I am finally ready to tell this

This is my unburdening. It’s a virtual one as I start a literal one. It’s the story I never tell, the problem I’m so ashamed of, of my life that got out of control.

It’s a peculiar mix of something most of my friends and followers don’t know, but if they visit me, it’s extremely visible, impossible to hide. It’s strange to have an issue that people I barely know might see, yet it’s concealed from people I’ve known years, decades. I have to let people in both into my space and my emotional world for them to know. I’m not good at letting people in, in either way.

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I have stuff. A lot of it. Here’s a partial tour of my two bedroom apartment, (where I’ve lived alone since 2013), starting with a few nonworking bikes on the back porch.

The kitchen is decently organized, but the pantry — actually I have two, I lucked out — has paperware for parties never thrown, tools for grilling I don’t do, dishes and decorations I don’t want anymore but forgot to try to sell or donate. Scores of cookbooks I don’t use but can’t get rid of yet. Cute things I forgot I had, like a Smurfette TV tray. Empty craft beer cans with designs I like. Old packaged ingredients bought for long-ago food website ideas, that I’m finally going through. Also, the stove hasn’t worked since fall 2019, but I avoid letting anyone in to fix things.

The dining room has a beautiful vintage table I thankfully keep clear enough to eat off of, but of four chairs that came with it, one has gone missing, lost in my stuff? The biggest closet in the place (oddly in this room) has clothes of many sizes and styles with enough basics like socks that I can easily go months without doing laundry. Boxes and bins of zines, vintage books, vintage accessories (pillbox hats, loud 1970s neckties, sparkly shoes), adorable stationery, old wall and page-a-day calendars, craft supplies, are stacked around. Bins of my unsorted Chicago ephemera — I’d say I have every takeout menu, every concert flyer, every bookstore and library program, every advertising card that I’ve ever picked up since moving to Chicago in 1995. Metal shelving units I bought at Container Store many years ago and have never assembled because they’re too big to set up by myself (for now I use them to dry laundry).

The bathroom is also decent, but the pantry has cute matching towels and pillows I’ve never used, cologne samples torn from ads (Marshall Field’s ads, that’s how old), dozens of bottles of nail polish, ones I’ve worn and ones I’ve used to make paintings.

The bedroom and sunroom are storage. Magazines, board games, hundreds of vintage clothes items, my best collectible toys, boxes of personal papers, my paintings and supplies, my photos and negatives from years of carrying a film camera around every day. I’ve never told the landlord the heat doesn’t work in here, because no one’s ever slept in here.

Oh, and the other bedroom is also storage. I won’t even describe it. This is my second straight apartment where two whole bedrooms are filled with things and I use the living room as my bedroom and office. These are the mystery doors that cause visitors to ask “what’s in there?” and I deflect or mumble, too embarrassed to say. “What’s behind the door?” and “Is there a body under there?” (laughs) are popular questions when there are this many doors and bins and stacks.

The hallway by the bath and second bedroom is filled with boxes of travel pamphlets picked up on years of road trips by car or Megabus, trinkets from baseball and hockey games I saw in those cities, and a file cabinet of cool stuff, like every public transit map, farecard, schedule I’ve ever acquired. Bins of unopened cute toys I bought, never did anything with or gave away, and I now see listed online for ten, twenty times what I paid for them. Boxes of unsorted papers, like stacks of “recent” mail that turn out to be eight years old.

The living room — it’s the “good” room! — is full of things I like to show off, though the cabinets may be blocked at times from papers and souvenirs I’m sorting. My fantastic collection of Chicago-related books and ephemera, and shelves of my favorite nonfiction, and huge stacks of art books. A nonfunctional but lovely fireplace (my second consecutive place with one) with built-in cabinets and a mantel, where there’s a huge thrifted coffee mug collection. Other people’s old yearbooks from thrift stores and sales. Lots of records when I haven’t had a working turntable in years (old electronics are found in multiple places in the apartment). My computer desk with a chair from my hometown Borders store. A futon that’s always flat because it doesn’t work well as a sofa. Actually, there’s hardly any furniture in any room for anyone to sit on.

Oh…and when I moved to this apartment, two-thirds the size of my previous one (not counting the garage there I got to use for storage for a small fee — I had my own garage, when I’ve never driven a car in Chicago), I moved a lot of things into a storage space. A double-size storage space. (Which I just managed to save from going to auction.)

