My son and I share a special relationship.
Being that we are close in age, just a mere 17 years apart, we have developed an open communication that allows for candor and honest humor. With this, I get the privilege of having the opinion of someone I KNOW loves me, will NOT spare my feelings for the sake of pleasantries, and has my best interest at heart. It's like having a "reality mirror" held up for you; what you see is what it is.
He calls me on my shit.
That said, I throw shit away.
That said, I throw shit away.
"STOP throwing things away! Driving me crazy woman!"
I don't really know when The Purging began. The recent call to attention of it has made me ponder it's seed. True, I'd been made aware of it before in my previous relationship. Admittedly I threw away MANY things of value; things that did not belong to me, things people needed. "Whoops, my bad".
It's a peculiar trait really, when I am dizzy with "mass disposal" I rarely even remember WHAT I am throwing out. I just know I feel an immediate urgency to eliminate things around me.
"A place for everything, and everything in it's place."
Perhaps this is a need for order.
As thing spiral out of what I believe I can control, I may be reducing clutter to it's lowest common denominator.
Perhaps it is an environmental bi-product.
My Grandmother and Father were bonafide HOARDERS. The house was a collection of cat hair, dust, musty old books, and cigarette butts. After my father passed away, things only got worse. The bath tub he used to bathe in nightly became a storage for my grandma's million miles of yarn. This is not hyperbole when I tell you, upon leaving Alaska the tub was filled half way up the closed shower doors with yarn. Boxes upon boxes stacked like Tetris filled her room, each of them stuffed with opened mail. Long did I repress the urge to simply clear the space. To be honest, many times I did ... without prejudice. As a teenager I would throw EVERYTHING out and once it came up missing, I would feign ignorance. "I don't know where it went, um ... when did you see it last?".
Perhaps it is a compulsion of clearing.
Truly I can feel an emotional connection to the urge itself. As the chaos of emotion rises inside me like a tide, the moon of my womb pulling at the waters within me, there is a panic. Sitting I feel my eyes shifting, looking for what I can get rid of to make more space. I scrutinize things left out of place, and with reckless abandon I eliminate. I purge.
As a child I had many new beginnings, By the time I'd reached 7th grade I'd already attended more than 10 schools. Living in a mobile trailer will certainly keep you ... well, mobile! The exercise of starting from scratch just became a part of the path, a life not unlike "Military Brats". Even in my adulthood I've watched my "brick by brick" be reduced to rubble multiple fold. I've learned how to lay new foundations quickly.
In my recent past I was informed that my love life never lasts because I am always building a trap door in it, an escape route; God Bless The Ejection Seat. But when you have been beat into a corner so many times, you start to realize "I should probably make myself a second exit in the case of an emergency" ...
digging your way out or chewing off your limb starts to look like a difficult way to survive.
Yet again reincarnated, in what feels like my 9th life, I am rebuilding. This time alone. This time TAKING time to survey each stone, looking for level ground, checking the grade ... and yes, I am still throwing things away. Except this time, THIS time I am trying not to build a trap door. THIS TIME ... I'd like to stay.
I don't know that I have enough strength for yet another new beginning.
In life as I accumulate the clutter of people, places, and things ... I am rebirthing purpose in this new now. I am beginning to see profoundly - that which I am surrounded can stay or go, and it still won't change the outcome; the ending of "I AM".
At this point I will merely open my hands ... whatever goes is free to go. Whatever stays can stay
but God help it if it doesn't know it's place, cuz I promise ya'll ...
I WILL throw shit away.