The $5,000 decision to get rid of my past
The games weren’t bringing me joy; they were just ghosts trapped inside jewel cases. The collection was a weight I was dragging from house to house, and opening a bin only to find boxed NES games always felt like metal poured into my gut. These games made me picture a young woman wanting to hug me when I was hurting, then deciding not to. The games were bottles of expensive, and then cheap, scotch in the garbage, double-bagged so the neighbors wouldn’t see how bad it was getting.
I never got this extreme with my board game collecting, but I can relate to the relief he feels after escaping the trap of collecting and completionism. It took downsizing and a transition through an apartment to let go of stuff, lots of stuff, including over 100 boardgames.