The Neurotic At Home

There is no place like home for the neurotic; whether it be a house or an apartment, it is the center for what little control you have over your life. At home you know which electrical outlets work and which are broken, you know the safest place to go to cower during a thunderstorm, you think you know where the pliers are. More importantly, if you like to put ketchup or even catsup on your scrambled eggs, fine: at home you can put as much on them as you like. You don't have to answer the phone even if someone (you know who) rings it fourty-seven times before hanging up. You can lie in bed all day drinking sherry and playing old music that makes you cry. You are allowed to cut the cheese whenever you want to. In short, you can be yourself at home and no one can do anything about it.

As pleasant as this may sound, it is not meant to imply that the home is a paradise. Rather, it is a familiar sort of purgatory. It is a place where the runaway problems of life in general are replaced by problems that are specific and predictable. If, for instance, you are in way over your head at work and you loose the whole account, it can be oddly comforting to come home and kill a mouse. Or if a pushy salesclerk bullies you into buying something you don't need or want, you can always go home and refuse to return a ball that has been hit into your yard by the neighborhood punk and then threaten to call the police when he sasses you back.

Home is the neurotic's safe harbor. It is there, amid the familiar patterns and the pleasantly sagging springs, that you have best arrayed your defenses against the storm tides of life. It is there that you have put your indelible stamp on everything and everyone. Finally, it is at home that the neurotic can let his or her peculiar personality run wild - and find that people understand. Or at least say they understand.

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The Two Most Important Rooms*

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Tools for Coping*

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Household Question's Answered*

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Locus Neuroticus*

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Are You Neurotic?*

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