A RECORD SKIPPIG IN MY HEAD

I've found ways to live with my obsessivecompulsive disorder. What bothers me are the people who say I should get over it.

- Lisa Whittington-Hill

WITH MY BRACES and Sun In bleached bangs, I may have looked like every other teenager at my 1980s Edmonton junior high, but I knew something about me was different. I was 13 when I first noticed myself acting in ways that resembled obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), though I wouldn't have known to call it that at the time.

It was the summer before ninth grade, the era of coming-of-age movies like St. Elmo's Fire and The Breakfast Club. I would bet a Judd Nelson glossy eight-by-10 that I was the only girl in my friend group who was both confused and troubled by the need to wake up several times a night to check on the Teen Beat magazines on her bedside table. I would lift each copy up, inspect it to make sure it was in perfect shape and replace it on the pile-which had to be in a certain corner of my nightstand, right between my Cabbage Patch Kids doll and Dr Pepper Lip Smacker.

Thirty-seven years later, my checking behaviour continues. Checking is a common OCD ritual, right up there with counting, tapping, cleaning and handwashing. It's also what people often, mistakenly, think all forms of OCD look like. In Canada, OCD affects one to two per cent of the population. I am one of these Canadians. I lose hours of every day to various checking rituals-making sure my bathtub tap isn't dripping, or my hair straightener is off, or my apartment door is locked.