Konnichiwa all! Akemashite omedeto gozaimasu! (Happy New Year).

I\'m a new member here, so I thought I\'d let you know why I came. I\'ve been told by family I have OCD, Sometimes I feel like I have OCD… but I\'ve never been diagnosed with OCD (cause I\'ve never seen anyone about it.)

My mom said I had issues all my life, but it got worse after a 2006 car accident.

I have a few phobias, some of them are kind of strange, but they bug me to no end. Spiders, heights, enclosed spaces, germs, used tissues/napkins, crowds, flying, death, the dark, the number 4 and 9 (cause in Japan and China the words for 4 and 9 mean death and suffering)

I also have odd "quirks" (as they are called by my friends)

if I touch something, I have to touch it again, almost as if I\'m giving germ backsies, like if I touch something twice I\'ll give back the germs I picked up the first time I touched it.

Even at home I have to take a plate or glass from the middle, cause I have this feeling the ones in the middle are cleaner. I can\'t eat off the top plate.

at night when I lock up the house, I\'ll stand there for 2 minutes pulling on the doors to make sure they\'re really locked. One time I did it for four minutes, then had to stand for an extra minute cause 4 is a bad luck number, so I had to do it for 5 minutes.

I carry hand sanitizer everywhere with me and wash my hands whenever possible. I hate being anywhere there are germs. I actually get panicky if someone around me coughs. I had a fight with my brother once that got really bad when he came to visit my mom, and he was talking about how sick he got the night before that he threw up. He claims it was because he ate something bad at a restaurant he went to with his wife and in-laws, but no one else got sick. I used clorox wipes to sanitize everywhere he sat and possibly touched, to the point he decided to leave.

my mom can\'t stand my tissue issue. I can\'t even look at a used kleenex. If it\'s in her pocket sticking out a bit, I get so grossed out she has to make sure it is unseeable. I hate it even worse when my other brother came to visit and left one of his used tissues in the guest room. I wouldn\'t touch it and when my mom got rid of it, I clorox wiped the area down.

I also have issues about obsessing over kind of stupid things. I have a hard time concentrating on every day tasks… but when I first heard of the swine flu, 2012, and the super volcano at yellowstone… I obsessed over them for weeks to the point I couldn\'t sleep. I actually spent time on the computer researching the probability of the world ending in 2012 despite knowing it\'s irrational. I couldn\'t let it go.

I get lots of anxiety. Whether it\'s being in too big of a crowd, or the thought of doing something gets me anxious, or what not. One time it got so bad I ended up in the hospital after having passed out. When I came to, I started having an asthma attack. So my doctor put me on alprazolam. It\'s not a constant thing where I have to take it everyday, just when I feel a panic attack coming on.

Its been very hard because I feel at that inbetween place… I\'m not completely socially cut off… I force myself to go Karaoke, go shopping, go to the casino… but at the same time… I\'m still single because I don\'t put myself out there. I tried dating sites just to bypass the hard stuff… but it doesn\'t work either. I always just back away and stop communicating with my matches.

So I don\'t know. I see shows about people with OCD and I say, "That\'s not me." I don\'t see others with the same issues who are diagnosed as OCD… so  I don\'t know. I just thought I\'d come here and see if there is anyone I can relate to that could point me in the right direction.

anyway… Happy New Year! Maybe things will look up in 2010