have.  The first time I really knew that my hand washing was becoming overkill was during winter time.  It was causing my family to come apart!  Okay, not really, I’ve just heard that a couple times in movies.  Really, it was causing my hands to come apart and here’s how:

Constantly, I was thrusting my hands underneath any sink I could find.  I would slosh soap and water around my fingers, making sure to get any dirt, germ, bacteria, grain, stickiness, tar, dust particle out.  Just like what Jillian Michaels said on one of her 30 day shred videos, “They are not invited to this party.”  They meaning the gross stuff.  (Don’t go exactly off of what I quoted.  I don’t want to be held accountable for bad quotations.  You never know how reliable my old teenage noggin is!)  Even just a regular, old Sunday where everyone in my family was still in PJ’s at 2:00 in the afternoon, my pits a little sweaty from summer heat, I would wash my hands at least 15 times just because I felt dirty.  In autumn, spring, and summer, this led to just semi-harsh rough and dry skin, however in the winter…  In the winter it was full-on bleeding.  This part does not apply to the Warning sign placed before this post.  It’s all truth.  My hands hurt, stung, secreted the red liquid coursing through my body.  It was dry skin to the next level.  It was crazy-obsessions to the next level.  It was almost as crazy as the woman on My Strange Addiction who ate toilet paper.  Almost. 

That’s when I entered OHWD Anonymous (not really) and met people just like me (not really).  Let’s start this paragraph over.  That’s when I became a lotion addict.  I put lotion on constantly, and cut down my washes…  A little.  Today, I proudly say that I suffered from OHWD and lived to see the end of my Lifetime movie.  I put lotion and chapstick on just as much as I cleaned, but it’s a much better problem.  More productive, I believe.  I had OHWD.  I got through it.  I am clean.

Please do not try this at home.