Hoarding

It's Halloween: I can't not mention it! I was excited for today: I dressed up as "power Toni" because I knew I had to get motivated to get things done--I'd been showing sings of crashing lately and I won't let it happen. I didn't trick-or-treat: I handed out candy to kids. I was dressed as a cutsie housewife and was thrilled about it. (If you've read ASIH and know me, you see the irony). I was so excited when the kids would come to the door, but a little scared to answer the door as well! There was a little spiderman at one point whose mask I had to fix because he couldn't figure out how to get the eye holes back over his eyes to see to pick his candy:) Halloween was different, but good.

Anyway.

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In General Psychology today we watched a show called "Hoarders." It was fascinating. Here were people who could not let things go; had let their houses get so overrun with stuff that there was nowhere to walk. Nowhere to eat. No way to distinguish the things around you. One woman was vehement that she would not waste food and therefore had it everywhere, even rotting on the ground. Another man was obsessed with the idea of recycling things for a later use and therefore could not let things go. I identified with him: I have a tendency to keep things because I feel as though they might have a use later. I too do not want to waste and feel their need to keep and be wise. For them though it is destructive and obsessive. I found myself marveling at the good they wished to do and the bad that could come from it.

I watched that and felt convicted: I hoard and I have not cleaned. So today (okay, I'm cheating, it's the 1st of November but I watched "Hoarders" on the 31st!) I cleaned. I cleaned from three hours in the morning and then for two more in the evening until everything had found it's place. It took a long time to go through all the papers, throw things out that I had been holding onto, and put away all my clothes. I swept the floor and organized my shelves. Now my room feels a tad bare from all the cleared away spaces but it feels like me again. It's reaffirming to stand in my room. It charges me like a battery. The way everything is, the way it's decorated, what I've decorated with, all describe me. When it was messy I had more trouble finding myself in it, it felt out of control. Having it clean once again, I feel more myself again. I feel more concrete. My room reminds me who I am.

And I want to always be reminded who I am. I don't want to hold onto things and in doing that, even with good intentions, lose myself in the mess and the clutter. I don't want to hoard. I don't want to hoard physically, nor do I want to hoard emotionally: because I do that. I hold onto things and I can't let them go, I can't forgive them, I can't release the gravity of them from my mind. But I want to be able to look at myself and be reminded who I am, and I want to keep that image clear. Physically and mentally.

10/31/11