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All mental health issues are hard to talk about, of course. But to suffer from one that’s never included in mental health awareness campaigns (or even the pieces about how mental health awareness leaves out certain serious conditions), that for years was subsumed into OCD (which I do not suffer from) and only in recent years became its own disorder, is so very isolating. One met with revulsion and contempt. One where the sufferers are talked about, but rarely get to speak for themselves. Meanwhile I’ve watched almost every other condition get widely discussed, often from people assertive about their differences and even the positives of being neuroatypical.

Hoarding has gone from barely known — the excellent, groundbreaking 2010 book “Stuff” shows just how recent the research is — to gawked at on reality TV, most notably “Hoarders.” I used to search for tweets about that show I’d never seen (still haven’t, beyond brief clips) to see the horrified responses and the endless tedious quips — you’re not clever — that the show is “inspiring me to clean! LOL.”

That freakshow view of hoarding has faded a bit and we now hear more about minimalism, decluttering, and Marie Kondo (who I like, and who is mistakenly conflated with the zealous minimalists). I feel judgment now, that having a lot of things, unless it’s obvious trash and you’re obviously severely disturbed, marks you as a greedy, materialistic person, even if most of it was acquired free or cheaply.

I don’t want to be anyone’s symbol for what’s wrong with a materialistic society, whether a spiritual or activist perspective. The pain when I’d see contempt that, say, a vacant building is being turned into a storage space and how it’s a sign of what’s wrong with our country…knowing I have a storage space…and a full apartment.

Hoarding does get attention, but all these years I’ve waited for first-person stories, Own Voices stories, for hoarding. The first-person memoirs I’ve seen are by people whose hoarding isn’t as severe as mine, while family members’ memoirs — which are much more common — are about people who are more impaired — and in denial of their problem — than I. References to “coming clean” and “dirty secrets” are taken to title the books by children of hoarders, stories that make me so glad I’ve never directly inflicted this problem on anyone else.

How hoarding and my lack of urges for romantic relationships — I identify as aromantic — are intertwined is a question. But I don’t think I ever wanted marriage or children anyway, so I’m not bitter this got in the way. I’ve still had dates over and it stresses me but rarely bothers them; a certain friend who’s visited many times in three years even compliments me on the place looking better. (When frankly it’s mostly just moving piles of stuff to be a little neater without actually getting rid of anything, clinical term “churning.”)

I’ve felt so alone with it. I have a long history of searching for online communities for conditions and orientations I identify with, but have barely tried for hoarding. Where’s my community? Who do I connect with, in laughter or despair, in the ways I see substance addicts or eating disorder sufferers talk to each other?

Who can I ask: so what’s the craziest setup you’ve had from not letting anyone in your place to fix things? What’s your most ridiculous story of getting new possessions home? (Once or twice I bought so much at thrift stores I couldn’t bike home and had to get a cab and come back later to get my bike.) You ever hear a crash in a room but know that to find out what fell would require moving stacks of boxes, so you don’t bother to check? Do you ever lie down and just stare at the ceiling a while because it’s blank and the only uncluttered surface you ever get to look at and you need a few moments of peace?

To be honest, I’m afraid of seeking out fellow sufferers, afraid I’ll be judged, or that I’ll judge people who aren’t as bad off as me (half a closet of unworn clothes, big deal), or are worse (thirty cats, yikes!)

I’ve discussed it in intermittent therapy over the years, but never as much as I should, as it’s the biggest issue I have. In my early therapy — before hoarding was widely known — I thought it was weird how much I talked about the stuff in my place. But I had a devastating insight back then. In a long-ago zine about a serious depression, I wrote a little about clutter and said if I was suddenly giving lots of stuff away, it wouldn’t be a sign of suicidal ideation (as it’s commonly considered) but of mental health — and it is. It took me much too long to act.

I’m someone who knows I have a problem and desperately wants to change — I can’t speak for the people in worse conditions who aren’t yet ready to change.

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I’m not telling my whole life story, but I absolutely had hoarding tendencies growing up. There’s family history — a grandparents’ house had a lot of collectibles and clutter (I cringe remembering the kitchen and garage) — but not my immediate family, though our house has a LOT in it. I have no deprivations or traumas growing up to explain it, other than being fairly shy or introverted or socially anxious at a time when there was far, far less understanding and empathy. It was easier to spend time with things and not people, and I learned this was a flaw to conceal.

There’s a few early anecdotes. If a party or festival had decorative paper napkins, I’d set aside a clean one to save, for their pretty colors and patterns, and I know I was laughed at for this. But they were cool! Why not save one? I remember being very strict about my possessions and getting upset if people would touch or move my miniature collection. I remember despair once, maybe early teens, when my parents tossed a stack of newspapers I hadn’t gone through yet — I used to clip certain comics and features.

