OCD and a trip to New England

A view of Walden Pond in 1986.

It was October 1986, and I was taking a class at Bowling Green State University that included the works of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Our professor set up a trip for the class to visit sites around Salem and Concord, Massachusetts, including Walden Pond.

About a dozen of us, making up a variety of ages and backgrounds, piled into a van and drove for hours from Ohio to New England. We were greeted by the cold but also by beautiful autumn leaves.

Another view of Walden Pond in 1986.

We visited a replica of the cabin that Thoreau stayed in during his time at Walden Pond, we visited the homes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott; visited other historical sites; and spent an evening in Boston.

A replica of the cabin Henry David Thoreau stayed in on Walden Pond.

But what I remember most about our trip was how uncomfortable I felt.

I was in the midst of the really bad OCD years, when I was consumed with contamination fears.

We stayed in a student hostel, and it was cold and damp. I worried about using quilts that others probably had used.

I had to use a shared bathroom. While the bathrooms were divided for men and women, there were four other women on the trip.

I tried to follow all my usual rituals in grooming, including brushing my teeth, showering, drying my hair, and putting in my contacts. The rituals took a long time when I was home.

Putting in my contacts was an ordeal, because they had to go in without any scratchiness in my eye or I had to take them out and redo them. I also had a set way of brushing my teeth and showering.

At the hostel, I had all the rituals I usually had in getting ready for anything plus the added rituals of trying to keep myself clean and avoid contamination in a strange environment.

I probably took at least an hour in the bathroom every morning.

I remember the irritation if not anger of one woman in particular because I took up so much of the available time for getting ready in the morning. I can’t blame her.

But I also couldn’t tell her or the others why I was taking so long. My OCD was my secret.

Another reason I felt uncomfortable was because I had started having bouts of diarrhea, what I euphemistically called “stomach problems.”

I was terrified about going on a long road trip and being unable to get to a bathroom, and having to use public bathrooms.

So before the trip, I visited student health and was given a prescription for medication to help me.

Despite my worry that the medication wouldn’t work and I would end up in an embarrassing bathroom situation, it did work.

But the medication made me incredibly sleepy and dopey. I fell asleep during one lecture at a museum we went to.

It was the first trip with others that I took when the OCD was so bad, and I felt isolated. Maybe that’s why the worries and rituals are what I remember the most about my New England trip.

Have you ever felt like your OCD or anxiety caused you to do things that inconvenienced and/or irritated others? Has your OCD or other mental illness caused you to feel isolated?