A blog? Really? I know. But you don’t have to read it! Honestly, please go back to watching the Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again trailer.

…Oh. Just me? Fuck, I’ve definitely lost you now.

If you’re still here, let me say I do realize blogs are kind of old-school for anyone who’s not a…I don’t know. Fitness guru? Tech guru? Gurus, in general. But Ladybird is still on people’s lips, and 2003 isn’t going to be popular again forever, y’all. Also, I’ve had writer’s block for ages and since the novel isn’t materializing, rambling it is!

First of all: the title. I originally thought this would make a great title for my memoir, but let’s be real, Samantha Irby has the corner on clever bitching. (And so much more, of course, but a love of bitching – and reading – are the main things we have in common.) Plus, as a blog, this doesn’t have to be cohesive, or even grammatically correct! (Just kidding. It will definitely be grammatically correct; this isn’t a twelve-year-old’s text message.) But I can also include gifs, if I can figure out how to embed gifs…

Bam! DONE.

So this title came from the realization that, while there are plenty of rules I like to flout, I spend a lot of my life following some weird (and let’s be honest: stupid) ones, thanks to a lovely little affliction called OCD. And anxiety, which is kind of like the number two riding in the sidecar who occasionally hijacks the whole vehicle, leading OCD to shout, “WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS, FAST AND THE FURIOUS 8?! BACK OFF, BUB, THIS IS MY SHOW!” And anxiety is like, “WHEELIE TIME!” and then sparks start flying like in a Bruce Willis film when you know shit is about to get real, and I’m standing on the sidelines thinking, “Why did I choose a motorcycle analogy?! I would have so much more control over a covered wagon!”

Because that’s what it’s about, isn’t it? Trying to make up for control in a world that, at large, seems less and less concerned with it. It wasn’t always this way. Back in the good old days (I guess it was the mention of covered wagons?), I used to mainly have depression, which I somehow thought was better than generalized anxiety. Like, in the hierarchy of mental disorders. You know: “My soul feels like a gray cloud of hopelessness, but at least I can brave the Lollapalooza crowds without freaking out, lol!”

Just kidding. I’ve never been to Lollapalooza and I never will.

Then, somewhere along the way, my soul took a note from Stella’s groove and came back, basically bringing with it an exhaustive list of things I should constantly worry about. Like the world’s worst vacation souvenir. These things are mostly germ-related, and got to be so debilitating that I wound up with my now-therapist I’ll call Jill. Jill is, to paraphrase Leslie Knope, a beautiful minx who looks like the love child of a pre-Raphaelite painting and Strawberry Shortcake and whose evil plan is to help me learn to live with OCD. (Note: not get rid of it, which is what I signed up for. Apparently, it’s like alcoholism and you can never make it go away, which blows.) Just the other day, Jill asked me if I was ready to begin exposures, which is pretty self-explanatory in that it involves exposing yourself to the things that trigger OCD behavior, and then trying to abstain from, say, washing your hands fifty billion times.

“Like what would we be doing?” I asked, thinking that we weren’t going to be practicing touching the CTA poles in a shrink’s office.

“Well,” Jill said, “the other day, another client and I ate a cookie off the bathroom floor.” She paused. “There might have been poop particles on that cookie; I don’t know.”

Me:

“Well, we wouldn’t start there,” she reassured me. “She’s further along in the exposure process than you are.”

But I had already tuned out. Start there? Let’s not end there! Jill, let’s never get to the place where we are eating cookies off a public restroom floor.

Whelp, now I want cookies. So let’s end with a link to one of my favorite bakeresses and fellow ED survivor, Jessie Oleson Moore: S’more Pop-Tart Drop Cookies from Cakespy. They’re so good I’d almost consider…

Nope. Never mind.