aww: september 13, 2013
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I am no longer the warm open person I used to be.
I used to say, "I wear my heart on my sleeve."
I don't do that anymore.
For the most part I stay distant from forming close relationships with new people.
I don't have the same passion I once did...to reach out, to offer help to others.
Have I become calloused and cynical?
Or am I just dampened, doused one too many times to silence the embers that spark the fire?
As I sit on my back porch, this night of September 11, 2013, I hear crickets and tree frogs. A symphony of sound coming from our small spread of backyard woods. Woods that if I had the money I would clean up and plant bamboo and erect a yurt for my private space, away from my home where work of some sort or another always seems to be calling. Laundry, dishes, bills, scrubbing, dusting, vacuuming, organizing, sorting, placing. Little of which I do in much fashion the past 5 years.
I keep telling myself that I must get my home in order. Yet, I avoid it.
The task looms large.
The task reminds me that I am growing old.
The task will bring up all the unfinished projects I once started.
The task will resurrect the many different self-employed businesses in which I've dabbled...from multilevel marketing sales to preschool music to miniature art to pet sitting.
Some 15 years ago Susan, a fellow eclectic-homeschooling mom in Lunch Bunch Learners, the Greensboro homeschool group, stated to me that she was "a generalist." Like me, she wasn't an expert at anything but knew a little about lots of different things. At the time I thought, "Finally I have a label for what I am - a 'generalist.'"
When I get around to the monumental task of decluttering my home, I'll have to make decisions. Not general decisions, but specific. I'll have to form opinions about what to keep, where to put it, what to give away, what to recycle, what to trash. I doubt I will sell any of our stuff; I abhor having yard sales. I don't want to go through learning how to sell stuff online. Maybe I'm just lazy or maybe I'll change my mind from benefactor to salesperson; I don't know.
This dampening of my heart, this avoidance of having to feel, this loneliness that I have chosen - is that who I really am after all these years? If it is, can I accept that person as she is? The past me, was that really me or was that who I was supposed to be?
Today I searched online for any wildlife rehab facilities in the city where I live in North Carolina. I found one. Volunteers learn the how-to of wildlife rehab and keep rescues in their homes until the animals are ready again for the wild. "I'd like that," I thought.
Then my critic chimed in, "It'd just be another thing you'd do and then get tired of. You'd probably only last for one animal. Why commit to that? You need to get your home in order, remember?"
6 comments:
Carol...as we grow older I think most of us who have had trauma in our lives we would rather forget feel the way you are. We keep analyzing it to try and figure out why when there is really no answer to why things happen, they just do. I think "clutter" just grows up around us thinking someday I may need that when in reality, we likely never will.
I was blue last week when one of the grandsons I adore left for college and decided it was time to de-clutter the boys room. It took two days and I told everyone not to ask what I threw away, I did put some shoes in a bag they had outgrown and hadn't worn in years and said if you are missing any shoes, look in the bag. if you are missing any papers from junior high, go to the trash dump. I felt a lot better after I was done and so did the rest of the family.
As for wildlife rehab...the boys found a baby dove and brought it home for me to "save" and believe me, force feeding a dove every couple hours for a couple months taught me that likely wasn't the job for me, but, maybe it would work for you for at least one animal. Bless You in what ever you decide to refurbish. :)
Analytical minds have a hard time moving on when the trauma won't let them. (Just my own pontificating.)
What I've had to work my ass off doing is learning to be analytical about other things than the trauma or the lost chances or this inevitable aging. And getting our house in order is one of the analytical chores I've been working on for years. It has paid off.
What I had to convince myself of first is that I do not have to do it all today or even in a week or even in a year. I don't even finish one project first and move on to the next. Kind of a generalist if you will. If I'm upstairs and working away but I've got to then go downstairs, I'll stay downstairs and work until going up stairs is necessary again. In a way, I'm working on two or three projects at once. Not completing them at once but gradually just working away at it. When I can finally see the forest I sense accomplishment and tend to tell myself to sit now and relax. I've earned it.
Then, I wait. Waiting is a wonderful spiritual tool or if not the term spiritual, then mental/emotional. I need a new word for that. Mentional? *grin* That will do. I give myself time to process what I've done, view the scenery and give myself time to get creative about the next round.
Maybe Carol time needs to be spent being warm and friendly with yourself. Doing so doesn't mean you are calloused or cynical. And even if you are to a degree you've earned it but it doesn't mean you are a failure or bad or without a spark.
I wish I could show you what I have thrown out. Hoards of stuff. I've recycled it, some has gone to the dump, but most of it we donate to a shop who sells it and gives the money back into the community and the needy. Last week Biker Dude took two truckloads of stuff and the people who received it thanked him so much because it's what keeps them in business and business means people get some food for their families and many many items for their homes and lives.