These tendencies escalated as I had more time and space to myself, from college dorm rooms to a room in a shared house to my first studio apartment in Chicago to a small two bedroom then a large three bedroom, and as I developed more and more interests (publishing a zine as a 1990s indie rock fan, collecting Barbie, exploring Chicago, going to art school, learning to cook, traveling, etc. etc.)

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Most of what I own can be divided into two groups — the past and the future, the two main reasons I own what I own. One is valuing the memories held by an object — books a loved one owned, childhood art projects, favorite old clothes. One is valuing the potential for what you could do with an object — this could be fixed, this could be turned into art, this is a nice gift to give to someone someday.

I’m also cursed by my conviction that literally everything becomes interesting and historically valuable after, say, twenty years. I’ll pick up any printed material from 2000 and it’s full of hilariously outdated technological references, ads for long-gone stores and restaurants, goofy fonts, a first reading by an author who’s now hugely famous. I’ve also been amazed at how often my random stuff from ten or twenty years ago is stashed in a bag for a store that no longer exists — so I’ve gotta keep that bag!

I have so much of both past and future, it often makes it hard to find the things I need to use right now — oh, there’s that umbrella I bought three years ago! Oh, I never sorted and put away souvenirs from this long-ago trip, there’s that book I wanted to read…and the coffee beans. Having ridiculous amounts of mementos and collectibles but lacking or not using basic things is common — I almost never have ice cubes. Or like I said, furniture.

Books may be the most socially acceptable item to discuss having too much of, when it’s common to see memes like “It’s not hoarding if it’s books” or “There’s no such thing as too many books.” Both false, sorry to say, if you’re told the stuff in your apartment is too heavy. But neither do I agree with advice to give away unread books because you’ll never get to them. I’ve often picked up an unread book years later and it was like a gift to my future self, hitting at just the right time. Still, though, too many of them around stress me out now and I acquire new books at a tiny fraction of my old rate.

So much else I own is not as acceptable, but I have reasons. Old calendars? I mean, the pictures and trivia on them haven’t expired. Greeting cards and other mail? Most people could save every piece of postal mail they’ve ever received and it’d take up less space than one piece of unused exercise equipment, but which one is considered bizarre to keep? Magazines? Still interesting to read, and we don’t yet have every page of everything ever printed online. I can defend any individual item or collection, but I can’t defend that I have way too much of it.

Having lots of stuff isn’t inherently a problem — I guess that’s a controversial view to moralizing minimalists — but it is if it limits you. If you can’t fully use your living space. If friends can’t hang out. If you can’t easily let repair people in. If you can’t sleep on your bed because you’re using it to organize papers right now. If you can’t get into that room because there’s a stack of boxes in front.

I’m not one of the more disgusting cases — though I’ve had a few gross experiences. I haven’t ever lived in what you’d call “squalor.” I haven’t had pets in years, so no horror stories there. I can open all the doors and walk through rooms in my place. Mostly. I shower and put on clean clothes every single day (even during the pandemic). But I can definitely understand how many hoarders are worse off, and how things spiral out of control, especially if other serious mental or physical conditions are involved.

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We were constantly told (pre-Covid) to value experiences and not things, that concerts, theater, dining out, travel are better uses of our money than acquiring stuff. And I’ve gone in that direction in the 2010s-20s.

I became fixated on visiting every location of a certain type of place — Chicago and suburban libraries, parks, breweries, independent coffeeshops, chain stores (all the Borders stores when they were closing), Metra and CTA train stations, diners — documenting in computer files and photos and tweets. (And articles or even books…someday.)

This urge predated social media, as I discovered by finding lists in notebooks from 2005 and 2007. But obviously social media made it a lot more fun to do and tell about. Nothing has felt compulsive or troubling about my urge to visit places. Being severely limited in 2020 (and slowed in 2021) by the pandemic didn’t cause the anxiety I feared. I visited every library branch in other years, it’s fine I didn’t do it in 2020!

It feels good and it’s become what people know me for, but only I knew it worked as a substitute for the absurd levels of acquiring I used to do: collecting dolls, buying vintage clothes just to have them (whether they fit or not), subscribing to multiple magazines and papers. Book sales, book fairs, discount toy stores, art stores, thrift stores, stores going out of business, interesting things left in alleys that could be turned into art…

I wasn’t ready to live for experiences in the 1990s-2000s, when that meant traveling in a pre-smartphone era (I have a few ridiculous stories) and hanging out in bars in the days they were choked with smoke and craft beer barely existed.

