Have Plenty

This is not my nail polish collection. I have mine under my bed, on my wall, in one of those little organizer things on wheels, etc. But to show a smidgen of the magnitude of my problem, I needed to show a big picture of a collection. This picture shows about 700 bottles. I have roughly 400 more polishes than that. The good news is that I have not bought a bottle of nail polish in nearly a year. The bad news is I still want to buy more. I'm slowly going through my polish collection because there is no way I can ever go through the amount of polish I have. I know that seems rather obvious when looking at a picture like this, but for people who collect things like me, it doesn't matter. You can never get enough.

Without going too deep into the psychology of my issues, let me just skip to the bottom line and say: I have a problem. I believe it can be traced back to when I was four years old. There I was, freshly adopted, a little black girl in a town of about four hundred people (not kidding) and I started to have dreams. At first the tights dream was cute. In it I would wake up (in my dream) and wander over to my dresser, open up the top drawer, and a rainbow of tights would fly out at me. I was so excited because my mother only allowed me to have one pair of white tights and one pair of black tights. Before I get on the mom kick, though, let me say that it's not my mother's fault. We didn't have the money for extravagances. I didn't need a rainbow of tights, I just wanted it. I wanted to know that no matter what I wore, I would always have a pair to match. It was the feeling of fulfillment -- of having everything that I wanted. More than I wanted-- having plenty.

So I have brought this bit of neurosis to my adult life and I still collect things. I want more than anyone else. It's not exactly greed, because I share, but only if I know I won't run out. Never mind -- it is greed. I have to have extra, plenty, an over abundance.

I watched Catfish the other day.  It's my guilty pleasure, and I have a pretty good idea of what makes people pretend and lie and scheme in order to have more. It all gets traced to the same thing: a lack of something in one area makes an almost unbearable need to drown another area to a breaking point of indulgence. Silence and neglect from your parents creates a deficit that you feel you need to fulfill by getting love and caring from a stranger. It never will be enough though. I know that a catfish will never stop at one person -- they need more affection because that one person might not be available. Catfish doesn't only mean you steal pictures and pretend to be someone else -- it also means you steal or lie about affections, afflictions, problems, heartaches, experiences -- anything to get you something more. More love. More attention. More sympathy. More.

Ask me how many red fingernail polishes I have. And I will argue with you, knowing I'm insane. They are a different hue, I'll tell you. I may need that shade for this or for that. And I'll organize my reasoning like I'm a lawyer on a case with naked fingernails. Yeah. I hardly wear it. I just need to have it.

A person who is lacking in one area in their life will always hoard something to make up for that void. The thing that becomes the filler is not important. Before I stumbled on fingernail polish, I collected lipstick. Before that I collected eyeshadows. Before that I collected pens. Journals. Stationary. Cards. Things. All putty. All filler.

So I needed to find in this stuff the hurt that never quite got healed. And I need to fill it with my own knowledge that I will survive. That little kid with the big hurt is going to make it, just like the adult me will take on any obstacle and survive. And then I will be able to let go of the stuff.

And I'll dance from sheer joy and lightness.