i am neurotic.

when I make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I always put the peanut butter on first. I have to get a new knife to put in the jelly to ensure I don’t get any peanut butter in it or I can never ever use the jelly again.

Whenever I text someone, as soon as I hit send, I switch the phone on silent and hide it under something. It makes me nervous when the phone rings because I don’t know when its going to go off and I don’t like not knowing when its about to go off. Then when I check it and see they message me it makes me feel like they really thought of me.

I can’t chew a whole stick of gum, I have to cut it in half. Just because. I don’t believe in chewing whole sticks of gum, I see no point. I even split one stick of gum for two of my friends to share. I have been doing this for about a year.

I have found I have to check the missed connections on my local craigslist in fear that I might miss one about me. I check it several times in an hours period every hour I am online. I counted once I checked it 24 times one hour a few days ago. I’ve been trying to be better about it. I have to read all of them, even if the headline has nothing to do with me.

When it snows I have to keep checking on it to make sure it’s still coming down. I get this completely nonsensical feeling that if I don’t the snow will get lazy and stop. I have been doing this since I was about six years old and as a twenty year old still do it.

When I sign my name (Eric), I always have to dot the i with a heart. Even on professional documents, government forms, anything, the i must be dotted with a heart, so people don’t think I’m scary.

Every time I say a “big” word out loud I also say it in my head, spell it, then say it in my head silently again like I’m in a spelling bee. I’ve been doing this since I was a kid. It’s really annoying.

I love to buy shoes but every time I get a new pair of shoes that I find myself wearing a lot I start to feel like my old shoes become depressed and I’ll end up wearing them out of sheer guilt.

Butterflies scare the living shit out of me. When I was younger, somebody told me that if I touched a butterfly, it would never fly again. I was already not the butterflies’ biggest fan, but this was the final straw. I know they’re not going to get hurt, and I’m not going to be in anyways injured by them, but I remain horribly scared of them to the point where I go and walk the opposite way of them and cross streets just to avoid them.

Whenever I watch a movie, I have to leave the credits on until I can turn it off right after the song playing. If I miss it by a few seconds and the next song starts to play, I have to sit through it till I can turn it off. I’m also like this when I’m reading. I never put down the book until I’m done with a paragraph.