I once despaired of my home mess. I let it go because for me it reflected the chaos in my mind, that analytical mind that couldn't etch out a sliver of self-help analysis regarding her home. It may take a few years but so what. I know I'm projecting my own stuff into this conversation. I guess we all tend to do that but I want to share to say you are not alone. This may sound strange but putting my house in order has always helped put my brain in order and it's amazing the self-therapy I've gone through. Almost like a 12-step program of sorts. I've done at in stages. Like when I threw out the first couple hundred Christian books in my library. There were a few hundred more I couldn't part with at that time but, I was able to box them and store them and a few years later I was able to make a decision to part with them. Some things we aren't sure about. Are they really toxic to us? Is seeing them always hanging around poisoning our minds with recall? If we throw them out will we really stop thinking about them? Who knows? But if you give yourself permission to warmly embrace who you are right now (even if you don't know who that is) and just start with an hour here or there or even writing it down and following it like work orders, you might get a start.
Personally, as I decluttered my brain did so too. Will it ever be totally decluttered? I don't know but when it comes to cleaning the house that is something I can control. I can't control the past. (And I know you know this.) (((hugs)))
I appreciate how you share your inner critic. Most of us have one.
My place is calling me to go through all kinds of stuff! I think I put it off because of summer, always something to do outside or make a road trip to visit family..some excuse to NOT deal w/ the disorganization. Also I wonder because I was SO organized in the cult, it was stressed you know that God is a God of order, that I wonder if deep down I'm not rebelling to some degree! :D
I am going to try to "get it together" been trying for a while now, Ha! Joining the cult & all it involved messed w/ my head, did something to me, I don't know. Going through all of it did not help me in my life. We are still feeling the effects of it to this very day. It's easy for me to get down... I guess like Dory from Finding Nemo, we have to "just keep swimmin'...just keep swimmin'"
I LOVE you Carol.
Your statement: "..."clutter" just grows up around us..." made me think of clutter seeds and then cluttercide. Maybe I can design an art picture out of that. Hmm...maybe I already have.
My son moved out mid-August. Hubby and I are now official empty-nesters. Son's absence didn't really hit me until last week...partly because I've spent some 20 nights away from home (for work) since he left. Last week was my first full week at home.
If, if, if I decide to volunteer for wildlife rehab, I wouldn't take in baby birds. I have a baby bird story and thankfully I was able to get Momma and Daddy Bluejay to continue caring for the birdies.
I just searched toss & ripple and I apparently haven't written the birdie story. Hm, I thought I had. Maybe I did and just didn't publish it. I did find our Squirrelly story: Critters in School.
:-)
Zoe...your comment brought me tears when I first read it a couple days ago. They were good tears validating that I am not alone. I know I'm not alone, but sometimes it *feels* that way.
I know you (and Anna and others) live with continual, if not continuous, physical pain. I thouight, "If Zoe and Anna can work and clear their clutter in spite of(or through) the pain, I can do it too." My pain is 24/7, but it is low-grade. Yet, that continuous drip, drip (so to speak) takes its toll in exhaustion. (I am able to sleep, thought I do get awoken on occasion with the pain. And my pain is 90% better than it was at the onset of the peripheral neuropathy.)
I've been terribly depressed since Friday evening. (It is now Sunday morning.) This morning as I was dressing (which is always painful for my wrists and hands), I lifted my arms and the new pain that has developed in each arm at my bicep brought my left arm down. Hubby came over to help me and I broke...guttural grief. I'd been crying since Friday evening, but smothering the tears and the grief. I couldn't smother them anymore.
Like most adults, I've lived through what-seems-insurmountable grief before...more than once. So, I know it will pass. I'll somehow build a grief bridge and get to the 'other' side.
After I "broke," I had to go care for a dog. Little Yorkie Jasper and I walked around his yard, with me in tears still. We then went into Jasper's home. He started running around and barking (which he has never done with me before). It was a happy bark. He got me laughing. We played tug-o-war with his little squeaky Lambchop sheep. Then Jasper was ready for a treat.
And I get paid for Jasper's therapy treatment. I like that arrangement. ;)
On my way home, I thought of my dad. For thirteen years he lived as a quadriplegic without use of his hands, bodily functions, legs, and feet. Yet, his attitude was most always gratitude and he pushed to live life to the fullest. As messed up as my mom was, she deserves a metal for her care of him for most of those years. My pity party is trite when compared to the sufferings of others. Not to dismiss my own grief, but to put it in perspective helps me...after I've let the dam bursts. I have to let the dam bursts.
Well, this was a ramble.
Thanks again....
:)
Oh gawd. I know that "decent and in order" standard. The Way pushed that incessantly. I think I did rebel against that unrelenting standard shortly before and then after leaving The Way. Now though, I don't think I become inert due to rebellion but rather due to avoidance.
The clutter really got the best of me beginning the year I had hip replacement surgery, which was August, 2008. Life events began to tumble and the clutter sprouted more seeds and the clutter weeds eventually took over.
I've never seen Finding Nemo, but I like the image I get from Dory's quote. A little fish beside a whale trying to get somewhere and they have to keep swimming. The only other alternative at that moment is to swim or drown.
Big hugs April!!
xoxo
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