But it did not end there. In reaction to that, I became just as studious about stepping only on lines on the sidewalk. Sort of a reverse of the first compulsion.

And it didn’t even stop there. Then I got a compulsion to very carefully measure my walk so that it appeared that I was walking normally and without regard to lines and spaces, but where I was actually keeping careful track of lines and spaces, and keeping careful track of my stride to make sure that I was just perfectly not-concerned-about-lines-and-spaces in my walking pattern.

I have read not much on the stuff that psychiatry calls OCD (and I’m using psychiatric terminology because I know no other), but I’m curious about whether other people’s compulsions have followed that weird pattern of “compulsion to do something,” “compulsion to do its opposite,” and “compulsion to act as if neither the thing nor its opposite matter”, often switching between all three of them in different orders over time.

Also if anyone’s ever experienced a fascination with a particular (innocent) thing that turns into a revulsion that can’t be shut off. That fascination might be like, watching the particular way cats turn their head when they eat and the sound they make, and insisting on watching it over and over and even imitating it, and then suddenly being so repelled by it that you can’t stand to be in the same room with it or anything that even vaguely resembles it. But where it’s at first an irresistible fascination, then an equally irresistible revulsion, and even worse, a revulsion that you can’t possibly turn away from and find yourself compelled to repeat (such as lip-smacking, where I used to be fascinated by it, now can’t stand it, but sometimes find myself stuck “having” to lip-smack over and over or something because I can’t stand it).