I never considered my behaviors addictive until I really began to examine how I felt with them but there comes a time when we need to change, we have to accept what we are and what we know as the truth.  I’ve been around enough addiction in my life that I can point it out in anyone—and I have.  But I didn’t want to admit my part in that.  I knew I had OCD and ADD and considered many of my behaviors tics, things I couldn’t control associated with the compulsion. Whether it was the completion of a collection of books (or lip balm, lotion, shoes, shirts, whatever…), I thought it was just that feeling of needing my nest whole and knowing where all my things were.  I thought the compulsion was the completion of the collection.  What I found out was that completing the collection didn’t necessarily fulfill what I was looking for and I was always off and on to the next collection.  I had to consider what was happening with this because that went beyond compulsion—this wasn’t about completing a collection, it was about making myself whole.  I never considered myself good enough to stand on my own so I looked to things to prove my worth.  My collections were impressive, they made me feel good. I started to need more and more to feel complete.  There was legitimately a compulsion to the completion of the collection as well, it was the ever present need to continue building collections that became the issue.   

Then things got out of control and I realized that I barely had space for the collections I built.  Soon the things I equated to my identity and power became overwhelming and no longer felt good.  I didn’t have any space for them and I didn’t have any space for me.  I wanted to buy to have control because I could always decide what I wanted and I could get it when I wanted.  I wanted the collections because it made me happy to have it all and it made me feel good to show people that I had it all.  There was no issue with follow through on completing collections—that was one area I was always reliable in.  I share this because this became an addiction.  I needed to spend, I needed to catch ‘em all no matter what it was.  I nearly drowned myself in it.  I felt like crap about it and it was one of the triggering factors in my later years of cutting.  It was a combination of the guilt of needing the collections, the fact that I shouldn’t have spent money like that, the fact that I really liked spending money like that, and that I was keeping myself stuck to prove my worth to people who didn’t care one way or another.  That was the real trigger: no one gave a damn about what I did.

I had been using these facets of my personality to excuse the pain of feeling incomplete.  I then transferred it to my skin instead of dealing with it within me.  I didn’t understand I was empty.  My self-worth was already nil and I had no clue how to fill my cup so all I could do was create this image, a persona of having it all together and having it all.  The truth always catches up with us and sometimes when it does it’s ugly.  My ugly truth was I was out of control accumulating things to make me feel better of an absence I didn’t realize existed.  I thought it was perfectly logical that people determined our worth and when people told me I was bad, when they told me I wasn’t worthy of anything, when they used me, I believed them.  Shopping never judges—until I started judging.  The feelings started shifting when I started hanging out with different people.  These are successful people who run their lives, own their own businesses and are at the top of their fields.  They don’t look to things to feel good, they look to experience.  And not one of them has any doubt about who they are.

Emotion is such a beautiful thing but it truly does skew the reality of the situation.  We have to keep our emotions under control or really understand where they come from.  As soon as that happens, things like addiction are irrelevant.  There is nothing we are addicted to except becoming the best version of ourselves.  The obsession transfers from what we can accumulate and how we can be recognized to what we can do, how we can improve what we can offer, and how to contribute more.  I don’t need things to do what I need to do—none of us need those things.  We just need the right tools and we need the ability to discern what we want and what is necessary to get it done.  My worth isn’t based on what I can show, what I have accumulated any more than any other person.  We use our talents and our gifts and all we need comes to us to share with those around us.  Sharing is the real wealth.