Well, good news. I am not as bad as that. Better news, I don't think I am close.
But I do like to control my universe by keeping things, things I never use, but there they are, on a shelf, just in case, there is a need for it.. Ever pick up something that you know you probably should get rid of? Here's what happens to me, bet it happens to you, too.
You have this poster, this great poster you got 20 years ago, but at the time you got it, you really did not have a place to hang it. But surely one day, you would! (How I don't know unless you gave up one of the things already on the wall!). You had to have it. It almost felt like a matter of life and death. So you got it! You admired it for quite a while at home but then put it in one of those holders for posters, rolled up neatly and safe, and placed it in your closet. Every time you open the closet, you see it. Every day, now, for 20 years.
"I think I'll have a garage sale" you say. And you go through all these things, things you haven't paid any attention to for ages, including that poster. You take the container into your hand. "Yes, I need to get rid of this, I'm never going to do anything with it." But then, "I loved it then, I love it now." You take it out of the container. "Ohhh, no wonder I bought it, it is lovely. If I give it up, and I think of it one day I KNOW I'll regret selling it." So back in the closet it goes. And every thing, big or small, the episode is repeated.
You should see me with books. I pull a few that I am simply sure that I have no further need of--one of my psychology books say-I have long since ceased the study of psychology. Then I start to rifle through it, and a paragraph catches my eye. Oh, this might come up. When? No matter. It just might. The book goes back to its recesses to be forgotten for another few years.
And then, there are the things that people bought FOR you. Oh, boy. That's a really hard one, whether you like the item or not. Or know what to do with it. So, let's say you don't like the thing that was given to you at your 40th birthday (and for me that is quite a long time ago). What happens if you put it in the garage sale and then off the cuff, she asks you about it? She never has, but sure as you are ready to get rid of it or do get rid of it. "Do you ever use the blah blah that I gave you?" If you have "used" it, you can hedge, but if you haven't, the lie is ripe. It is a philosophical question whether one would call this lie spontaneous, or calculated, but either way. Never mind. I better not give it away. I have one thing like that, from my 50th, and it isn't exactlly that I don't like it, but I am not sure what to do with it. I think it may actually be rather valuable, a Villroy and Boch rabbit carrying a dove keepsake box? I think that's what it is. If you are reading this and you gave it to me, please know that I still have it, sitting on my jewelry box, but every so often I do think it is time to give it up. Well, looking at it, I am not sure I do like it. The rabbit is oddly posed and I cannot really understand why the dove is on his hand and another bird is in his breast pocket. Here is the photo. I have to admit that now that I took it, I kind of like him and am not sure I could give him up!
But you have no idea how much stuff like this, beloved, liked, and in a category of its own, that I have!
I went through a phase of buying "Beanie Babies" in the 1990s. Somewhere in the bowels of my mind I thought I might become a "collector", except I have no space to be a real "collector" and the twenty or more of them, each bought because it was cute, the polar bear, the several dogs of many different colors, the dragon, the bear eating a leaf, at least I think it's a bear, but bears are carnivores, oh well. I had them in a plastic bag in the garage for a while and then I felt guilty, they looked so abandoned. And they are back in here again, interspersed among my book shelves in the little closet out of which I made a library of sorts. I have other stuffed animals. Occasionally over the years I have given one of these ordinary stuffed animals to the children of friends of mine. And I can tell you that it has been hard for me to part with each one. Talk about needing a transitional object! I apparently need a surfeit of them. Ok, I am not crazy about the vampire bear beanie baby so maybe he'll get the boot. But then, I think, what if I am throwing away money by selling it for like 2 dollars at a garage sale. Practical Djinn, such as she is, arises and remonstrates with me. "Go away, practical Djinn", I say. (ok, not really).
For a lot of reasons, not the least of which is I sense a sea change in my emotional way of being, I need to pare it all down. Simplify. Oh, I have said this here before, I am sure, but I MEAN it, this time!
I have heard that the psychology of hoarding is that the person is trying to create a safe controlled space (even if it is to the third party eye a mess) in a world in which he or she feels otherwise out of control. I may not be a hoarder in the clinical sense, but I understand. These things I have always had around me, it feels safe, secure, as if the world will not change or devour me if they are here surrounding me and the memories they represent.
Silly girl. So, I shall push through my resistance and get rid of that which means more than it should. Really.
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