I used to steal things.
It was wrong, certainly, and I felt a tremendous guilt over it at the time, but largely because I didn’t understand why it was only directed towards the people I cared about. I think people take things for a lot of different reasons, and while kleptomania is the clinical label we put on it when people do it compulsively, trying to paint every person who has this compulsion with the same brush ends up dismissing the very real dysfunctional thought processes which underlie it.
I didn’t steal things very often, but it occurred enough times as a child that I was convinced that I was a ‘very bad person.’ I took a swan-shaped perfume bottle from my best friend (and forever added water to it, trying to get it to last for as long as possible). I took a tiny drummer boy pin from my grade two teacher’s desk at Christmas time. I occasionally took tiny mementos from my mother’s desk or jewellery drawer.
I didn’t do these things because I was angry or wanted to hurt anyone.
I did it because I loved them. But I cannot deny that these acts must have hurt them, and would have hurt them even more if they’d known that I was the one who did these things, because you don’t steal things, especially from people you love.
