My Mid-Life Addiction

Remember when I won that gorgeous bag from Bangle and Clutch? Well, Nannette Bosh Inc. liked my video so much they returned the favor and invited me to write a guest post. They ran into some snags getting it up on their site and that's why I'm sharing it here so you can read it:

I thought long and hard about adding the word ‘Strange’ to the title of this post, but decided against it since I don’t eat toilet paper, sleep with blow dryers, or play wife to a man blow-up doll. Is my addiction real? Oh hell yes. Is it strange? Hardly not..

I was raised in the south by a woman who had three daughters. I’m the youngest. As part of our upbringing, we walked with books balanced on our heads because ladies have good posture, ate properly with a knife and fork (even if your food didn’t need to be cut up) because ladies have good table manners, and if we left the house without earrings, we were subject to lose an ear. Because a lady would rather die than get caught without earrings.

Somehow, over the past 39 years, the urge to have a foreign object dangling from my lobes – hoops are my drug of choice…the bigger the better – has spiraled out of control.

I’ve always had the potential to become a heavy user and I got strung out about five or so years ago. I didn’t start off doing the hard stuff. I had enough sense to know that could be deadly. So I’d just throw on a necklace here and there. Then another. And another. Before I knew it, I was mixing and matching and layering every chance I got. I couldn’t step foot out the door without experimenting. I was never a designer kind of girl. I found myself gravitating more toward the recreational, costume stuff.

As I added more poison to the almost fatal concoction, it became harder to function. The only thing I could focus on was my next fix. Everything I did centered around picking the right ring, bangle, and/or cuff. I thought I’d hit rock bottom when I got introduced to scarves and the mere thought of a trendy handbag sends me into a cold sweat.

Then the dealers started playing dirty. The got more creative with how they marketed the goods to defenseless addicts like me. They turned to twitter and Facebook and used giveaways to lure you in.

I refuse to seek treatment though. Either inpatient, outpatient, or otherwise. I can beat this thing. Single handedly. One rhinestone and clutch at a time.