i am neurotic.

I have to make a conscious effort every day to keep my thoughts internal. It’s worse when I’m stressed out. I catch myself muttering sometimes and have to physically bite my tongue. I worry that when I’m old I’ll lose my filter and say all of my thoughts out loud.

In another neurotic spam deleting frenzy, I accidentally deleted some of the comments posted by readers.  I’m terribly sorry.  Feel free to repost your deleted comment (if you’re feeling neurotic about it).  Otherwise, I’m very sorry, and I’ll try to be more careful next time.

Whenever there is running water, I have to spit into it. If i’m washing my hands, I have to spit into the bowl – not an aggressive spit, just kind of let it fall out. I’m a guy and when i’m urinating, I have to spit into the toilet but for some reason when it happens like this, I absolutely must make my spit ‘break’ my stream of wee – merely spitting into the toilet bowl doesn’t suffice.

before i have sex, i have to move all the stuffed animals off my bed, for fear they might see me and be scarred. once, i forgot to move them and my boyfriend had to reassure me that all the stuffed animals were asleep…

I cannot write my name with an uppercase ‘m’ because it looks too angular and forbidding, it overpowers the rest of my name and I cannot stand to do it. On passports, visas, school applications and resumes…its always simply: meg.

When me and my bf begin to get intimate; beforehand, I must cover all cracks in the door because I’m paranoid someone would be watching us. Plus I need to have the T.V. on so it covers up the sounds of us doing it. I need all these components or else I don’t enjoy it at all.

When I’m eating, I have to take turns eating with the left and right sides of my mouth. The food I don’t like as much (vegetables, pizza crust, yellow Skittles, etc.), I chew on the left side. I save the best parts and chew them on the right. I like to end my meal with a right-sided chew. Usually the “good” and “bad” foods are about equally divided, but if there’s a lot more of one or the other I end up taking huge, disgusting gobbles to even things out. I’ve done this since I was a kid and can’t stop even when I’m in public and people watch me dividing my food.

If I dream about someone I have to tell someone else about it (either my boyfriend or my mother) or else I feel something bad will happen to them. Even if the dream is boring and uneventful, I have to tell someone about it just to make sure the person doesn’t get hurt because I ignored their existance in my dream.

I don’t read the side effects of any medicines I take because if I do, I’ll be paranoid that they’ll happen.

I have to have all white hangers in my closet. Sometimes, my brother will switch out my white hangers for colored ones and I get very angry. Then, I must switch out the hanger(s) that very second and do something for payback.