Hoarder Avoider

Confession time:

I have long struggled with hoarder tendencies. I mean, I don't have piles of trash with dead animals concealed beneath (or do I...), but I certainly have entirely too much stuff. I've moved four times in the last four years, seven in the last seven, and I have carted around so much junk that I never use. Things that have no purpose or meaning. Useless nonsense.

But I've found it impossible to get rid of most of it. For years, I have struggled. Whenever I commit to cleaning and organizing, and I am faced with something I've clung to for a decade, I start to argue with myself. "Oh but what if I need this?!" or "But this has personal meaning!" "I don't want to have to buy it again..." "SENTIMENTAL VALUE!" And that's how I end up with every drawer in my apartment full of crap and my bookcase crammed with crap and my closet stuffed with crap. CRAP.

But this week, I have been going just nuts. I am in beast mode. I have thrown out so many garbage bags full of trash and I have multiple boxes of stuff to give away or sell. I'm on fire and I ain't done yet, yo.

I think this motivation must be medically-rooted. I blame my anti-depressants, or a placebo effect. I would never have made the connection that my anxiety about getting rid of stuff would be affected by taking some little green pills, but I find myself holding items I've kept since I was sixteen, shrugging and saying, "Eh, don't need it!" and tossing them without a second thought.

I feel cleansed.

And so glad that when I eventually die, I won't be buried alive under a mountain of half-blank journals. Wouldn't that be ironic?*

*Would it? Would it? I still don't know when I use that word correctly.