It was the pre-digital era, so I accumulated a lot of film photos, newspapers, magazines, videotapes. Ten years younger, and I’d have so much less to deal with. But it was also an era where I could walk into a thrift store and in ten minutes have multiple vintage (1960s-70s) items in my cart for cheap. I went to toy stores a lot then, particularly to collect Barbie. Some of these things appreciated in value, or at least stayed the same; I’d rather sell it than have stuff I can’t see and enjoy. There’s not much I regret buying, I just regret not tackling it sooner.

I now buy or accumulate a tiny fraction of what I used to; the 2013 move was such an ordeal, I didn’t want to add much more. I moved to within walking distance of two thrift stores but wouldn’t let myself go to either for many months. My rare thrift or book sale visits now, I limit myself to what I can fit in my purse/backpack and the cash I have on hand ($20 tops). I haven’t obsessively recorded TV in many years — I never even made the switch to DVR. I haven’t subscribed to newspapers or magazines at this address. I can live vicariously through others’ secondhand finds via popular online communities, and just take pictures of packages and clothes I like rather than buy them.

But neither did I move much to declutter, whether the junk or the valuables. Stalled, not getting worse, but not getting much better.

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I hardly ever see discussions of hoarding involving renters, only homeowners. I never hear about mental health as a source of conflict with landlords, when depression and anxiety and hoarding combine to make it hard to keep a place up in the state it should be kept. I feel guilty I’m not making full use of this gorgeous apartment, that so much of it is just storage. I have no clue if I have mental health/disability grounds to challenge an eviction, because I’ve never heard anyone talk about this. Nothing panics me more than the thought of having to quickly clear out, and/or lose stuff. I wouldn’t quite call it a fate worse than death, but it’s very close.

I’ve only lived in four places in Chicago since 1995, and my amount of stuff has been an issue in the last three. That’s over twenty years living in fear. Any type of work: cable, electricity, appliances being replaced, means landlords, handymen, total strangers in your space, judging. It might be a cable guy’s mildly irritating “Have you read ALL these books?” or it might be the surly handyman/neighbor in my last place, cursing at the tumbling empty boxes I didn’t move from my laundry room before he checked it. Their amazement or annoyance would send me deeper into shame and fear and not wanting to let people in.

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So here’s a story that’s hard to tell, and I’m afraid it’ll sound like an excuse. When I moved in early 2013, I was ready for a new life. I was in a smaller place (yes, a lot of my stuff was now in storage) after nearly 12 years in a huge apartment and had donated quite a bit before my move and was in a new part of town I really enjoyed and my “experiences, not things” mantra happened to mean hanging out in bars a lot by myself for the first time. There’s a night, to fully tell about another time. It was my birthday and I’d had a great time with friends but then it was late and I was alone and my mood turned and I went to a late-night bar. And talked to someone I was too drunk to talk to, and let them drive me home, where he assaulted me in my beautiful new apartment. It took days to piece together what happened, realize how bad it was, speak up, then later, I had horrific fallout with a close friend who wanted to blame me and minimize what happened, making me feel hopeless about ever confiding in anyone about anything ever again. I was extremely messed up.

I can’t promise I’d have spent 2013 finally decluttering if this hadn’t happened, but it stalled the progress I’d been making. It made it even more difficult to let anyone in my place. How could I have a housewarming when this had just happened there? Grotesque. And it’d taken so much time and money to move (my landlord gave me six months, and it took a little extra; I had about two months having two apartments), there was no possibility of moving out of the place it happened. I was stuck. My bed and desk were in that room, so I spent nearly all my hours at home there, a crime scene. I threw myself even more into going places and having experiences. Those experiences weren’t supposed to be multiple weeknights shutting down neighborhood/dive bars, but that’s what I thought I needed at the time.

I’ve seen two therapists since it happened, so I’ve done some work around it. I don’t currently have any psychiatric diagnoses or treatment and haven’t in many years. My hoarding problem is in a galaxy of intermittent symptoms one could call anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, ADHD, maybe? Above all, I feel a frustration at how much I want to change, but am overwhelmed and hopeless.

There’s a lot more pain in the past few years I’m not getting into here. I knew I couldn’t live like this much longer, but getting started was tremendously hard. What took me so long?

