Okay, so I’m gonna be putting a lot of myself out there with this, but hey, it’s six o clock in the morning, I haven’t gone to bed yet, and I feel like sharing.
I guess I’ll start by introducing you guys to my newest character that I’ve been working on. I’m posting with him now! So this is still Beth/Jupiter/
Kane you’re listening to ramble.
Anyways, a lot of the weird little character quirks and compulsions that Yan has in his personality are based exactly on things that I do in real life. This happened because I was making him, and I thought about what it would be like to write someone who does the same odd things that I do. I really liked the idea, so I put it into action! I haven’t even started writing with him yet and I’m already incredibly attached.
Now, for those of you who may be curious but don’t want to go read through my 2000 word character sheet, I’ll give you a synopsis. Yan has this thing with numbers. He’ll count the number of times that he does things and if he does something, like for example scratch his foot, a certain number of times it’ll bother him so he doesn’t do things in certain numbers. The numbers he (and I) avoid are 4, 6, 12, and 13. And also any number whose numbers happen to add up to any of these numbers. (The example I use in his CS, 24 --> 2+4=6. Also that has 4 in it and it’s 12 two times. I’m not going into this any further.)
He does this with everything. The number of steps that he takes, the number of times he scratches his neck, the number of times he blinks, the number of times he breathes, and I think you all get the point. (Though then there's also loosing track of the numbers, and then he's gotta do something way more than enough times, just to be safe.)
And you know, this got me thinking. Cause I’ve never thought that this was a serious problem for me. (Though it HAS actually gotten to that point in the past.) But it made me think back into my past. And I remembered some things that I used to do that I never realized were basically the same thing, but they just slowly evolved into what I do now.
Back when I was in high school, I used to check inside my closet and move the clothes around before I went to bed every night to make sure no one was in there. I didn’t even connect that to what I do until just a few minutes ago. This eventually turned into me checking all the locks in the house (and for a little bit all the windows too) and sometimes I’d go and check every closet in the house to make sure there weren’t people hiding in there. (I’m really glad I don’t do this anymore. :/ I’m a little tempted to check my closet right now though. Not gonna happen though cause I ain’t opening that jar of worms again.)
This next part is going to sound the craziest, I’m sure. See, I’m not sure how, but eventually I got it in my head that other people wanted to read my mind and that they would go about this by touching me or me touching something that they touched. (Don’t worry, I don’t think this any more. I’m glad for this.) So I began to wash my hands a lot because that would stop it from happening. The weird part is that I’d only do it in my house, and the only safe place I had was my room.
When it was bad I would wash my hands before entering my room, accidentally touch something in my room that someone else had touched, have to leave my room to go to the bathroom and wash my hands, go back in my room, have to chase the cats all over the house cause they got out again, carry them back in my room, think that I accidentally touched something again, and it would start all over again. At it’s worst, and I really think this is the worse this has ever gotten, I somehow touched the inside of my mouth after touching something else. I couldn’t swallow my spit. It had been touched by something else so I sat there and went to spit in the sink every 5-10 minutes. Eventually I went to take a shower and washed my mouth out to fix the problem. But that’s when I really realized that this could turn into a serious problem for me. I worked on it, and it’s not THAT bad anymore, which I’m infinitely grateful for.
Somewhere along the line though, it just turned into the numbers thing. And I still can’t touch doorknobs with my hands without having to go wash them afterwards. (You’d be surprised at how easy they are to turn with your feet though.)
And I think that the worst part about it is that I know that nothing bad will happen. I knew that there weren't gonna be people hiding in those closets. I knew that no one wanted to read my mind. I know that if I do things a certain number of times, something horrible won't happen. (Don't even get me started on "Knock on wood") But I do it anyways. It just really,
REALLY bothers me if I don't. And then I do it, because I have to.
[
EDIT: Reading over this again, I feel like this part needs clarification. It's like, you know something is true, like there aren't people in the closet, but you really don't know for sure. You don't know for sure unless you check. So you end up checking.]
I’m pretty sure that this is some form of obsessive compulsive disorder, but I’ve never actually gone to a psychiatrist or anyone about it, so I can’t say for sure.
Aaaand, I think that’s my sharing for tonight. I’ve actually been thinking about posting up
something about my new character explaining him, but I didn’t expect to want to get into all my crazy until now.
Simon actually bites me if I try to rub his belly. He's a little jerk. 
