Shall I confess my weaknesses? How often they lie hidden, even from ourselves — especially from ourselves. Then, at certain moments, they reveal themselves with startling clarity. Moving house is one such moment, particularly when the move is abroad. Suddenly, painful decisions must be made. Do you pack this? Give it to a charity shop? Pass it on to a friend? Or simply throw it away? The pressure of time only sharpens the difficulty of every choice.
At such moments, we are forced to confront our own peculiar attachments — our little fetishes. Mine are notebooks, pens, and anything remotely connected to calligraphy. Even when my drawers and suitcases are already overflowing, I still linger longingly in stationery shops, tempted to buy more. Pens and pencils seem to call out to me irresistibly. Never mind that I already own a vast collection of fountain pens, complete with cartridges in every imaginable colour, alongside pencils ranging from soft 2B to velvety 6B. I buy ballpoint pens too, usually with an ultra-fine 0.35 mm tip. Once, I even bought a heavy rotary pencil simply because I loved its look and weight, only to spend weeks scouring the internet for the rare oversized 2B lead it required.
Another, perhaps more alarming, obsession is toiletries — anything connected with showering, shampooing, lotions, or potions. Every house I have ever left has contained at least three large crates filled with such things. I seem to accumulate them with effortless speed. Still, on the bright side, I have little interest in clothes, shoes, or handbags, so perhaps some restraint remains.
By now, you are probably thinking of your own particular guilty obsession. You know exactly where to buy it, which make you prefer, and how oddly reassuring it feels simply to have it close at hand. Like the wheels on a suitcase, these obsessions keep us moving forward. They comfort us in ways only we fully understand. When preparing for a major move, we mentally clear space so that the things that truly ring our bells can be given pride of place.
Letting go of possessions is painful, though often necessary. Yet certain objects cling stubbornly to our fingers, transforming us momentarily into Gollum — that wretched creature from The Lord of the Rings — clutching our treasures and hissing defensively, “My precious, my precious!”
