Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - probably affects most of us in one way or another!
Hazy x
I think I hide it well, actually. There are people at work who've never cottoned on. They just think I'm partial to burgers and Maltesers.
My obsession with round food started about five years ago, probably after my husband disappeared. I thought he was dead. So did the police for a while as they interviewed me half a dozen times down at the station. If they'd not found him sunning himself on a beach in Marbella with a piña colada in one hand and a blonde's arse in the other, I might have been charged with his murder.
Maybe it represents the full circle my life's turned around. Boyfriends hanging off my arm since I was about seventeen and suddenly, two decades later, I find myself alone and single.
Eating out's the hardest to deal with. Chips are off the menu unless I make them at home. Thankfully, not everything has to be perfectly round, although if I'm having a particularly bad day or week I'll only eat spherical food, like a tomato or peach. If things are hunky-dory, flat and round is okay which is where the burgers come in. But, as life trickles on and shit happens, the rounder the food gets.
I've got used to circular food at home. My diet's not that limited, really. Carrots can be sliced, along with cucumbers. Babybel cheese is man's best invention! Edam always was too large to eat in one sitting. Meat's tricky, but, so long as I'm dining alone (more often than not these days), I use the scone cutter. It means the edges are serrated, but I can live with that.
I can feel other compulsions creeping into my life too. Now, I have to wash my hands twice on the trot. And I'll only answer the telephone after four rings. Has to be an even number. Don't you just hate it when it starts ringing on a half-ring?
It's not that I think something bad will happen. I'm not particularly superstitious (unless you count not opening umbrellas indoors or stepping under ladders, the number thirteen, saluting a magpie, not putting new shoes on a table and I always try to eat an apple a day to keep the doctor away. Mind you, if apples were square, I'm sure I'd manage to overlook that particular one) and my childhood was what they define as 'relatively normal'.
And what's the fashion with square plates lately? Now that is disturbing. They're meant to be round. Always have been, always should be. On the rare occasions I do eat out, I always ring beforehand to check the shape of their plates. Okay, so I'm obviously way past caring what strangers think, but I wouldn't have to call if people just stuck to normality.
I do sometimes wonder exactly who has the problem.
http://www.freewebs.com/hazy-jo/ - for Hazy's homepage, of find more of her work on UKA!
I’d like to die in spring
when summer’s in the air,
and birds are on the wing
and new life everywhere.
… to die with dignity
in calm and gentle grace,
completeness in my soul
and warm sun on my face.
I’d like to die alone,
with beauty all around,
my head held in the air,
my feet firm on the ground,
while sitting on a chair
in a garden in the south,
and savouring the taste
of cherries in my mouth.
The path that I have trod
will end before the year.
I’d like to die in spring
with no regret or fear.