I understand that relationship with your parents as my mother is endlessly piling on things I don't want or need, too. In my case, I think it was coming out of poverty and a family legacy of trauma - not knowing how to love appropriately, but also my mom finally being in a place where she CAN buy us gifts all the time.

As with most online writing, the headline was MEANT to touch a nerve. I'm not sure why all of a sudden in the past couple of days it's gotten all this feedback (where did you see it?) but yeah, that's how you get people to read your stuff - write a headline that touches a nerve ;)

For me, it's more that I'm an extroverted introvert - people exhaust me *quickly* and I really, really enjoy being in my garden or in my music studio. My garden got pretty big before we gave it up to move, and now it's my music studio that keeps expanding. Those are my "things."