So, a friend posted this picture and it triggered a recent memory.
First off, here’s the pic;
Now the memory!
I was gonna write what I was gonna write in the “about” area of the pic when sharing it on Facebook, but, I’m pretty sure I know what would likely have happened and I wanted to avoid it. So I didn’t share the pic and my thoughts on Facebook after all. Yet.
While there may be a few folks who read what I have to say, there would likely have been more that responded in the comments area telling me how much they care about me. And, maybe one person telling me to buck up and stop feeling sorry for myself.
In other words, my reason for sharing would be mostly unnoticed, and “sorry for me ” notions or “stop feeling sorry for yourself” notions would just be annoying.
But I still wanted to write about what I was thinkin about. And that brings us to the here and now and this blog.
I wanna talk about hoarding. Just give me a moment and you’ll see how this applies. In my head anyway.
The TV shows about hoarders are fascinating to me for various reasons. Things like that also make me investigate myself. “Am I a hoarder?” Can I even spell hoarder without spellcheck? Um, well, there was the issue of forgetting the “a” in that word. lol
There are the obvious things like the stacks of papers I keep meaning to go through and sort and file and put away or throw out. Stuff that never seems to get done and keeps piling up. Some may consider me a bit of a book hoarder. I don’t. And there are the things I went without most of my life that I’ve collected even though I didn’t need to. I’ve challenged myself over the years as I come to realize that I have an unnecessary attachment. Dehoarding your life not only takes time due to getting your mind in a state that you can deal with it and make the necessary changes, it also takes time because you may not realize you’re hoarding this or that.
Hoarding usually stems from fear. And that’s what shone a light on some hoarding I have been doing for a long time. It’s people. I’ve been hoarding people. Not physically, but mentally and cyberlly. (I made the word cyberlly up. YW)
Growing up my family moved often which made keeping friends difficult. Some of them I’d stay in touch by exchanging letters. But after a while, even those disappeared into the mist of time and were gone. The depression that comes with losing one’s friends on a regular basis was most obvious in my sister. She’s three years older than me and back then she was the people person, I wasn’t. So it didn’t appear to take a toll on me, but deep inside it kept secretly adding up. Not just a secret to others, but also to myself.
Then there was San Diego. The last port we lived on the sailboat in. This time it wasn’t us moving away, it was partly our friends because most of them were in the military. We’d get close, like family, even when they were overseas, but when they went home the friendship usually died. To add insult to injury, my mom didn’t listen and obey the pastor of the church we were attending that all our friends were in. Not listening and not obeying can be both a good or a bad thing. In the case of my mom, it was mixed. We ended up getting kicked out of the church and ostracized. Talk about painful, this was heart-wrenching for all of us.
A similar thing happened with the next church, only we didn’t get kicked out. Again, all our friends were in the same church, the pastor had controlling issues, my mom not only wouldn’t obey him, she actually left and started learning from someone else. How dare she! Our family left along with her gradually. Again, we lost all our friends due to this. The pastor would let everyone know that we or anyone else, who left his church had backslidden and were living in sin.
While I call those two churches borderline cults, the next one we because a part of was a bonified fully fledged cult. Anyone who didn’t eventually join the “church” also lost friendship with us. I didn’t see it that way. I never wanted to lose friends and I did what I could to keep them but I was uneducated in so many ways, I had no idea of what I was doing. So, the cult kept me from making any real friends outside of the group. I did try, but the leadership always found a way to”fix” that.
And then there’s the post-cult effect. At first, I lost all my friends, again. Partly because they were being fed a load of crap about me and pulled away and partly because it wasn’t just the cult leader who duped me, it was also several of the members. So, I didn’t trust any of them.
I made some fair-weather friends during that time. There were some good folks, and, well, some not so good folks.
And this brings me to the beginning of my people hoarding.
It started with Myspace. I could actually make friends and keep them through Myspace. Then Facebook came into play. And that’s where the serious hoarding became a thing. I found some old friends and I made new friends and I was able to keep most of them through social media. It was awesome!!!
But then there was the heart ripping painful times. When people would remove me from their friend’s list. I knew it shouldn’t hurt me like that, after all, it was usually people I only met once or not at all and a few I had known but were not really good friends in the first place. Still, I couldn’t stand losing anyone. Losing a social media “friend” was like being virtually stabbed in the heard. I knew this wasn’t realistic, but I didn’t know how to make those feelings go away.
There were even times I believe I came a bit too close to stocking. I didn’t do anything illegal, but I would do what I could online, which wasn’t much, to learn about this person or that guy, wishing I could meet them in person or at least not lose them as an online friend. I definitely got too attached to people I barely knew wither I met them in person or not.
Time has taken me further and further from that behavior that was actually harmful to myself. The obsessing and the people collecting has faded over the years.
It’s been recent that I realized I really didn’t care all that much if people who didn’t see a reason to be my social media friend removed me from their friend’s list. Sure, there’s been a few that I was a tad hurt by, but I got over it. The ol’ “they don’t deserve you” attitude only worked for, well, no seconds, lol. But now while I may entertain that notion for a bit, I understand that I don’t need everyone, and everyone doesn’t need me. I have a few good friends I can count on. Wither they are near me or far away, I value them.
I’m actually okay and sometimes even glad when I don’t connect on social media with everyone I come across. Sure, I enjoy making new friends but it’s not a point of great disappointment and sorrow when I don’t. And for the record, I don’t have any plans to remove anyone from my friend’s list. While there may be a lot, and I believe I haven’t met most of them in person, I still appreciate the connection and community and the different ways of thinking and living. I can still be connected without being obsessive about it by letting fear guide me.
Another train of thought I’ve had to adjust is the notion that people who remove me from their friend’s list or don’t want to add me are being small minded. That they don’t see the big picture and they don’t know that there may come a day they wished they hadn’t turned down my friendship. Why, that’s not at all arrogant. lol! Okay, it was. But I thought it wasn’t cause I felt the same way about them, I may someday need them. While bridge burners may be way out of balance, I overdid it and was way out of balance the opposite direction.
Whatever it be, I am who I am and the way I think is mine. I shouldn’t expect others to think like I do and act and respond the way I do. We’re all different with different strengths and weaknesses and characteristics and ways of thinking. I don’t like it when others project their ideas on others or myself, so I shouldn’t do it either.
Hoarding is so much more than collecting and even more than just fear. It can be complicated and intertwined and tangled with other issues. Like straightening anything out, prodding and pulling and agitating only makes it worse. Changing without understanding the root cause doesn’t usually last. In order to up weed our fears, we need to understand where they came from and what’s been feeding them. And it’s there that we can begin our healing journey.
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