Everyone that knows me by either growing up with me, or watching me grow up, knows about "lizzy and her messy room". It's been a running family joke. I'm thinking an intervention could have helped around the time a mouse discovered the hidden bologna stash under my bed in the mid 1980s. Mom had thrown it away, I found it in the trash and not wanting to be wasteful, I took it and hid it...where it was promptly forgotten about. Until said mouse found it again for me. The mouse walking under a piece of paper woke me from a dead sleep and I woke up the entire family with my blood curdling scream.
It's too bad that hoarding wasn't a known issue back in the 80s or 90s...maybe we could have gotten to the root of the issue and put a stop to it much earlier.
I think I realized that it was much more than just a messy room a few years ago. I was researching OCD to see what other "symptoms" I had besides just the eating finger foods in twos (my coworkers loved that one), not liking people touching my stuff and a few other oddities. This OCD website mentioned that hoarding is another symptom of OCD. I always thought that OCD meant extremely clean and organized, never realized that "collecting" could be considered obsessive. And boy, do I have a ton of collections. I can pick up anything in my room or storage unit, and justify why it needs to be kept. "It was my first (fill in the blank)", "It could be worth money some day", "I didn't want to throw it away because I hadn't used at all yet", "It was the picture that (name any preschooler I've ever looked after or taught) made me"....I watched an episode of Hoarders a year or two ago and it really hit me...I actually could feel exactly what they were going through and why they were shedding those tears as they were being forced to rid themselves of their "junk".
I've decided to put my thoughts on hoarding into a blog so that maybe I can better understand, as well as everyone else. I sometimes have a really difficult time putting my thoughts into words when first asked, and I honestly get tired of people asking me "why don't you just toss/donate/sell your crap?" If it were that easy, I would have a nice and tidy living space right now.
This won't be a daily or weekly or regularly scheduled blog...just when something hits me that I feel the need to get off my chest...and, seeing as though this is my very first blog, be fully prepared for it to suck. :)
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