Help Me, Please

Hi, my name is Laura, and I'm a shoe-aholic.

I've got it bad, reeeeal bad. I can't stop buying shoes.

I try... I really do.

I try to enter a store on the opposite end from the shoe department, but it beckons. It calls. "C'mon Laura... you can just try some on... there's no harm in that...." like a slick dealer offering me a free fix...

I try to resist. I do some deep breathing. I tie my laces in hundreds of knots so they can't be easily removed. I cover my ears with my hands and whine "no no NO" at the shoe-devil voices inside my head. I throw myself to the ground and cling to the nearest clothing rack, fighting the shoe department's gravitational pull.

It doesn't work.

I've got shoes everywhere. In the van. In the garage. In boxes in the back of my closet, in the laundry room, on the stairs, and near every entry.

There are lots of conversations with my kids that go something like this:

Brady: Don't you have, like, a couple pair of black shoes already?

Me: Yea, but not exactly like this pair.

Brady: (rolls eyes, shakes head) Mom, I don't get you....

My addiction gets all creepy and co-dependent when I mask the craving with a good deed. Like taking my nieces shoe shopping. Rob actually praised me for shoe shopping that day. That's when I knew I was on to something, and asked my nieces if they'd like to shop for shoes, say, every Tuesday and Thursday. (They've stopped taking my calls.)

I'll even buy used shoes. And that's pretty crazy, considering I don't like other people's feet. I've always had an aversion to feet, even though I sometimes have to stare at them in that can't-help-it sort of way. You know, the way you can't take your eyes off a boil on someone's neck, or Aunt Penelope's nose hair, or the roofer's *ss-crack as he's hanging shingles on your front porch.

I'm the Imelda Marcos of the cornfields. I'm the Carrie Bradshaw of Cornfield Country.

This is my closet this morning, after sorting through my closet shoe pile, dusting them off, sorting them by color and style, and having a shoe fashion show in my room while dancing to Justin Timberlake's "Sexy Back."

And that's after I piled several pair (ok, more than several - like a dozen or so) into a bag for Goodwill. Where I'll drop them off out back, then head around front, willing myself not to go in. But I will, and I'll shop, and I'll try on shoes, and I'll probably bring home a pair, and I'll hide them from Rob, and try them on with various outfits, and it'll be fun, oh-so-fun. Oh so indulgently, toe-wigglingly fun.

If you know of a cure, please forward it along. I'm out of closet space.

"What's wrong with shoes? I collected them because it was like a symbol of thanksgiving and love?" --Imelda Marcos

"The fact is, sometimes it's really hard to walk in a single woman's shoes. That's why we need really special ones now and then, to make the walk a little more fun." --Carrie Bradshaw