Once I knew a guy who grew up in this dysfunctional, alcoholic home and his mom was passed out all the time and his dad
was gone, and so he grew up basically taking care of himself most of the time and he never had enough shoes to wear, and was
always wearing old shoes with holes in them. So now that he's an adult, he's always buying shoes and can't seem to throw them
away, ever.
Like when a survivor from a Nazi death camp is liberated and goes on to establish a home and a normal life and then
gets really fat. Except that never really seemed to happen that way, and every time you see a death camp survivor, they're
still really skinny. I don't know why that is.
But it's the exact same reason that some folks who get divorced, having gone years and years with no affection, or
love, or even sex, enter into a long series of unfulfilling and ultimately meaningless relationships. The world is a much
different place when you're having sex, after all: When you're not having it, it's all you can think about, but when you are,
you notice colors that you never saw before. I've resisted the urge to indulge myself in this particular form of self-immolation,
mostly because I'm too busy with the kids, but also because even meaningless relationships are so much work as to be intractable.
Anyway, the point is, sometimes when you go for a long time without something, you overcompensate later on by obsessing
on it and going overboard. I've read that when the death camps were liberated, they couldn't give too much food to the survivors
because they would gorge themselves and die, which seems like it would really suck, not only almost dying because you have
no food, but then to actually die because you get some.
That's like what people say about women, how you can't live with them, and you can't live without them. This is the
first analogy I've ever made where I'm the death camp survivor.
