I watched a National Geographic documentary about hoarders today (it was an episode of Extreme Lives. I watched it and made piles of "to throw out" and "to keep." My living quarters are not as depicted in this googled image above. Yet.) The show was upsetting. People who keep hundreds and hundreds of animals until some of the animals start getting sick and dying. People who can't throw away empty packages and papers and receipts and bags and trash, so their living quarters become unlivable. People who buy things all the time, though they're not going to open the packages, or use them, just to fill up sometimes as many as three houses with items, and have nowhere to live. People who live in warehouses jammed with their stuff, and have no room for anything else but the very basics.
I'm a bit like that, alright. Nothing of the order of what I've seen onscreen there, but yeah. Trouble clearing a path? Yeah. Rotting garbage and piles of heavy things that tower to the ceiling and occasionally fall on people? Not quite. I know people with quite the opposite problem. People who are secretly haunted by the existence of other people's stuff in a box in the basement, and sneaking down and throwing it all away with a sick mixture of guilt and triumph. Like they stole something, but didn't keep it. I knew a woman who let her husband keep a trunk of old things in the basement. It bugged her. She fretted over it all the time.
"If it were in France, would that help?" I asked.
"No," she said. "I'd still know it was there."
There is a difference between being an avid collector, and being an out-of-control hoarder. But I thought this evening about what I hoard. I hoard books more than anything, really. Why have I always done that? Because in books, there is a hero and there is resolution. Or in non-fiction, there are ideas and answers. There is an end, a solution. Usually, there's a cool guy, and there's an adventure that works out satisfactorily. The school library would be getting rid of these adventures I'd just recently had, and I'd keep boxes of them.
Life's not enough like a book for me. In life, I don't feel like you really get to be the wizard, the king, the hero, the cowboy, the romantic lead, The Man. Life's disappointing like that. I think I am actually ever more bitterly disillusioned about this, the older I get. To not get to grow up and be a hero. After reading too much Spider-man and Batman. But if you actually try to live your life, walking around talking about yourself as if you were the hero in a world full of other people, perhaps even using third person, and creating a whole "Of course, you know me..." mythology? You're an asshole. (A deluded, attention-seeking asshole.)
And I hoard TV shows and movies and toys; really anything that ever made me happy. It's like I was raised without any ability to expect anything nice to happen in future. A chronic inability to even imagine myself with something I want unless I'm just about to get it (and even then, it's tough). I had trouble buying a car due to this. Couldn't quite believe I could really do it. So, it's like I'm determined to hold onto everything that ever made me happy at all. I certainly don't expect anything else to come along. My bad years, my bouts of abortive romance, all commemorated and kept. Mostly they were really horrible. But I will keep it all and make songs and poems and drawings and stories and videos about it. Because I really don't expect anything nice to happen next. So I keep it all. And turn much of it into anecdotes which make structured stories. Or songs and poems with endings and concluding thoughts or images.
So like a hoarder typically does, when I live in an environment that's decorated with wall-to-wall reminders of little things that made me happy in the past, little Star Wars and Fight Club things and Atari and Nintendo games and consoles, various musical instruments, endless photographs and books, t-shirts with holes in them but with Alice Cooper on the front because I got them at a concert of his that I really enjoyed; it's like it all reminds me of past enjoyment and I want to keep it stored somewhere near me. Like sadness is always waiting, and that stuff is associated with happiness and could perhaps dilute the misery a bit.
But this hoarding has gone as far as it can. I have a Kindle, with even more books in it than are on my shelves. I have a computer with as many pictures in it as are in my albums. My past is commemorated in the form of songs and blog entries and books on the very Internet. And it isn't enough. It isn't working. With Internet piracy, I can hoard, almost for free, a truly staggering amount of stuff I will never have the time to enjoy. And I'm tired of it. I need something else. And can't imagine myself having anything else.
Because happiness doesn't work well unless it's shared. And the older I get, the fewer people are around that one can share anything with, and make new memories with. The ones who are around, increasingly weren't there back in the day when the stories were made and don't get it. And new memories are increasingly hard to come by. It's all been done before, and more vigorously. So now it's just stuff and stories. This is what getting old feels like.
I'm a bit like that, alright. Nothing of the order of what I've seen onscreen there, but yeah. Trouble clearing a path? Yeah. Rotting garbage and piles of heavy things that tower to the ceiling and occasionally fall on people? Not quite. I know people with quite the opposite problem. People who are secretly haunted by the existence of other people's stuff in a box in the basement, and sneaking down and throwing it all away with a sick mixture of guilt and triumph. Like they stole something, but didn't keep it. I knew a woman who let her husband keep a trunk of old things in the basement. It bugged her. She fretted over it all the time.
"If it were in France, would that help?" I asked.
"No," she said. "I'd still know it was there."
There is a difference between being an avid collector, and being an out-of-control hoarder. But I thought this evening about what I hoard. I hoard books more than anything, really. Why have I always done that? Because in books, there is a hero and there is resolution. Or in non-fiction, there are ideas and answers. There is an end, a solution. Usually, there's a cool guy, and there's an adventure that works out satisfactorily. The school library would be getting rid of these adventures I'd just recently had, and I'd keep boxes of them.
Life's not enough like a book for me. In life, I don't feel like you really get to be the wizard, the king, the hero, the cowboy, the romantic lead, The Man. Life's disappointing like that. I think I am actually ever more bitterly disillusioned about this, the older I get. To not get to grow up and be a hero. After reading too much Spider-man and Batman. But if you actually try to live your life, walking around talking about yourself as if you were the hero in a world full of other people, perhaps even using third person, and creating a whole "Of course, you know me..." mythology? You're an asshole. (A deluded, attention-seeking asshole.)
And I hoard TV shows and movies and toys; really anything that ever made me happy. It's like I was raised without any ability to expect anything nice to happen in future. A chronic inability to even imagine myself with something I want unless I'm just about to get it (and even then, it's tough). I had trouble buying a car due to this. Couldn't quite believe I could really do it. So, it's like I'm determined to hold onto everything that ever made me happy at all. I certainly don't expect anything else to come along. My bad years, my bouts of abortive romance, all commemorated and kept. Mostly they were really horrible. But I will keep it all and make songs and poems and drawings and stories and videos about it. Because I really don't expect anything nice to happen next. So I keep it all. And turn much of it into anecdotes which make structured stories. Or songs and poems with endings and concluding thoughts or images.
So like a hoarder typically does, when I live in an environment that's decorated with wall-to-wall reminders of little things that made me happy in the past, little Star Wars and Fight Club things and Atari and Nintendo games and consoles, various musical instruments, endless photographs and books, t-shirts with holes in them but with Alice Cooper on the front because I got them at a concert of his that I really enjoyed; it's like it all reminds me of past enjoyment and I want to keep it stored somewhere near me. Like sadness is always waiting, and that stuff is associated with happiness and could perhaps dilute the misery a bit.
But this hoarding has gone as far as it can. I have a Kindle, with even more books in it than are on my shelves. I have a computer with as many pictures in it as are in my albums. My past is commemorated in the form of songs and blog entries and books on the very Internet. And it isn't enough. It isn't working. With Internet piracy, I can hoard, almost for free, a truly staggering amount of stuff I will never have the time to enjoy. And I'm tired of it. I need something else. And can't imagine myself having anything else.
Because happiness doesn't work well unless it's shared. And the older I get, the fewer people are around that one can share anything with, and make new memories with. The ones who are around, increasingly weren't there back in the day when the stories were made and don't get it. And new memories are increasingly hard to come by. It's all been done before, and more vigorously. So now it's just stuff and stories. This is what getting old feels like.
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