Crazy

I'm pretty sure no one is going to be interested in reading any of this...but I guess I need to write it for myself so that one day I can read it over and know that I'm a whole lot less crazy than I used to be...and maybe feel good about that.
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The other day I was perusing a website where you can find a health practitioner in your area and insurance network, looking for a therapist I can see locally and who could write prescriptions for me after I've had this baby. I'm going a little crazy not being able to medicate my chronic anxiety and depression, and it's especially bad that I can't fall back on the herbs and supplements that I would normally take in a period where I'm not on drugs. Anyway, on the website I saw a link to an article about compulsive hoarding and clicked on it. There are currently three articles it brings you to and I read through them all, laughing and shaking my head. That information is nothing new to me, it's just always startling to read about yourself like that.

I spend maybe the first 20 years of my life not throwing anything out; having a very emotional attachment to all my things. I'm still hugely attached to things, but on most days I'm somehow able to overcome it enough to not be one of those people who only have little pathways running through piles of crap in their home. Infact, I'm like the opposite now, I have a fear of getting too many things, and it makes me crazy, makes other people think I'm crazy. I know that once something comes into the house it will grow in sentimentality and I'll never be able to get rid of it. So my solution is to be crazy in the opposite direction and be uber controlling about what comes into the house.

"The most commonly saved items include newspapers, magazines, old clothing, bags, books, mail, notes, and lists....Some keep food products, broken items to be fixed, clothes, books, craft materials and leaves. " Hoarders may rationalize: "This is too good to throw away," "This is important information," "I will need this later on," "This should not be wasted." These thoughts are generally normal, but their frequency and the importance attached to them are clearly excessive in compulsive hoarders."

This is from one of the articles...of the above list I have every single one of those things (including autumn leaves picked up in the back yard) and I clearly don't need them any of them, but I also don't know how to get rid of them. The broken items one is what is most scary to me. I have things that were broken years ago and I still think they'd make a pretty mosaic one day!

My new obsession is hoarding memories - writing and taking photos. I'm obsessive about my photo albums and writing. I have a method and perfect order for the life of a photo. If I can't get a thought down on paper, I'm nervous until I do record the thought. That's sometimes what keeps me up at night.

"Yet, ironically, people often report anxiety about having to engage in compulsions. Sometimes people avoid doing things because they know that they will be stuck for long periods engaged in some compulsive ritual."

Lately it's been really hard to keep up with all the photos I take, so at times I've just stopped taking pictures for a week at a time even when I've really wanted to because I know I won't be able to manage them.

"More commonly, hoarders have anxiety when their hoard is threatened in some way." When we went on our trip this summer I went to great lengths beforehand to cart all my photo albams and journals up to my mom's house because I had this irrational fear that the person who was house sitting would burn down the house or something.

"A survey of elderly hoarders found that hoarding constituted a physical health threat in 81% of identified cases. These included threat of fire hazard, falling, unsanitary conditions, and inability to prepare food."

"One hoarder had a collection of pictures of staircases. She believed her children might want them some day. Another explained that she kept newspapers because someday her grandchildren (not yet conceived) might be interested in contemporaneous coverage of events."

OK, these examples I just thought were funny, particularly the fact that an elderly person might become so insane with hoarding that they wouldn't be able to feed themselves, and rather than move some stuff, they would just sit there and starve.

I did get freaked out inside when the little girl at Marisa's school holiday party threw out an entire, uneaten cupcake. I'm definitely one of those parents who tells their kid not to waste food because there are children in the world who don't have any. When my mom heard me say this to Jacob the other day she remarked, "I thought those parents only existed in my generation." It shouldn't matter to me what other people do, or should it?

I'm always fighting the urge to keep things, but it doesn't feel good to get rid of something I know could be used in another way. These two forces are always fighting each other and it makes it so hard to know what is right - to be 'safe' by keeping everything, or to be in control of my life by just saying no. I do know that I feel liberated when I get rid of things, like the energy in my space has been cleansed, so maybe I am coming out of this on the right side.