Almost a year later I have finally shipped my stuff from Montreal to my new-old stomping grounds of Vancouver. After a brief perusal of my old junk, I somehow thought it was worth a blog.

First of all, I have to put this all into context. At the time I packed all of it I was in a major depressive phase after a major manic episode that took me to the hospital. And life sucked and I had no friends coming by to cheer me up, in fact at the time I was getting threatened by people I'd flipped out around. And I realized everyone I cared about who would go have a beer with me and let me be myself was way far away in Vancouver. So I packed up and left, with very few belongings because I showed up in Montreal with very little. And you can live for a long time with just a coffee cup, a tin soup pot, a fork, a spoon, and a knife.

Oh but wait, I went MANIC, see, which means I also went shopping, A LOT. I bought $60 cultural studies books, knickknacks and gee-gaws, movies and lampshades and other things which really don't mean anything to anybody else but me. And coming out of my bipolar emotional ruins I started thinking "Aw hell, none of those things really matter in the end does it? It's just junk, material goods, why do we need any of this stuff anyway?"

Well I have to say, almost a year later I am looking through all these boxes, and I'm in a pretty good mental state, and I say "Fuckin' rights this is good stuff! When am I ever going to buy a Buddha again? And dammit, I need my DVD's and I loooooooove my books, and I've really missed this pornography, and my Columbia figurine is beat up but so freakin' cute!"

Okay, I admit it, I'm a materialistic little chickadee. I feel better when I am surrounded by stuff. It's just stuff, but somehow it gives me a sense of accomplishment. I know when I need to think about my precarious gender tightrope, I've got a Kate Bornstien book to read. When I want to study films I can pop in my DVD of Mullholland Drive or whatever and sit back and analyse structure and themes and all that nerdly film stuff. And when I'm naked, I still have my bathrobe that I wore in the hospital.

Some people call it hording, and it's true that I do that. Apparently people with OCD often horde. I'm not a meticulously clean person, but having things around gives me a sense of stability and calm. Why? I don't know. Maybe it's craziness, maybe it's just human nature. We pathologize everything these days, but you know, maybe it all just comes down to our own unique quirks.

At the same time I have to say, some of the things I bought were just ridiculous. At my bipolar support group I came up with what I thought was a brilliant plan to have a garage sale of all the things we had bought in a manic state. I mean, you can rack up some intense debt in an episode! But no, the Manic garage sale has yet to happen. If any of my dear readers would like to contribute something to the sale, email me!