Retail Therapy~Part One

Throughout the trials of my life I’ve often turned to retail therapy to sooth my woes.  And more often than not, the act of purchasing something did more to pacify my anxieties than shopping itself.  I remember so clearly, spending every penny of my weekly $86.00 paycheck from Founda’s Chinese Restaurant, where I spent my high school evenings working.  I purchased everything from earrings to clothing, to fast food, and occasionally I even filled up my tank with gas, back when it was less than a dollar a gallon.  I started retail therapy at a young age, it was the bane of my existence at times, and dulled the aching pain I was hiding from.

I don’t exactly want to make my life sound as if it was horrible because it really wasn’t.  My parents didn’t get divorced when I was a kid, in fact this year they’ll celebrate their 36th anniversary.  I didn’t suffer through any traumatic events in my childhood that caused me to be emotionally scarred.  But still, it was there.  It started as a cloud, a rather dark, dreary cloud, somewhere in my mind.  I don’t know any other way to describe it.  At the time I was so unaware that it was abnormal, I figured that everyone must have the same cloud, the same weight on their mind.  The thought never entered my mind to tell my parents that I was “depressed” because I didn’t even know what that word meant.

I went through school, church, all the motions were there, and I would be willing to bet that few of my friends ever knew the demons I fought daily.  There were times that I contemplated life, and the pure exhaustion that overcame me would start to gnaw at my mind.  It didn’t feel worth it at times, and I can honestly say that I tossed ideas around in my brain quite often about if I should stay or go.   Thank God I got to a point in my life that I could live, and I started to live with purpose.  I had my first child at a young age, and in all truthfulness, I think having that little boy changed my life for the better.  I had more of a reason to rise every day, and actually be productive.  Where was my retail therapy during all of this time? Oh, it was still there, it had just hushed to a whisper.  Now it was expressed through paper food-stamps that provided me with shrimp, pasta, and various other ingredients from the local grocery store to cook intricate recipes found in cookbooks, and Woman’s Day magazines.  Even during these times, I still sought my old refuge, the point where the paper or plastic departed from my hand to the cashier’s.  The high that was better than any drug could induce.

More on my retail therapy to come…..

Tagged as: depression, emotions, personal, retail therapy