I’m surfing the internet like a madwoman this week: Target, Macy’s, Victoria’s Secret, Banana Republic, even Adam & Eve.  I can’t help it.  I want to buy something.  I know if it’s really cool, it’ll offer me hours of distraction.  Sometimes, it’s as simple as a 1000 piece puzzle.  Most of the time, it’s a new Apple toy.

I never give in.  Well, I do, but I refocus my desire for frivolity on pragmatism: food, bills.  I spend it responsibly, immediately, most of it, so that I can’t be tempted to spend it on clothes and gadgets.

I sometimes indulge in new cleaning supplies.  It’s so pathetic, the cheap high I get from imagining how these tools will help me make my house cleaner, prettier, warmer, perfect.  I can rationalize that expenditure with ideas about hygiene.  I can tell myself, cleaning supplies are cheaper than high-heeled pumps.

But the moment the cashier passes me Method wipes is not as satisfying as when the counter girl passes me an indiscreet bag full of what is now mine, and I get to walk out of a chic boutique starry-eyed and feeling sexy, subtly proud of my shopping prowess and good fashion sense.

That feeling is an addiction of mine.  When I pay bills and spend my money on necessities, I feel like an alcoholic who reaches past a Vodka bottle for her water glass.

Most of the time, I’m so broke, I can’t even consider anything but water.  At once, I’m too tired to think about anything but getting to sleep or enjoying one more minute of time spent doing something I want to do.  I’m too concerned with the price of a train ticket to think about the price of make-up.

To that point, I’m so careful not to feed my addiction, I’ve become an extremist in the other direction.  I haven’t bought make-up in over a year.  The clothes I have bought were right after graduation, on sale pieces for the time I now spend in corporate America.  Otherwise, I keep up with my register, and I save receipts should I need it for my taxes.  I enter my bills into iCal and Quicken.  I’m responsible.  Well, that is barring the last three or four very insane months of depression.  But what I’m saying is, I’m back on track.

The problem is, I want a reward for being such a good girl.  I think, don’t I deserve to indulge just a little bit after all my hard work?  But right now, I’m too broke to buy myself that pat on the back.

I’m forced to consider: is this the effect of a cultural trend most obviously represented by the huge commercial success of the”Confessions of a Shopoholic“ attitude toward materialism?  Or is the popularity of this attitude merely due to its celebratory reflection on what was already there: the common American woman’s materialism.  In other words, how did I become like this?  Did the media inflict this disease on me, or is the media reacting to women like me and, in their reaction, spreading this affliction?

Either way, my mother had something to do with it.  She’s shopoholism’s ignorant, helpless victim.  My sisters have, noticeably, battled with it also.

I just keep thinking, would it be so bad if I gave in? I crunch the numbers in my head—current bank balance minus bills that need to be paid before my next two paychecks equals how much?  Subtract from that sub-primary essentials.  Can I buy this?  No?  What can I cut, then?  What doesn’t necessarily have to get paid?  I try to rationalize money out of the money I’ve allotted for food.

It’s another exhausting habit I have.  I realize as I write this, these desires are a manifestation of my obsessive and compulsive behavior.  A real shopoholic wouldn’t care about the bills.

—Oh!  I see now how it all connects: I’m obsessed with counting.  Ever since I was a little girl, I would count how many sidewalk stones there were and how many steps it took to get from home to school, data I checked on my way home from school.  I would compare information gathered over several days, several weeks, several months.  I would keep the numbers in my head.

As an adult, much like I do stones, I count money.  This time, my obsessive habits wear the cape of responsibility.

Except I’ve also learned, from my mother and society that shopping is ladylike and satisfying.  In light of my recent desire to define my femininity and sexuality, it makes perfect sense that  I would feel compelled to buy clothes, shoes, and, as the modern girl that I am, technology.

What an unsatisfying interpretation of facts!  Among the problems with therapy: it offers no answers.  I agree, but now what do I do with that?!

You stop doing it, most therapists seem to tell me.  It sounds like they’re telling me a joke.

Yet there seem to be no better mothods, no answers at all.  So, I continue with it: I suppose I have to now consider just how these obsessive-compulsive tendencies—I doubt I have the disorder, but I also doubted I had depression—have infiltrated my life.  Then again, maybe I’m just a hypochondriac.

Round and round, I go.  I doubt my doubts.  There’s no end to it.

So when all this sounds like exhausting self-research, a multi-tiered task among an already long list of similar projects, I add it and address it among my other self-discoveries.  I know there isn’t an answer, but I still feel like asking, screaming, shaking someone to make them answer: when will I get better?!

Instead, I’m wishing they’d stop diagnosing me.  Tell me, someone, what do I have to do to make this easier, and how long do I have to live through this?  If I’m obsessing, it’s over that.  I’m responsible with my money despite my desire to splurge because my fear of not surviving through this life has made me practice these money rituals.  I know money can help me live.  More importantly, it can help me avoid the suffering that comes from living below the upper middle class.  It’s also why I need to prove to myself I can be successful in my chosen career.  I’m screaming, “See?!  I’m going to make it!  The success I’ve built, this perfectly effective theory toward life that I’ve invented and successfully applied, will make sure that I’m safe.  I’m safe.  I’m safe.”

Fuck.  Why does it always go back to that?!  I didn’t know at the time how deeply they had penetrated me.  I just want to get them out.  It’s been years.  Why won’t they get out of me yet?  How long—how long can a rape last?