Relocating

The addition is complete. The painter needs to make one more trip, to do some touch-ups, but she isn’t holding me up. I can fill closets, furnish rooms, and hang pictures on the walls. The disruption of noise and perpetual creation of dust is over.

The last obvious remaining project was the existing shower on the first floor. In order to refinish the wood floor in the next room, I had shoved a bunch of boxes of stuff into the shower, and closed the curtain across it. Today I emptied it. I threw away a couple of little boxes, set aside some items that I’ll give away, and relocated the rest. It is now in closets or drawers, out of the way and in a place that when I want to find it, I’ll probably be able to. If I ever want to find it.

You’ve been there, right? In theory, you were "putting stuff away;" in fact, you were doing nothing more than relocating junk. You don’t need it, you don’t want it, and you haven’t done anything with it for years but occasionally relocate it, but you haven’t actually taken the leap and gotten rid of it. I have a sneaky suspicion that in spite of my not being a true pack-rat, and in spite of my now spacious house, I’ll probably have to knuckle down when the day comes that I marry. I still am carrying with me some genuine junk, and I know it.

More disturbing, however, is the mental junk I’ve been relocating for the past few weeks. My birthday, as it often does, brought a lot of painful feelings, and in an attempt to banish the feelings, I’ve been digging around in my heart and my memories a little more than normal. Encounters with one particular person seem to be coming to the fore.

This individual is a confirmed perfectionist, and was so before I was born. I don’t think I’m dense now—in fact, I’d grade myself as being more on the perceptive side, than otherwise—but in some things I used to be very dense indeed. If my mom wanted me to do something around the house, I wanted it spelled out in words. If I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing, I didn’t want to guess: tell me. This perfectionist didn’t tell me, and as of six months ago was still smarting over my having not performed properly.

I’ll admit to you I’m doing some wallowing in guilt. I’m sad that she couldn’t be honest enough to express in words what she wanted of me back then, and I’m embarrassed that I didn’t "get it," yet I don’t feel true sorrow for what I did, and I definitely don’t want the relationship—if you could call it that—to be restored.

So I’m relocating junk, letting it take up space, until I can give myself permission to actually throw it out.

Until I really don’t want it anymore.

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