Breathing Room

This past weekend I undertook a massive re-organization project of stuff that's been piling up for the past couple years and that, likewise, I've been pushing aside for a couple years now. I've slowly dealt with it 'til it was whittled down to the confines of my room, but my room for the past four months has served as nothing more than a place to crash and a vault for all this... shit. And what I realized is how much I was being hindered by the maelstrom otherwise known as my room.

There's a whole list of legitimate reasons why it grew so out of control. Whatever. There's always reasons, right? So the real issue at hand was tackling the heap that was beginning to resemble the clay mountain Roy built in his home in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Ironically, I'm typically a very tidy person, and as long as no one peaked behind door number three, you'd still think it were the case. But in classic form, the steeper the mountain got, the more I avoided climbing it.

I'm not exactly sure what inspired me to dive into it with fervor this weekend, but I did - until it was all done. Now I'm luxuriating in my cozy space as if it were Inara's shuttle.

Interestingly, as I sifted and sorted my way through the clutter, 80% of it was stuff that I'd been lugging around for two or three years that I neither wanted nor needed, and I wondered why it was exactly that I'd held onto it for so long. Sure, a good deal of it was stuff I'd tossed aside with the intention of dealing with later until later became now, but some of it was stuff I hadn't touched or used or even thought about in years. And true, there was also the obligatory notion that some of it was gifted to me by my mother or whomever else, so I just couldn't get rid of it. You know what I mean. But what about all the other stuff? All that stuff that just took up space and created disorder in my life? How could I let it get to this point? I guess I'm human.

Coincidentally, I'm not even a packrat. I usually like to keep my possessions to a minimum (art is the only exception). I really don't even have a lot of stuff. Like Ani Difranco, I value my portability. Yet here I was toting around boxes of junk that truly oppressed me and prevented me from living the kind of full life that I want to live.

The good news is that it's done now, and that's what's really important. But I guess if I take anything away from my experiences over the past two years, then it's this: I will never again allow myself to be distracted from taking care of myself. It only makes life a lot tougher later on. And at some point we're all gonna have to deal with ourselves - whether we like it or not.

~ the lady liberated