Housecleaning cont'd

It began innocently enough. I moved one or two things, trying to find something.

Now it’s about four hours later and my room is miraculously cleaner. I won’t say clean as there is still work to do. But suddenly, I have room to move. Okay, don’t open the closet but even that is moderately organized. Still stuffed to the brim but moderately organized.

I realized today that I have been living in boxed since July. I started packing up my belongings then. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, put 16 years of a relationship in boxes. Figure out who gets what. I never thought he and I would get to that point. I never actually thought we would ever be apart. We were supposed to be soulmates. We were supposed to be forever. Even now, as I write this, I have a hard believing we didn’t make it.

I think that’s why I haven’t unpacked. I haven’t been ready to accept the fact that this is not a temporary situation. Even though the decision to leave was really mine, at the beginning, I thought it would be temporary. We’d spend some time apart, I’d get my head together, figure out what I wanted, and then we’d be back together. It hit me like a truck when, two weeks after I told him I needed some time, he informed me that he was filing for divorce. But I guess that’s what he needed to do to go on.

I don’t regret my decision one bit. But I don’t think I’ve been ready to accept my own decision and what it really meant. I kept thinking somehow everything would fall into place and work out somehow. Somehow, magically, everything would feel and become permanent. I don’t even know what I mean by that but I have felt like I’ve spent the last five months waiting – waiting for something I can’t even explain.

I’ve hauled these boxes with me from my – our – home to Zadra’s therapy camp to my “new” apartment. I’ve moved the boxes around in my room, barely able to open them and explore what’s inside. Too many memories, too many ghosts.

But today, for reasons I cannot explain, I started opening those boxes and releasing the ghosts. And I was kind of amazed what I found.

First of all, I found Chairman, ironically. I sometimes forget how long this man has been involved in my life, no matter how peripherally. I found a photo of him from I don’t know how many years ago. I had asked all my friends one year for my birthday to bring a photo of themselves for this photo wall I had planned that never materialized. But I have kept those photos all these years and was delighted when I found Chairman’s photo amongst them. I’m sorry I didn’t really get to know this wonderful man as well as I have until this last year but I do know that I’ve always been delighted to have him as a part of my life.

I found pictures from my first marriage. God, was I ever that young? I remember how passionate we were for each other until he discovered a passion for somebody else. The hurt and the pain of that very short marriage has mellowed down to something more like a bittersweet memory now. I know his life did not turn out the way he had hoped, which makes me sad sometimes.

I found my favorite picture of my grandfather and I. He’s the inspiration for many of my creative crafts and I’m sorry he died when I was so young. I never got to know him.


A million other ghosts and voices found me this afternoon as I build shelves and resituated things. Friends I’ve lost track of, friends whose names I can no longer even remember, family that are now gone and family that is now far away.

But as I put boxes back into the closet in a more organized way and as I filled my shelves with all the junk that we fill shelves with, I began to feel more permanent. I began to feel like I’m finally ready to begin my new life. I’ve struggled a lot over these five months, feeling disassociated, lonely, lost. I say I know what I’m doing but deep inside, I’ve been terrified to admit that I don’t know what I’m doing. Up until June, I thought I knew what the rest of my life was going to be. Then, on June 21, everything changed. I changed everything. And I haven’t been able to accept that – until now.

I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I still don’t know what the future hold. I don’t even know what I’m doing for the holidays. I have a half-assed idea what my creative life will be in 2006 but as for my personal life, it still is in transition. And I think it’s going to be for some time, until I figure out who I am, just me, by myself, with no one there to define me. I have been such an extension of someone for so long that it’s been hard to see me.

And now, with a piece of my life organized and feeling more centered, I think I can start unpacking mentally and start figuring out where the pieces go to put together the person I want to be. And that’s the biggest home improvement project yet. But I can’t wait to get started.