Mass. The term I occasionally heard in my physics class came to mind when I entered my apartment.

I opened a kitchen cupboard and 30 Tupperware boxes fell towards me. Even the ones without lids I had kept. I also have a small graveyard collection of single socks. I, single, 35, refuse to throw away socks without a partner and Tupperware boxes without lids. Otherwise I would have had to dispose of myself long ago.

I just used them for a different purpose. Tupperware as bowls, socks as… oh, as graveyard of the lonely sock on my clothesline.

I keep things because „you never know“. I walk around there all year with an umbrella in my backpack. Even in a 38-degree heat, because of a possible summer shower. Just in case, I have a lip balm with me, which I have NEVER used and which has probably expired several years ago. About the other items in my bag I can only say: I could spontaneously leave the country with my bag and would SURVIVE.

I have a pair of cycling shorts, with padding between my thighs, which I could dig out and start my career if I decided to become a professional cyclist. I put them on once when they arrived. Not. Very. Flattering. It makes me look like a big diapered baby trying to compete in the Tour de France.

I also subscribe to three streaming services, own numerous shoes, boots and clothes. I’ve taken out several annuity policies in case I survive my life until retirement.

There are so many other things I would need several versions of.

Several lives, for example. If I make a serious mistake in one life span, I could jump into a secondary life and continue there. Or multiple bodies. If one of them is sick or too fat I would like to retreat into another body – isn’t that what many books on transmigration are about? I would like a single me and a relationship me. The freedom and independence from the tough loner AND then

I would also like to have several parents, several loved ones in my life, so that they remain interchangeable and if I lose someone, I am not alone. Is that why polygamy is so attractive to some people? But quantity is not quality, in every respect.

And yet, we simply want more of everything. I know that people who have more are really the ones who either have too much money (I am not one of them) or are insecure or control freaks. I do not exclude myself from this. But this if-then-bill is ultimately paid by you, buried under Tupperware, pressing your “for-everything” stuffed bag with super-dry lips against your chest, feeling as if you were in the preliminary stage to becoming a messy.

The paradox: At the same time, we, in contrast to the lush possessions we have and aspire to, are there and do NOT want to be interchangeable; the only ones, individually. This also is what makes us valuable – our uniqueness. A Funda, a Mohammed, a Hilde with the SAME mindset cannot be found anywhere in the world. They are dear to us. Every person is a diamond and has been uniquely shaped by life.

Perhaps that is why my Tupperware and my masses of other goods lose their value for me, which saddens me. And there is already a gap that Christmas shops, Black Fridays, clearance sales want to fill. But my metaphorical lonely socks remain unstuffed and untouched, they hang there until I feel no more loneliness or my washing machine stops eating single socks.

Funda Doğhan