I've been reading and hearing a lot lately about OCD, and after reading some of the signs of it, have to wonder if I have a mild problem. I don't count things, but only recently noticed that almost everything in my life is in "threes". Three pictures here, three paintings there, three candles over there, three knick-knacks in that corner. And if anyone ever moves one of those things out of place, it bugs me so much I have to get up and put it back.

There are a few other things that might fall into that mild OCD category. Perfectionist kind of things. Like being bothered by a bathroom tile with a design on it that hasn't been installed in sequence with the others.

I have to work very hard, talk myself through not being so anxious about things being "out of place", or out of sequence, or not symmetrical. Crooked pictures on the wall really bother me, but I can restrain myself in other people's houses. I never noticed all these little things before, but was always conscious of being unsettled and anxious and jittery in certain circumstances and can now directly relate them to something in the room being out of sync.

It's not a life-jarring thing, and I'm definitely not inordinately compulsive anymore (I think I used to be before my first breakdown in the 80's), but these kinds of imperfections do still irritate me, but it's more "under the skin" than blatant compulsion. I never understood why it was something I had to learn to live with, why these things bothered me...OCD might explain it.