shopping as a mirror for life
So I've realized, though I've always known, that I'm a very specific and obsessive type of shopper. I like browsing, though I rarely buy when I'm browsing. Most of the time I decide I want a very specific thing and then for the next month I'm like a blood hound searching online and at the mall for that item. Last year it was that deer antler necklace. A few months back it was a cool pair of bone earrings. Now it's a white leather motorcycle jacket. But I never just want a general white leather jacket. I want a specific collar, a specific cut, zipper detailing in specific places, blablabla. I feel like this says a very, well, specific thing about my personality which I feel like I should consider.
Not in a negative I need to reassess my persona kind of way. Just in a scientific inquiry capacity.
Because I just spent the last hour online looking at dozens of white leather jackets and going, "this one doesn't have a zipper on the sleave" and "this one has a mandarin collar. I already have a jacket with a mandarin collar" and "this jacket zips up with a center zipper instead of a side diagonal zipper."
The thing with me is, I have to either have complete control or I don't want any control at all. I need to either be the master of the entire situation or I want everyone else to tell me what to do and guide me. There's this switch in my brain that either goes on or off, not slid from one end of the spectrum to the other. In professional situations I like to have a task I can do completely by myself or with someone under my dictation. When it's somewhere in the middle I get this buzzing in my brain where I keep thinking about how someone else could be getting something wrong and I need to go over and make sure they're not. You know. Doing it wrong. I'm an absolute anal retentive order or abject chaos type of girl. For example, when I was volunteering in Ghana I would help with dispensing. If I was tasked with typing up papers I really had to distance myself from the eye glasses and medicine station or else I'd start thinking about how the medicine wasn't organized right or the glasses weren't in order or the pacing was slow because the dispensing wasn't at peak efficiency. And if it was my job to dispense medicine I had to have everything exactly where I wanted it to be and for the other person helping to do exactly what I wanted or else the disorder would make me extremely irritable. But if someone else was in charge of dispensing I basically relinquished all control and forced myself not to care or else I'd just worry about everything.
The worst part is I'm this way about guys. I have to just not care what the hell he does because the moment I nitpick one thing it's all over. Everything becomes a subject of concern. It's little things like "his teeth are slightly yellow" to "I think he's bad with money" to "I don't think he has a healthy respect for women." So I either put the monster in the box and keep her there or let her out to rage.
You know there are just so many details in life, in behavior, in the world. I'm really good at getting over things and not caring because I know how detailed and obsessive I am if I do care. After I broke up with Jon I gave myself a week to pick apart everything. What I did wrong, what he did wrong, what I could've changed about myself, where the problems started, whether it could've been salvaged, my every action that lead up to that moment and each individual thought that went through my head before it. I don't even realize I remembered those things until I start thinking and then suddenly it's all there. Good or bad sensations during sex, a word said in a phone conversation from three months ago, subtle expressions during a trip back from the airport, money spent or not spent, it's all there in my brain pressing against the hippocampus and screaming for acknowledgement.
It's a lot easier to let go and not think about it, to release control and just exist. And then I can slowly release my anal retentive obsessive tendencies on things more trivial and less consquential, like the kind of leather jacket I buy.
Not in a negative I need to reassess my persona kind of way. Just in a scientific inquiry capacity.
Because I just spent the last hour online looking at dozens of white leather jackets and going, "this one doesn't have a zipper on the sleave" and "this one has a mandarin collar. I already have a jacket with a mandarin collar" and "this jacket zips up with a center zipper instead of a side diagonal zipper."
The thing with me is, I have to either have complete control or I don't want any control at all. I need to either be the master of the entire situation or I want everyone else to tell me what to do and guide me. There's this switch in my brain that either goes on or off, not slid from one end of the spectrum to the other. In professional situations I like to have a task I can do completely by myself or with someone under my dictation. When it's somewhere in the middle I get this buzzing in my brain where I keep thinking about how someone else could be getting something wrong and I need to go over and make sure they're not. You know. Doing it wrong. I'm an absolute anal retentive order or abject chaos type of girl. For example, when I was volunteering in Ghana I would help with dispensing. If I was tasked with typing up papers I really had to distance myself from the eye glasses and medicine station or else I'd start thinking about how the medicine wasn't organized right or the glasses weren't in order or the pacing was slow because the dispensing wasn't at peak efficiency. And if it was my job to dispense medicine I had to have everything exactly where I wanted it to be and for the other person helping to do exactly what I wanted or else the disorder would make me extremely irritable. But if someone else was in charge of dispensing I basically relinquished all control and forced myself not to care or else I'd just worry about everything.
The worst part is I'm this way about guys. I have to just not care what the hell he does because the moment I nitpick one thing it's all over. Everything becomes a subject of concern. It's little things like "his teeth are slightly yellow" to "I think he's bad with money" to "I don't think he has a healthy respect for women." So I either put the monster in the box and keep her there or let her out to rage.
You know there are just so many details in life, in behavior, in the world. I'm really good at getting over things and not caring because I know how detailed and obsessive I am if I do care. After I broke up with Jon I gave myself a week to pick apart everything. What I did wrong, what he did wrong, what I could've changed about myself, where the problems started, whether it could've been salvaged, my every action that lead up to that moment and each individual thought that went through my head before it. I don't even realize I remembered those things until I start thinking and then suddenly it's all there. Good or bad sensations during sex, a word said in a phone conversation from three months ago, subtle expressions during a trip back from the airport, money spent or not spent, it's all there in my brain pressing against the hippocampus and screaming for acknowledgement.
It's a lot easier to let go and not think about it, to release control and just exist. And then I can slowly release my anal retentive obsessive tendencies on things more trivial and less consquential, like the kind of leather jacket I buy.