Suffering from lack of sleep and lack of food, it’s safe to say that I wasn’t behaving like a normal healthy person. My stress and anxiety levels were so high that my blood pressure was through the roof and I knew that if I continued down this road, I would soon have to be hospitalized. The body can only take so much abuse.
The only thing keeping me going was my strong work ethic. We had a huge conference coming up in September, and I could not, would not, fail my co-workers. Plus, I was working hard to get a much wanted promotion and failure because of fleas was just not an option…plus that would have been embarrassing.
In my sleep and food starved mind, my fear of contaminating people with fleas got so bad that I became obsessive compulsive. My O.C.D. behavior had manifested itself in my early twenties when I felt out of control during a hard time in my life, but it had never spiraled this badly.
I was showering twice a day, morning and evening, with a bath right before I’d go to bed. Again, I was drowning the fuckers and this gave me some measure of control. The upside is that I’ve never smelled so good in my life.
In addition to obsessively washing, I was also obsessively examining my clothes at work. I’d strip at least five times a day in the bathroom stalls and look for red dots, which I always found and in great quantities. I wanted to stop, trust me but alas, the crazies were stronger than my desire to stop stripping…which in normal times…that would never have happened.
I likes being naked.
