W is for Washing Hands
Remember before the pandemic, when everybody would go to the grocery store and then cheerfully just…eat…food…without washing their hands first? That sort of behavior has always freaked me out.
Everybody is obsessed with hygiene now, but for those of us with contamination OCD, it’s always been like that. I would never think to eat a burrito with my hands without first washing said hands. It is ridiculous to me that people just don’t think about germs sometimes. Germs are always on my mind.
COVID-19 means that people now understand very well what it’s like to have contamination OCD. If there was anything good from this pandemic, I guess that’s one thing. That’s what contamination OCD feels like. You are always, always thinking about what you’ve touched, what you’re about to touch, and the next time you can wash your hands.
For me, my obsession was hand sanitizer. I would use it multiple times a day. The thing is, it’s GOOD to be hygenic and make sure your hands are clean. The problem becomes when you can’t operate normally because of those fears. I wouldn’t eat a granola bar while I was out of the house without wrapping a napkin around it so I wouldn’t have to touch the granola bar. I used to not touch public door handles at all – I am very good at doing strange things with my feet and am flexible enough to open doors with my feet sometimes, although not round doorknobs yet.
Anyway, I had so many bottles of hand sanitizer that I probably could have made a small fortune reselling them at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Every once in a while, it pays to be obsessive.
Not everyone has obsessive-hand-washing OCD. But sometimes, stereotypes are based in reality, and there are a lot of us who have this particular worry. I just hope the rest of the world keeps being as concerned about germs when COVID is over. It’s a relief to see other people taking germs seriously. Makes my obsessive self feel a little else alone.