TL:DR I am a middle-aged woman who lives in the middle of Montana in the middle of a nuclear missile field on top of an earthquake fault line, along with a bunch of unprepared idiots whom I love very dearly and would hate to see starve to death.

Photo credit: winnond

MY MENTAL ILLNESS:
A TRUE STORY IN FOUR PARTS
or, HOW I BECAME A PREPPER
(and Why You Should Too)

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I admit it. I’m a hoarder; a stockpiler; a prepper – whatever you want to call it. I collect and store “supplies”: with “supplies” being defined as anything I might need if an emergency came up or society broke down.

A friend of mine, thinking this to be an odd personality quirk, helpfully diagnosed my “problem” as stemming from inadequate mothering. “You’re trying to make up with physical goods for the psychological support you never got from your mother,” she said. “You’re trying to fill a void in your life by filling it full of stuff.” I begged to differ, pointing out that not only have I enjoyed the highest possible quality of mothering throughout my entire life (even up to the present day) but that it had been a specific set of circumstances that instigated my desire to hoard—circumstances that had nothing whatsoever to do with my mother. My reaction to those circumstances was the only sane, prudent, and responsible response. Becoming a stockpiler was a conscious, deliberate decision I made; it was a commitment, and I remember the specific day it started. She asked me what, then, had caused me to become a prepper, so I told her the stories of The Train Wreck, The Blizzard, and The Training.