The Hunger That Shops
The packages arrive like love letters from my lesser self. Brown cardboard confessionals stacked by the door, each one a small betrayal wrapped in tape and false promises. I am Pavlov's dog, salivating at the chime of notifications, the dopamine hit of add to cart clicking through my neural pathways like rosary beads through desperate fingers.
Today it was books again. Always books—as if I could purchase wisdom by the pound, stack enlightenment on shelves already groaning under the weight of unread spines. The Art of Not Being Governed. Women Who Run With Wolves. Two volumes on the psychology of creative genius. Each title a small prayer that this time, this purchase will be the one that transforms me into who I think I should be.
But it is never about the books, is it? It is about the hunt—that electric moment before the click, when possibility hangs suspended like a hummingbird between heartbeats. In those seconds, I am powerful. I am choosing. I am filling the hollow space inside my ribs with the illusion of agency, of becoming.
The credit card slides through my fingers like silk, like sin. Numbers on a screen—abstract, bloodless, unreal until the statement arrives like judgment day in my inbox. Then comes the familiar cascade: first the guilt, bitter as black coffee on an empty stomach. Then the shame, that hot flush that starts between my shoulder blades and creeps up my neck like accusation.
I am compulsive in all things—shopping, loving, bleeding my heart onto pages. I consume experiences like air, hoard moments like a dragon guards gold. Cannot simply be without the constant motion of acquisition, of more, of next. My therapist calls it "seeking external validation through material comfort." I call it trying to fill the God-shaped hole with Amazon packages and the temporary high of transaction complete.
The boxes sit unopened for days sometimes. It was never about having, only about the getting. The rush of blood to temples, the quickening pulse when I find the perfect thing—that ceramic mug that will make morning coffee a ritual of self-care, those linen sheets that will transform sleep into luxury. Each purchase a small spell cast against the ordinary terror of existing in this skin.
But the magic never takes. The books remain unread, the mugs gather dust, the sheets feel rough against my too-sensitive flesh. And I am left with only the familiar ache—that hollow place that shopping fills for exactly as long as the checkout page loads, then empties again like a broken vessel.
Tonight I deleted the apps. Again. Tomorrow I will probably reinstall them. This is the particular hell of the compulsive: knowing exactly what you're doing while being powerless to stop the doing of it.
The packages sit by the door like accusations, like small monuments to my beautiful, terrible inability to simply be enough.