So I realised quite a long time ago that I lean towards an obsessive personality. I don’t mean in a weirdo kind of way, I just recognise in myself the tendency to fall into the grip of something to the point where it stops being a hobby for example, and sort of takes over. I guess it’s another example of the struggle I’ve always had to take a balanced approach to stuff. Trouble is, it’s like anything else…recognising that you’ve crossed a line, and finding the desire or the ability to stop aren’t necessarily one and the same thing, right?
Over the years I’ve referred to myself as a ‘collector’ – isn’t that just the best catch-all name for someone who can’t quit buying stuff…it’s kind of a license to carry on, because it legitimises what you’re doing. Some years ago, I bought a necklace. It was nothing special, just a little piece of costume jewellery but I really liked it. It drew a few comments and I liked the way it looked, so I started paying more attention to jewellery in general. Bought a few more things…outgrew my jewellery box so moved a few things around and had a jewellery drawer instead.
And then another. Then I started displaying them on a wrought iron wall sculpture in my bedroom, and loved the way it looked so once that one was overloaded, I bought another and started filling that one up too. I spent hours scouring on-line outlets for statement jewellery, hunting down unusual and often outrageously priced hand-made one-off pieces. After all, I was a collector. Shops, markets, boutiques, craft fairs…it was all about the jewellery.
The thing is, I rarely wore any of it. I mean I did in the early days, but I was skinny back then. As my collection grew, so did my waistline and in the same way that clothes don’t look or feel right on this fat body, neither does jewellery. You can have a gorgeous statement necklace for example, hand tooled by a master craftsman in an exclusive little studio who’s more than likely relaxing on a beach somewhere with a large Pina Colada on the proceeds of what you paid for it, but when you put it on, if it’s sitting in the shadow of a stumpy double chin, framed by fat arms and with a spare tyre sitting right underneath it, I’m here to tell you it doesn’t look as nice as it did in the shop window. Sure, it might fasten, but it still doesn’t fit…or rather, you don’t fit it.
The jewellery obsession passed, although clearly I will be accessorised within an inch of my life when I get to skinny town. Next it was handbags. It still is handbags…now that’s a fat girl accessory I can get along with. No matter what shape or size I am, fabulous handbags are fabulous handbags, even on this chunky arm. But they’re an expensive hobby and have definitely contributed to my bank manager’s nervous twitch. He’s even keener for me to get to skinny town than I am, on the basis that I might step away from the handbag counter. Because again, somewhere along the way, I crossed the line from interested, to obsessive.
I dipped into the psychology of collecting once, more out of curiosity than anything else – I couldn’t believe the wealth of differing perspectives out there in terms of what inspires people to collect stuff. I suspected some ‘ologist’ somewhere would try and declare that it was my way of filling a void, and I could even get on board with that on some level. It seems that Freud went one step further and regarded it as stemming from unresolved toilet training conflict which seemed a bit extreme to me. I mean yes, fair enough, one or two of the credit card statements I’ve had following a fuck it moment in Selfridges have turned my bowels to liquid, but I always made it to the potty in time!
Whatever…I continue to be a magpie. With great accessories… 🙂
