Call Me Crazy

I have long suspected it but now it's official: My husband is nuts. According to the latest findings of the American Psychiatric Association, the condition from which he suffers has just been voted into the soon-to-be-published 5th edition of its "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders." It's comforting to know there are such organizations out there deciding who among us is crazy and who is not. We'll surely all sleep better tonight knowing the folks over at The Balanced Mind Foundation are overseeing  this important stuff.

Mitch's condition is called hoarding disorder, and while he has a very mild case--nothing like what you see on TV in those houses stuffed with 37 cats and a bag lady-- still, it's not easy to live with, especially for a neatnik like me. It is characterized as "having persistent difficulty parting with possessions, regardless of their value." Like, for example, those 25-year-old, taped-up cardboard boxes that we have moved from Washington, D.C. to Takoma Park, Maryland to Salt Lake City, Utah and then back to Washington, D.C., and finally up here to Maine, without even opening them. "What's in them?" I dared ask one time. "My things," came the testy reply. Curious on a rainy afternoon when nobody was around, I stuck my hand in the open corner of a particularly saggy box and retrieved a Valentine's card sent to Mitch, now 55, when he was in the third grade. I replaced it immediately and poured myself a drink.

To be fair, the APA has also just declared one of my own conditions, binge eating disorder, as certifiable too. Just yesterday I made a bag of Licorice Allsorts totally disappear in short order using nothing more than my hands and mouth. I thought I was being piggy, so it's a relief to find out I am actually mentally ill.