Conestoga Mall

 I'm becoming more and more confident going to Conestoga Mall if Mike is with me. For a long time I was able to go on my own, and then I wasn't, and now I'm sometimes able again, but it's definitely easier with Mike.

The mall has a very particular feel to me - when I am there, I feel accomplished, since it's not easy to actually get there, emotionally. I also feel like I'm in this world I know is there, but don't have as much contact with: the world of ordinary people. I didn't go to the mall at all for years and years, during a certain time of my life when I was more agoraphobic and lived further away from it. When I started going again I realized how different life is when you mainly shop at smaller stores downtown, or a few big box stores in a neighborhood plaza. The mall is on an entirely new level.

First, there are just so many, many things. I've experienced a lot of consumerist limits as an agoraphobic person, especially before online shopping. I could buy the clothes and shoes near my house. There used to be a Reitman's uptown and that was the only place I bought work clothes. I went to Zellers before it became Walmart (though I rarely buy clothes at Walmart since it feels so low quality). I often bought things a Giant Tiger next to Breithaupt Park. And of course, thrift - there used to be a lot near by.

The first time I went to the mall again after a long hiatus, it was to get a cord for my Mac, and I walked through The Bay to the get to Apple Store and was blown away. Memories of endless hours of shopping in high school and university with girl friends came back, but there was also a new feeling of just incredulity at the abundance that I had not experienced in years. I even took a picture of myself outside The Bay, me smiling in front of the long, brightly lit and coloured hallway, very happy with myself and feeling very normal. The next time I went was because I needed bike shorts, something that would be nearly impossible to find anywhere near my home. The feeling that I could go to the mall that had a huge amount of products and choose on and buy it made me feel like I had the utmost of power and free will a human could had. Of course, I was very anxious the entire time, but the sort of anxiety you might have if you were exploring the Artic or meeting the King - nervous, but like, you're fucking doing it.

I've gone maybe ten or 15 time since then, over the past six years, and the thrill is definitely still there, though I am less overwhelmed. I'm still amazed by the selection and mildly disoriented by the lights and music. It feels like a theme park.

Today I was very strategic (and Mike prefers that since he does not like to drift within a mall) and got what I needed plus some other stuff hard to find near my house. I noted I did not quite feel so much the sense that I had to buy everything (feast or famine) or that I could never keep up, no matter how much I bought (social anxiety). 

Looking back over my life, I grew up without extra money for clothes and accessories. My youth and pre-teen years, I longed to fit in sartorially but we couldn't afford it (plus I had no sense of mainstream style, being, then as now, a weirdo.) Then it was the 90s and we all wore thrift and made judgements of mainstream culture, of fitting in, of buying expensive clothing with labels. Especially going to art school, we embraced weirdness. Next it was my university activism days, where aesthetic judgement was layered with moral judgement (I still cannot buy any product made by Nike). The AdBuster days, where I remember marching through Fairview Mall with a bunch of people drumming and yelling Buy Nothing on what is now Black Friday. 

Ok, I'm glossing a bit. There were lots of times in high school and university where I went to the mall with friends, as I said, for the quintessential activity of window-shopping and eating New York Fries in the food court. But it didn't matter whether I judged consumerism or yearned for style - I couldn't afford it, so I was ambivalent.

Fast forward a bunch of years where agoraphobia and other interests kept me away from the mall. I returned in my mid-thirties when I started my first well paying job. Now I had the money and I was starting to get the physical access again! Cue consumerist overwhelm.

That was about 6 years ago and I honestly still don't know how to relate to having the ability to go to the mall and the ability to buy what is offered there. How do people make these choices? I get being at a boutique Uptown and making the decision whether you'll drop 200 or not on a designer dress, the only one you like in the shop. I get how you can go to GT Boutique and drop 200 on an entire wardrobe for the season. But I don't get how you can figure out which of the fifty stores and million brands you should pay a medium amount of money to buy a couple products from. I really don't know how people make the choice. 

I found myself just settling on brands that either evoked not being at the mall (Roots, MEC) or brands that I desperately wanted to buy as a teen (Gap). Then Roots became crappy quality so recently its just Mike goes to Indigo and I got to the Gap and get a bunch of jeans so I don't have to buy more pants for a few years. That kind of shopping. But it's not because I'm truly a minimalist. I have come to really love fashion and understand it better than I used to. I just don't know how to make a decision within such abundance. I suppose if it was infinitely wealthy, maybe it would be easier - but then I would definitely feel morally uncomfortable with the potential waste.

Which leads me to my experience at the mall today. As my anxiety gets less and less at the mall and I'm more and more familiar, I experience it less like a theme park ride and more like a park. My mind isn't so engaged by the thrill of novelty and the hard work of cognitive behavourial therapy, mindfulness and breath work. My wallet can afford generally speaking what I want, and my aesthetic sense can, if not make a decision, at least understand the elements of wardrobe building, and balancing trends with classic and personal style. I feel more ... competent? I think my brain has more capacity.

After reading a great analysis of the connections between hyper-consumerism, hoarding/clutter and emotional needs in Tracy McCubbin's Making Space for Happiness, I realized that, as she says, consumerist culture to the level we are experiencing it is sick. That's what I saw the mall as today - a sick place. What I had previously only been able to process as decision-paralysis, overstimulation and craving, I now see as just a place that manifests a deep illness in our culture. I'm not incompetent to dress myself or buy stuff or fit in, and I'm not going to be a better or more loved person for having the latest look and tech. No. There is objectively too many things at the mall; too many versions of the same thing, and too many unnecessary things. More than any of us could ever need, and, we'll never be rid of them, either in our homes or in our landfills and oceans. 

While of course we do need things and can healthily enjoy buying some beautiful things, there is nothing to aspire to in this place. You might as well be walking around the emergency room in a hospital or a the rank and dirty mess of an extreme hoarder house. Our feast or famine biology deludes us into thinking this is a place of wealth, beauty, meaning and almost spiritual transcendence. It's not. In many ways, it's just a future garbage dump. 

"Though of course, for me," I continued, as I ranted this entire realization above to Mike as we were getting into the car to go, "It also represents emotional healing, wellness and growth. It represents great achievement." 

I sat in the back seat and ate the sandwich I brought in a Tupperware to avoid buying more plastic at the Food Court. As an agoraphobic, eating my own food in a mall parking lot on a sunny day feels like being a Burning Man to me, I feel so wild, free, counterculture and far from home. 

As we leave, I head directly for the trees at the edge of the parking lot, on the south end by the highway. I have always, in the twenty years I've lived here, thought this little woods was beautiful. I wanted to see them close up before I went east to exit.

"This is also how I play GTA,"I told Mike. "I just head for the wild edges, outside the border of how you would normally be expected to play the game."