Due to bad habit and little discipline, I have become a person obsessed, a condition known very well amongst the people who collect. These people, the ones who find nothing more interesting than to engross themselves within a collection of useless commodities. The people who scour the internet and shops or in my case the floor for the something that will better their collection. The kinds of people who are so fascinated by pointless belongings they are interested in nothing else. I have now become one of these people, a proud Stone collector, and possibly the only one of my kind.
I know I look ridiculous when I walk with a hunch back, my neck awkwardly arched where my eyes are fixated to the floor. I go anywhere I know will have the potential to offer a good stone, and there I find myself distracted with my eyes sub-consciously drifting to the floor for another unnecessary search incase I miss one.
Everyone gets so annoyed with me when we are out as I am constantly needing to stop every five minutes to bend down and pick up another stone to fill my already heavy handbag with. My friends and family have now learnt that to ensure we get to where ever we are heading on time at least another ten minutes will be added to our journey just so I can satisfy my obsessive behavior. To anyone who sees me, bum in the air rustling on the floor, its not like I would find money or anything interesting, I would find a stone that to anyone else, it would not look any different from the one I last picked up.
This crazy obsession started when I must have been about five. It was the huge drive of my old house that encouraged and tempted me a little too often. I remember thinking it was the best thing ever though and would spend hours playing out on the drive. I would roll in the gravel, throw it in the air, and collect the tiny pebbles which I would fill my pink polly pockets bag with. My pride and joy. I use to wear this bag around my neck, as it was the easiest way for me to cart my gravel around because it would always become to too heavy, so carrying the bag on my shoulder was out of the question no matter how stupid I must have looked. All the time we lived there, there was an endless amount of gravel, and one very easily pleased Katy.
Soon after discovering my love for the gravel, we moved to a house that was very close to the beach. This was where I realised that gravel was not the only thing on offer. Stones were as well. I had access to an array of new pebbles and more excitingly, stones. Coincidentally the beach where my collection was based is called Stone Bay. During the summer season, my family spent most of the time at the beach. Usually I ended up playing on my own because I didn't want to go in the sea or build sandcastles with the normal children, I just wanted to look for stones. So we’d go, my mum and my polly pockets bag, to see what new treasures I could discover.
I would crouch down for hours, and lose myself within the piles of stones. I was so fascinated by them that I wanted to take everyone home, but my polly pockets bag would never allow me to have that many, so I would end up having to pick my favorites. It always became such a hard decision and would take me ages. My mum use to think I had a problem, OCD or something that would explain my outrageous obsession with a thing that should have no purpose to anyone.
During one summer day at the beach, I noticed it as soon as I arrived and knew I just had to have it. My collection would never be complete without it. It was the mother all stones. And was soon to be mine. I scrambled onto the beach for closer inspection of this alluring stone. It was beautiful, I had never seen so many colours in one stone. Blues, pinks, golden creams, there were even shades of green. This stone glistened in the light I was not going to let it escape me. Only being young, not very big, and might I add not the strongest person, I was determined to lift this rock that could have been as big as me. I spent hours trying to lift it, and when I eventually did, I didn't manage to get it very far, and there was no way it was squeezing into my Polly pockets bag. Defeated and unhappy I had no choice but to give up, and settle for a few smaller stones. They were not the same though.
Even now at 19 years old, I still find myself easily amused squatting awkwardly over a pile of stones. A burst of excitement encircles me. I’m like a child in a sweet shop, but with stones. I can sit there for hours, uncontrollably filling my pockets, handbags and any thing else I can put them in. Sadly the Polly pockets bag is no longer in use, as it does not really hold that many, and I think now walking along the beach with a child's bag around my neck collecting stones could look quite strange, however I do still have the bag with originals still intact.
Theres a scene from ‘Somethings Gotta Give’ where Erica Barry (Diane Keaton) and Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson) are walking along the beach and every white stone Erica finds she picks up to fill her vases with at home. Now, I don't only just go for the white ones, I like all of them, but I can see a reflection of myself in the character as Harry asks her, “Why do you only pick up the white ones” and she replies “I don't know, I just like them.” This scene gave me a sense of remorse. I know she is only a fictional character, but at one time someone shared my obsession for stones.
The draws, cupboards and boxes in my room are over taken by stones floating around. Some of them are so old they date back to when my collection began. I love them though, and could never part with them.
There is something upsetting about parting with something that in all fairness has played such an important part of your life. It would be like ridding a part of me, and I’m not sure I’m prepared to give them up to the environment just yet. However I have come to the age now when I think I may have enough stones in my life and my collection is possibly complete.
Maybe its time to go cold turkey and give up the collecting for a while. When my pockets are full and my bag gets so heavy I resort to carrying it around my neck all for the sake of stones, have I reached my limit. Was the stone I just picked up really that different from the ones that are already weighing me down, and in all fairness encouraging my comical obsession and turning me into the borderline obsessive compulsive person who has nothing better to do than collect.
Cam Simpson is a 30 something hairdresser. She has been with her boyfriend Dean for six years. The relationship- once based on excitement and passion now leaves her lethargic and able to predict the day’s forth coming events. 
