The ‘disorder' called neatness

What’s cleanliness for you, a must-have habit or an obsession hard to get rid of? If you ask me, I would say I fall in to the first category, whereas this  my former roommate of mine, a freakish neat freak  with some very strange characters would come under the second, or in fact I would put her way above the neat freaks that I am familiar with. This is because she is so crazily neat and believed that everyone in the world other than her  are slobs. I met her a few years back, in 2008 to put it precisely, when I was new to the city as well as to the hostel that I live.  A thirty something average looking female, she never spoke much to others, even to me, and was always found clung to her mobile phone, the typical ‘symptom’ of a long distance relationship. Whether she talks or not didn’t matter much to me, as what bothered me like hell was her fixation towards neatness, which I felt was the worst possible case of OCD.  A woman who insanely spends a major share of her day washing her hands and feet and cleaning her body is someone hard to live with, but unfortunately I had no other options to choose.  Thus started the long ordeal, which was nothing less silently and sanely bearing her delirious tantrums, until I was lucky enough to have another option.

Let me tell you a few interesting things from her daily routine, and I can prove what I have said, beyond any doubts. Walking up at 6.45 am is never a crime, but spending one hour in the bathroom that’s meant for four of us  is of course an inexcusable offense, especially when she knows very well that our offices are way too far unlike hers, which is just a few steps away from the hostel. After testing our patience for about an hour or so, she would relaxingly come out to get ready to go for breakfast, when we would be hurrying for our turns to take bath. Before having breakfast she would wash her hands and feet all over again, as if she’s desperately trying to wash away tons of dirt and dust. What would you all say when you see someone who has just taken bath desperately washing her hands and feet within another ten minutes? Mad?

By the time she comes back after her breakfast, let’s say in another forty-five minutes, we all would hurriedly finish bathing, as we know that she would soon jump in to the bathroom to wash her hands and feet again, which is another half an hour’s process. After those three different cleaning sessions, she would languidly stand in front of the mirror in the pretext of getting ready, making us wait until we lose our entire patience and ask her to move a little, when she would soon pick up that reason to start a quarrel. Once she gets ready to go to the office, she would again run towards the bathroom, to wash her hands and feet, as if filth has covered them all over again. So after all these, she would happily walk out of the room, leaving us wondering how on earth it is possible for someone to have such exceptional needs and neurotic craziness for neatness.

Although we could never live up her sparkling standards, we were never ‘dirt carriers’, and never used to spend significant amount of time cleaning and ordering things. Once I was walking towards her and unknowingly touched her finger, and shocking me to core, my “germaphobe"   roommate hurried towards the washbasin and started washing and scrubbing her hands.

We were forced to keep her away because of her extreme need for neatness and her weird and wacky sanitation habits, but never felt she bothered about it much as she was never ready to leave away her compulsiveness about neatness which was never a simple and amusing eccentricity, but a serious disorder that was hard to accept. We were quite sure that she would soon get on other people's nerves due to her unreasonable germ paranoia, and it happened in a few months, when endless number of complaints started pouring in to the hostel office about her insensitive behavior and neurotic urge for neatness.  Soon we all moved to other rooms and she left the hostel very soon.

They say neatness is next to godliness but I beg to differ.  Too much neatness won’t do any good, and may actually hurt your mental health as well as your relationships with people around.  Neat freaks would never know that there’s a fine yet distinct line between basic neatness and compulsive madness, thus badly hampering the life of everyone around them.

Too serious to handle

How good are you in handling people who are too silent and serious all the time, and can’t handle even a joke? Being moderately serious is almost excusable, but, it’s too awful to be in the company of people who are masters of the artless art of spreading glumness through unnecessary seriousness. Be in their presence for a moment and they would soon cover your surroundings with a dreadful shadow, as they always have the immense capability of draining out the vigor and cheeriness of people in their proximity. I've experienced this many times in my life, so if you ask me, I would say I am not big-hearted enough to handle them and the huge amount of ‘heaviness’ that they forcefully share with others. What keeps me wondering is the reason why they put-in the mask of seriousness all day long and suck the life out of others? I do agree that life has lots of tough situations, and everyone has their share of happiness and sadness in life, but this in no way means one has to be dead serious all the time. In spite of all the bad situations that we have, life is never biased and has equal share of happiness for everyone, but putting in serious faces and indulging in serious thoughts would do no good and would sneakily veil the share of happiness that we are gifted with, thus making us view only the serious and sadder part of life.

If you really don’t want to drain-away the happiness in your mind and feel exhausted and depressed, I would say it’s always better to diplomatically and tactfully avoid people who are blessed enough to inflate even the lightest day today situations, and make them as heaviest as possible.  Just run away from them before they take hold of your mind, and inject-in the ‘fatally poisonous’ seriousness and numbness that they always carry, and are too generous to share with others. Be it a person or a topic, I carefully try and avoid the unscrupulous exploitation or kind of vampirism that these people indulge in, with their numb presence and sober, grumpy talks, thus making others instinctively feel unsafe, anxious, and depressed. I used to think that I can give my best smile and remain completely detached from such people and their talks, but unfortunately, some are too immune to my smile therapy and I miserably fail, thus desperately looking for the best possible way to get-away.

Many people do have this misconception that looking dead serious is the sign of intelligence and sensibility.  They are utterly wrong and I am sure they would never know about how the really intelligent people take-up life with ease and lightness that would lighten the mind and help it release some clearer and vivid thoughts that can initiate a bunch of sensible actions to make life worth living.

Serious people and their burdened minds can change only if they voluntarily change their attitude towards life and people around.   Or else, they would never ever taste the better side of life, and would end up living a numb life filled in with serious thoughts, right from the minute they get up, until they go to bed.