Boy do women just lurve shopping, right?
Ask a girl who will need to have a ring inserted through her nose then dragged like a cow to slaughter before she would see a therapist, on how she copes with a bad breakup, and she will exclaim, “SHOPPING!”
I believe that stories abound of women in your lives and mine of women who would rather burn cash buying stuff than go flop on a shrink’s couch. I know quite a few people who have coped with stress through this innovative, though cash-burning, method.
I used to have a classmate who had a friend who had a shoe jewelry addiction. My classmate’s friend had a jewelry purchase addiction so extreme, that when her shrink “cured” that, her addiction for the bling-blings was transferred to an addiction for the high heels. Talk about serious issues. It is so bad, that she had to catalogue her collection through photos and a cataloguing system much like the librarian’s Dewey system. It got so bad, that after sitting pretty in her closet, big brand name shoes would be tossed out, barely used yet unusable, because it had rotted there, unworn.
Well, I guess my friend is her tamer version, because back when we had our call center stint, because of the stress, she had bought around a dozen pairs of footwear in the span of a week, aside from the numerous spa treatments she “had to have”. 😀 :))
While those anecdotes may be a little extreme, my mom, another one of my friends, and even I, are no different. My own mother recommended “retail therapy” to my other friend when she was coping with the loss.. Of a crush. Well, my mother is an addict of retail therapy too, anyway. She would buy cheap blouses for herself once in a while to feel pampered.
My other friend is crazy, though. Because she had purchased a laptop on a bit of an impulse. It was a worthy purchase, anyway, and she has been able to use her baby to keep herself sane.
I, on the other hand, never mind. Talk about blowing a couple of hundred dollars in two days’ time going crazy buying housewares for my dorm room. Eek.
But the stranger thing is, I relished seeing the money fly away and morphing into the work/kitchen/multi-purpose table my laptop is on now. I relish payday moments when I can burn money in a gadgets store, pointing at hard drives and other gizmos, feeling like Richie Rich’s girlfriend and then feeling the temporary high of getting my new purchases. Then three days down the line, like a cocaine addict, I realize I have to work my butt off for next week’s allowance.
Such is the epiphany of a shopaholic female. And yet, I am in nowhere within the vicinity of a therapy center for shopaholism withdrawal. And there is no way on this earth that I would allow myself to be dragged by men in white into rehab, either. They’d have to endure my kicking, screaming and clawing first. :p