I am completely obsessed with order and cleaning beyond help. I am a tidiness junky. I panic every time I have to face the disorder of things, the messy hoarding of objects, the collapsing of controlled linearity. Therefore I suffer from the opposite of Diogenes syndrome, although I don’t know whether such obsessive–compulsive disorder has a given name or a surname to which you can refer.
Rather more glamorous is telling people that you suffer from Forgoodnesssake syndrome, for instance, than being eaten away by one or several obsessive-compulsive disorders. You never ever call them OCD, please. It is very prosaic and it totally stinks of Argentinian psychologist.
I can’t stand old things. I have to throw them away. The act of throwing away makes me feel liberated. I keep on throwing things away time and time again. My body urges me strongely to do it. It is a pressing need.If I didn’t throw something away every day, I would have to throw myself under a tube train. Even though it is tempting to die like Ann Karenina, physical pain terrifies me. Besides, I deplore the violent smashing of the flesh.
I very often throw away even new things that have come to my house due to its other dweller’s choice. My mind, having marked them as useless, makes me feel they take up a lot of space and are a real bother, so I have to make room.
My family disapproves of these throwing-away acts of mine, so I have to outwit them cunningly if I want to succeed. So, I am forced to sneak out secretly at naptime, my shopping trolley filled with junk, heading for the trash can, my heart palpitations clearly audible.
To avoid bumping into some snitching neighbor, I go out my garage door, gasping with the titanic effort (sometimes, in addition to a full shopping trolley, I drag several heavy garbage bags).
My God, what a joy when I step on the grey garbage can foot pedal and throw inside one bag after the other, all these thingamajigs away! I hear the noise they make when falling down onto the heap of debris and detritus.
Carried away by this irrational and irresistible frenzy I sometimes hurt my hands and twist my wrists, in my haste to throw the hateful cargo away. If these efforts could be systematised and included as a competitive sport at the Olympic Games, I would undoubtedly win the Golden medal.
What a relief! What a catharsis!The pleasure I feel getting rid of this rubbish compares to the placid oblivion when placed under general anesthesia (later on I will write other posts explaining my favourite pastimes, one of which is to be induced in such a blissful state of unconsciousness on some plausible pretext).
Once I have cleaned the space that the wasteful things used to take up before the purge, I begin the systematic organization of the items I have finally decided to keep, always following a certain method of organizing to the very detail. Marie Kondo’s folding skills have been enourmously useful for me. How I worship this female Japanese demiurge, always battling untidiness. She is the scourge of scuzziness.
When at last I tidy up the whole house and put everything in order, arranged in categories, I feel like I had swallowed a blister pack of bromazepam tablets. Order engulfs me in a glorious calm.
