Reflection: It's Not OCD, I'm Just Mexican
Written by Short Latina
I know it's far fetched and possibly blasphemous to our old Aztec gods, so I ask for forgiveness and redemption in advance, but I am going to go ahead and say that Ttaloc, the god of rain, really just wanted a clean earth. I don't mean a sin free and pure earth. No, I mean a Fabuloso smelling type of clean.
That is the only reason I find that would explain why I need a clean home, why every Mexican mother cleans as much as she cleans. We want, no need, to wash away all impurity from our homes as the rain takes away the dirt into the river and cleanses our souls. Almost like a prayer, we wipe counters, scrub floors and break our backs to maintain a perfect abode. There is no peace and it cannot be our paradise Tlalocan, the fourth heaven that has an eternal spring, if that single glass in the sink is not properly washed, and put away. If not, there will be the wrath of thundering yells and screams that bring the terrible drought, which is a Mexican mother's silence ignoring her child.
Tlaloc’s obsession with cleanliness I believe has been passed from generation to generation. I now cannot go to bed if the dishes are dirty in the sink. I will lay in bed trying to fight getting up to wash that fork on the side of the sink that I remembered I used last minute to feed the cat. If I can contain the obsession and not wash it, the wrath will come, not from my mother this time, but from within. My thoughts will consume me and criticize me. “You are so irresponsible, you are not fit to live on our own, why are you so lazy?, I can’t believe you forgot?” Then, the terrible feeling that disaster is imminent if I do not get up and wash that fork will come over me. “What if I don’t wash the fork and the cat food residue attracts cockroaches and I become infested? I'll have to leave my apartment, unless I get an exterminator, but how much does one costs? Can I afford one? What if I have to move? I won’t have money to move? I’ll be homeless and lose everything.” So then, I get up, because it is easier to please my thoughts and quiet my demons that wash that fork. But, I am not OCD, I’m just Mexican.
Now, in the matter of checking everything twice, it's all because of the Aztec god Mictlantecuhtli, the deity of death. The fear that he brought upon our ancestors is engraved in our Mexican DNA. I bet the Aztecs checked multiple times to avoid death and misery and prevent meeting the god that wears their eyeballs as a necklace. Just like my ancestors, I must check. I will touch the stove knob to check if I turned off the stove, because I am a responsible woman that must care for her apartment. I will check again to make sure a second time, in case I turned it on by mistake when I checked it the first time. It is acceptable to touch the doorknob three times reassuring me that I locked the front door. I wouldn’t want to return to a burglarized home. I am being responsible, as my mother and father taught me. I will make sure nothing terrible happens to prevent death and the underworld Mictlantecuhtli reigns over. This is why I say I am not OCD and just Mexican, because there has to be a reason why my great-grandmother, grandmother, my mother and I, all lived and live in constant fear of tragedy striking our home and lives and clean so that we will have control over something, anything.
Maybe it is just easier to say I am Mexican, and not OCD. Maybe it is easier to make excuses for this generational undetected mental illness that has chained and cursed our families for generations. If you are Mexican, it does not mean you have OCD, but I do have OCD and I am Mexican.
It could be the fact that being Mexican means you must learn to survive. Having to overcome a conquest and mass extermination of our people was only the beginning. Constant oppression of our culture, religion and lifestyles was threatened constantly. Being under the thumb of the Spanish and the French, fed an unknown religion, we began to be controlled, forced to be something we did not know. But, as Mexican, we persisted, and we adapted. The thoughts still haunt us, "what could we have done differently?" "Could we have prevented the conquest?" "Someone didn't check."
Either way, it doesn't matter because it's not OCD, I'm just Mexican.
