The urge to splurge

"How can money be the root of all evil, when shopping is the cure for all sadness?"
- Naomi Comer

I'd never put much stock in that saying, simply because i seldom go shopping. Friends have said i'm not a very good representative of the female of the species - i know little about makeup, less about fashion, and owning racks and racks of shoes does not a happy Li Yen make. I just never really enjoyed shopping, because it takes far too much time, usually involves shouldering through crowds, waiting in line, and more often than not leaves me wracked with indecision over whether to buy the pink or the black.

Until last week.

Last week, i went mildly nuts. Possibly i suffered a massive personality change, because in the span of 2 days i spent about $700, mostly on underwear (or lingerie, as someone pointed out recently. Guys wear underwear. Girls wear lingerie. Um. Sure.), the rest on assorted things like bags and accessories and toiletries. And strangely enough, I felt good having spent all that money, and that's very un-me. I never feel good spending money, because i am not a rich person, and every cent spent makes me that much less rich.

But last week, spend i did.

After that I took it upon myself to calculate just how much money i'd spent on shopping over the past couple months. The final figure came out to a hefty S$1,500 since November, averaging out to a not so intimidating $500 a month. It's still quite a lot more than i'm used to spending though, seeing how throughout the rest of the year i'd only shelled out about $800 on frivolities like clothes and shoes and a whole bunch of random t-shirts that always make me smile when i put them on.

Apart from the numbers though, the other conclusion i came to is that i have succumbed to shopping as a form of therapy. If i were to put the 2 timelines side by side, there is little doubt my shopping sprees would coincide nicely with the ebbs and flows of all the tumult that has been my life over the past 3 months. Since October really, was when all the excitement, for want of a better word, or perhaps chaos would fit too, started, and that's when the shopping started as well.

Upon further contemplation, and i contemplate a lot, it is my understanding that the shopping helps because i get to make the decisions. However much thought i have to put into making my final choice, it is my decision to make, and nobody else's actions would so much as make a dent on what i pick out. Although if we're talking lingerie, then perhaps it does matter what someone else's opinion is.

But again i digress.

Shopping helps because i'm in control. And over the past couple of months very little has been within my control. How people react to me, how they treat me, what they think of me, how they live, how they treat each other, it's all way beyond my ability to manipulate. And it seems to have upset me a lot more than i cared to admit before. Because these things matter. It's not right that anyone could possibly have more than one cancer. It's not right that someone who's 28 and obviously mature enough to handle her own life should be treated like a 5 year old imbecile. It's not right for some someone to throw herself into a relationship, albeit a fuzzy one that was almost 100% shrouded in doom from the start, expecting nothing but the best, if only for a short period of time, only to have the other person turn a cold shoulder without an explanation, and THEN nonchalantly go back to being friends again. It's just not right. And these are things which i should be able to get explanations for, because i deserve better.

I realise "i deserve better" is never going to work as a plausible reason for an easier time, but it really should suffice. I believe in things coming around that go around, and if i haven't passed anything too bad around, i shouldn't be getting anything too bad coming around either wot? Round and round and round...

Just like a washing machine.