Posted by chdurie2 on October 10, 2000, at 19:09:18
In reply to Re: How to resume normal life? for noa.#2.., posted by Cindy W on October 10, 2000, at 8:55:12
> > > I had posted a response a couple of days ago, and have no idea what happened to it......
> > >
> > > essentially, I said "thank you" because your responses helped me a lot. It does help to connect to others who understand this strange experience.
> > >
> > > Caroline, maybe it would help to pair up and noencourage each other along in cleaning up the messes, literal and figurative. Perhaps by email?
> >
> > Noa-an e-mail support pairing would be great! this is really tough stuff for me, as i'm sure it is for you, too.
> >
> > i haven't responded earlier cuz i've been busy studying for an exam i was supposed to take on saturday that i'll end up taking in december when it's given again. but...
> >
> > on saturday, i boxed up one big box and one medium box of gifts i've bought for an ex-long-distance boyfriend over the years and never sent.
> > (b-day, xmas, etc. - he always sends me something.) i'm always saying i'll send them but never do. for some reasonj, i find the u.s. mail very intimidating. well, that got some stuff out of the house. when i brought them tp post office, funny thing was, the clerk, who knows me by face, said: "good job, kiddo." i don't know what he was referring to, but i thought he was right. there's a nice hole where all that stuff was. but that's like one millionth of the job.
> > then, today, i uncovered stashes of old styrofoam noodles and bubble wrap that i had been saving to wrap those presents with, and that's one garbage bag worth of stuff. sort of a joke, cuz a friend confessed to me that she cannot let go of old noodles and bubble wrap, that for some reason, she hoards it like she'll never be able to buy more. so it felt good tossing that. then i took all the boxes that i had scattered all over the living room to box up excess stuff for storage and put them inside each other and then made a tall pile of the condensed boxes in one corner. figured that was better than seeing them all over. then i went through one box of stuff i pulled from my car at least a year ago and actually threw some of it out. then i went through a pile of stuff on a chair and organized it.
> > these little, itty-bitty steps...my p-doc said i have to think of it in baby steps, cuz when i think of the whole thing, it becomes mind-bogglingly terrifying. but the thing is, i know i'm pretty close to being out of easy stuff, and most of the rest is hard stuff.
> > i'm just a stuff monster, and i love my stuff. there's just too damn much of it. i'm an antiques dealer, and i collect just about everything. some choices have to be made here, and i don't like doing that.
> > i just had to laugh at myself last nite cuz i couldn't find a cheese grater, and i must own at least 25 of them since i collect old kitchen implements, among other things. i ended up using the back of a strainer, but tonite i walked into the kitchen, and there was a cheese grater staring at me. i didn't see it cuz there's so much stuff around it - and it also was in a place i didn't expect.
> > i walk around here, and i just shake my head looking cuz there's 50 of everything each slightly different, and i want them all!
> > anyway, noa, my e-mail address is chdurie2@aol.com. i'll look forward to hearing your trevails.
> >
> > caroline
>
> Caroline, I really enjoyed your post! I'm a "stuff monster" too and also have multiples of everything and am doing "baby steps" to stp acquiring things and to throw things away.--Cindy Wcindy- i didn't mean to not include you in this support thing by e-mail that noa and i are talking about doing. once i suggested it to you, and you didn't respond-probably too caught up in your mom's illness to respond. but i'd love to have you "in," either by regular e-mail or by posting here. (we'd need our own board: call it psycho-social-stuff babble!)
today, cuz stuff was a litttle re-arranged, i think, i kept bumping into things and dropping things. A toolbox fell on my toe (ouch!) and didn't get much done other than mostly fixing a very leaky faucet (it still leaks, but much less) and the beginning of fixing a table i want to keep, that i broke by putting too much stuff on the legs (don't ask how i did that!) the break is bad- i don't know if it will fix or not.
anyway, went to p-doc and talked about this stuff and it was PAINFUL! I don't know if you're borderline or not (by the way, thanks for the linehan stuff - i see my post thanking you for that never made it on.) but we talked about my needing my stuff in the same way as my neediness with other people. the cost is tremendous!
while i can say that and know it and feel it, it's still very painful, and it's really hard to let go. one book you might want to get - i may have mentioned it before - organizing from the inside out by julie morganstern is a little more psychologically oriented than most.
anyway, keeping all this crap is very painful, and getting rid of it is very painful. i know the journey of 1,000 miles starts with a single step, but this is gut-wrenching.
if you figure out anything that makes it any easier, please let me know! (by the way, i saw your meds on another posting - don't mean to make you feel bad, but 100 mgs. of seroquel? i thought i was hard to knock out! (i take 50 - 75 makes me sleep half the day away) but i'm small. so maybe a normal-sized person needs more. also, fyi - a little (like 12.5 mgs twice a day) helps calm me down. enuf about meds. any progress on the stuff front? caroline
poster:chdurie2
thread:753
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20000813/msgs/938.html