The older I get, the more weird I become about throwing anything away. I torture myself to see if something can be reused, repurposed, sold, composted or recycled. I try to dismantle things that have bits of paper or plastic on them and recycle what i can, and get super put out about anything that I can't dispose of in a green way.

It's at the point where I have heaps of stuff piled up everywhere because I am too overwhelmed to actually do anything. I get frozen into the inability to make an executive decision.

For example, I get a lot of boxes through amazon. I could burn them in my fire pit, but i have trouble actually leaving the RV to ever make a fire pit (due to anxiety). I could bring them to the recycling, but i talk myself out of it because these are very nice boxes someone could use. I tell myself I can give them away on Craigslist or freecycle, but that involves communication with strangers (anxiety again). And I won't do a 'leave it on the curb for pickup thing' because my street isn't set up in a way that I could do that. I used to break them down and use them for mulching, but I really don't care about my ugly yard anymore.

So instead, I have boxes everywhere. Piles of them that blow over in the yard and pile up in the rooms. I look at them all and despair, and then still MORE come in all the time.

And this is just boxes. I probably have dozens of categories of things that I can't make a move to get rid of. I feel guilt and exhaustion and shame about such things, but still I can't bring myself to decide how to handle anything.

From reading around the internet, I have a sense that this kind of odd behavior isn't as uncommon as it seems. I know it is a form of hoarding.

I wish I could figure out what to do about these things. When I talk to my case manager, more important things always come up, so this keeps getting shoved to the backburner and the piles get higher.

Sorry about the depressing topic. But maybe someone else won't feel so alone out there, reading this.