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It’s hard to tackle a problem when you fear a flood of self-loathing for not starting to do so sooner. I’m perplexed how I didn’t understand what I was doing in my worst years of acquiring (late 90s-early 2000s). To fully face how much time and money I’ve wasted is devastating. I know I’ve been ridiculously privileged to have so much space mostly to myself (I did have roommates in the previous apartment — it was three bedrooms!) for so long. I try to bright-side it — there’s far more dangerous habits to have, worse things I could have spent my money on. It’s legal, and it hasn’t affected my (physical) health, except inhaling too much dust over the years.

Starting to declutter is intense. So much pain and joy, pain at things I could have been using all these years or that became unusable while forgotten and buried, joy at things I’m glad to have, either for myself or to be given or sold so someone else can use them.

It’s a wild feeling, confronting all these different selves — the student, the traveler, the activist, the vegetarian cook, the artist, the indie rock fanatic, the minor league sports fan, the craft beer enthusiast, the collector of kitschy femininity — piled up. Normal people have a commemorative t-shirt or two, an abandoned website, a few photos to mark past phases and hobbies; they don’t have stacks of boxes or even an entire roomful of stuff for each interest.

I expected, while sorting my past, I’d be crushed by memories of people now gone from my life, and failure at the unfinished projects and abandoned goals, but it hasn’t been that bad. I’ve had an appreciation for all the people I’ve been and why each was valuable at the time.

I’m trying to be kind to myself. I realized the alternate life where I frequently entertain at home in vintage clothes, serving on cute dishes, was probably never going to happen; it’s my personality, not clutter, standing in my way, honestly. Maybe I’ll always be too nervous to let people in my space, maybe not. I haven’t been offered much kindness or constructive help with my hoarding, but then I’ve hardly let anyone know it exists. It’s mostly known by the people I’ve hurt with it — my family, my landlords.

I’m trying to see the upsides to the years I spent acquiring. It brought me to so many neighborhoods and cities. I supported a lot of local businesses, international grocery stores and art supply stores and bookstores. I had happiness and hope at the time in finding great things cheap or free and imagining what I’d do with them.

Hoarders can be highly creative, filled with optimism and zeal for repurposing and upcycling before those were trendy. The problem is in executing these lofty plans, but at least I want to show there are positive attributes that lead to such a terrible problem. It’s not about being too lazy to organize and too stupid to understand what other people consider “trash.”

I need to find positives or it will be nothing but self-hate, like when terrible words volleyed in my head for months after the assault. “You’re not an awful person,” I think now, over and over, trying to convince myself. “You didn’t waste your life.”

This is why it hurts to get morality lectures about how “people are more important than things” (I agree! But I can care about both!), to be told “it’s just stuff,” to be commanded to donate it to a thrift store. With how much time and sometimes money we spent acquiring things, and how much meaning we invested in its past or its potential, to reject the stuff rejects us, it tells us our lives were meaningless. Maybe you’re too enlightened to care about material things. I’m not.

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I’ve spent the pandemic terrified I could be evicted for non-financial reasons. In mid-March 2020, I was just about to settle down for the stay-at-home orders and tackle my place, when I was called away for a family emergency to my childhood home in Iowa. I had an intense four months there.

I did a ton of cleaning and organizing, and it appears my family is the keeper of a great deal of mementos from both sides of the family, so I have immense amounts more to do in the future.

But I was paying full rent on a two-bedroom apartment no one was in. I came back and threw myself into experiences again — long bike rides, parks, libraries, carryout food, a few brewery visits. I should have been cleaning, I know, but I was going through a lot. A lot. I kept putting off the real life I needed to tackle, and I’m sorry. By late fall my privileged financial situation was changing (short version: I haven’t been rich, but I’ve had support from family) and staying afloat became my concern.

At least I hadn’t acquired much during the pandemic, without book sales or thrift store visits or flyers, programs, and free weeklies to pick up. And I don’t buy things online (besides travel/event tickets), had fortunately never gotten into the habit.

I wanted to get rid of stuff but months of virtually no money (no real job in years, no unemployment, no stimulus checks) and no transportation (I don’t drive, and my bicycle was vandalized just before Christmas) and no wifi (yes, I don’t have wifi in my apartment, during this everything’s-done-online pandemic), and no working camera (besides my phone) to take photos of the things I need to sell/give away, and, oh, the pandemic and weather limitations on selling my stuff made it absolutely overwhelming (and I don’t function well when I have multiple crises at once).

