...and I didn't even want to! Unfortunately, at the time, my CDing (and various other "deviant" activities I engaged in) had a head-on collision with some religious scruples that had been plaguing me, and came off the worse of the two. (These scruples had been brewing for quite some time, since back then I had a most unfortunate tendency to suffer that kind of thing, being rather superstitious, fearful of the unknown etc. Thankfully, however, I've not been troubled by them for many years now: mainly because, at the first sign of them threatening to reappear, I tell them to kindly "F**k off!") Anyway, I got rid of my entire collection of women's clothing (which fortunately only consisted of three pairs of satin pyjamas and a satin nightshirt back then), which I gave to my mother. She ended up being the lucky recipient of the items in question because, after discovering I'd had them a couple of years earlier, she'd said I could always give them to her if I ever tired of wearing them myself. She even gave me a little money for them, although I was unfortunately quick to blow that on various bits of junk.
Unfortunately, my female "wardrobe" wasn't the only victim of my purge, for my scruples also impelled me to get rid of a pair of nipple piercings, and all the "Satanic" heavy metal albums in my record collection (and, yes, I ended up replacing all those things pretty soon thereafter as well, so a fat lot of good that stupid purge did me!). Funnily enough, the OP's comment about thinking, "That was the old me, this is the new me" while purging echoed my mother's feelings about my own purge. While tolerating them, she'd never been terribly enthused about the various "deviant" activities I engaged in, and she saw my own purge as a hopeful sign that a "new me" was emerging. Even when she told me this, though, I felt rather cynical. To me, the phrase "the new me" conjured up positive images of someone trying to better themselves, yet I couldn't see how the "new me" was in any way an improvement on the "old me". Quite the contrary, in fact; whereas the "old me" was someone who wasn't afraid to do interesting, "far out" things, the "new me" was someone who was just trying to be like everybody else - God, how I hated him! Oh well, I was young and dumb at the time (God help me, I was only nineteen!), and I've thankfully not made that mistake since. Indeed, it was only a couple of years ago that I actually heard of the "phenomenon" of purging for the first time!
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Originally Posted by Sarah_GG
