Woken at 4am this morning, I listened to a podcast to try and get back to sleep. It was a radio interview with a comedian who has just published a book about her 'secret life' as a hoarder. Listened along with her as she spoke about some of the insights she got when her 'stuff' started to get the better of her. Listened along at the bemusement and then the exasperation of the interviewer as she revealed more and more of her hoarding 'addiction'.
I understood her need to still have those TMNT socks from primary school. I understood why it was so hard for her to throw them out . I twinged with recognition as she described her 'dividing wall' of boxes of stuff, artfully arranged. I laughed as she recounted being told by her best friend that she couldn't get rid of her stuff because she was hoarding the flat she was living in as well.
She needed to honour the little girl that she was. She was narcisisstic about how important she was in people's lives, even when they had moved on. She thought if she could just fix all the once useful things, everything would be alright again. She wanted to hold on to the happiest of memories and times encapsulated in each piece of 'stuff'. She didn't know who she was now, so she held on to who she was then. She still had 'a bunch of sticks tied up with a red ribbon', the sticks that were the first bunch of flowers the first boy that every loved her gave to her.
I know that person. I am a hoarder too. I have not yet worked out all the whys but I am going to try an experiment. Each day I am going to take one thing from my many boxes of 'stuff' and post a blog about it, then let it go.
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