I’ve been fixing these situations, with help. I started getting help around the terribly lonely winter holidays. I hadn’t had a working microwave in months and a friend had an extra new one her family didn’t need, so she arranged to bring it over. It was free, but I wanted to give something, so I started madly sorting bins of unused stationery, stickers, arts and craft supplies, filling a couple big bags of stuff that kids could use.

Around then I learned about free food fridges and pantries, like the Love Fridge at Roscoe/Elston, and have relied on them in these grim broke months. I soon started bringing non-food items to leave there, much of it still packaged (soap, disposable razors, plastic wrap) but some used items too. Virtually everything would be gone on my next visit a day or two later. Giving gifts to strangers and feeling like I was “trading” them for the food felt exhilarating.

I put a lot in the alley, too, finally giving up on that printer that hadn’t worked in a decade, and the old futon mattress that holds awful memories. I’ve been using a neighborhood Free Box group too, thankfully not to acquire more stuff. I sold a few vintage items to friends, as I try to get set up on Etsy.

I can hopefully sell the most collectible things there (kocvintage), and store or move my Chicago and personal archives, but so much of the rest is…I don’t know, how do you have an estate sale in an apartment? Or a garage sale online? Or a “pay what you want” sale? Can I post everything I’m selling and giving away and have people just take it? I don’t know, but I need help here. Please take my stuff or tell people you know who might want it (who can pick things up in Chicago or pay to ship things) who might be interested. There’s so much of it and a lot of it is cool! I mean I’d like money for some of it, but a lot I could give away.

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It’s not as simple as “just donate to a thrift store” — a lot of what I have is too weird and specialized. Rusty but cool vintage bike frames, obscure vegan cookbooks, academic journals, an enormous collection of psychology books, weird art supplies, fabric scraps, boxes of things found in abandoned buildings, boxes of signage from a Crown bookstore that closed (I Dumpster-dived and had to get a cab to get it all home.) If you wanted to set a film or TV show in, say, 2003, I have dozens of extra Starbucks and Borders paper cups, and blue bags from Chicago’s ill-fated recycling program, and bottles of Hard Candy nail polish…

Many hoarders have issues with perfectionism, and I’m aware that finding the perfect home or use for my stuff is part of it. I might not want it anymore, but the thought of anything useful to anyone getting trashed causes an almost physical pain.

And also, I have such joy now when find useful homes for things, whether it’s free to needier people or making a few bucks from a friend. I have joy in finally using things up, too, those cosmetics I bought on my one trip to Paris (in 2000!), random pantry items from when I was discovering vegan cooking, painting with film canisters of acrylic paint I mixed 15+ years ago.

I’ve done more in the past months than my seven-plus years here combined, but I fear it sounds like nothing to my family and my landlord. It hurts to know inside how much I’ve done, while how little other people believe I’m changing.

I cannot stress enough that “Just get rid of it” and “It’s only stuff” are as wildly unhelpful — and hurtful — to hoarders as “Just eat” or “You’re already thin enough” would be to an anorexic person. I cannot stress enough that yelling that’s it’s weird and wrong to have so much, that calling our things trash, won’t motivate change.

I want to change, but I struggle to make it happen. I feel trapped, surrounded by these stacks, bins, boxes, bags, as I keep imagining what it’d be like without them. The Kondo method of dumping all your stuff in a category in a pile to deal with it at once is an excellent one, but very difficult for a person like me who knows there’s electronics, cosmetics, art supplies, books tucked away in boxes in almost every room.

I don’t want to be buried by memories or by potential anymore, I want to mostly live for now — what I can cook now, what I can wear now, what I can listen to now.

I can imagine living “normally,” or at least, I can imagine this apartment with much less in it. Having my own home is more than I should let myself dream now, but I’d love to have one in Chicagoland someday, a pleasant, decent space with enough things to be interesting, not enough to be burdened. I try not to dwell on regret I didn’t save all this time for a house or condo, or that I haven’t gotten to live in more city neighborhoods because of how much trouble it is to move.

I believe I can let things go. I can reminisce and laugh or cringe at the stories of how I acquired it all and the good feelings I had at the time, respect my past rather than hating myself for it. I realize how just having photos of things and their stories and memories can be enough, I don’t need all the things.

I am ready to unburden. I just can’t do it alone anymore.

[Acknowledgments: a huge THANK YOU to the people who saw my many requests for early readers and reached out; the helpful critiques and praise were very welcome. I regret that I had to rush this out and couldn’t take all your suggestions to heart yet…the beginning of the piece is probably too long. Oh well. I really appreciate it and you may have earned a spot if/when I get to write acknowledgments in a book someday!]