It’s Time to Trash Your Obsessions.
There is nothing life-changing about packing boxes, carrying them downstairs one by one, and leaving them on your front porch, bound for some warehouse to be sorted and redistributed. I am no different now than I was before, having spent a Sunday afternoon pulling empty journals off of my bookshelf, untangling balls of yarn, folding and refolding blankets, checking that lipstick tubes and lotion bottles were, indeed, untouched.
Saying goodbye to the full, the unused, the destined for a better life objects I’d accumulated over the years had finally become easy. I was never a hoarder. I was obsessed with the hope of accomplishment. I was obsessed with finishing something complex, achieving the impossible and being able to say, proudly, “look, closely, at the fine details of this thing that I have made.”
I spent years perfecting cable and lace stitching, knitting hats and crocheting blankets, convincing myself this was the perfect outlet for the anxiety growing within me that I could never be good at something.
I could never impress anyone. Looking at boxes and bags of unused yarn, needles with rubber bands as stitch markers, crochet hooks bent, I finally saw it for what it really was. An obsession, not a hobby.
I thought, briefly, of the times I worked myself to tears when stitches didn’t line up, when cables leaned left instead of right. When I screamed and unraveled every row to start over, and over, and over in my desperate and tireless journey towards perfection. I donated every hat, scarf, and blanket I ever made with that box of supplies.
I hope that someday the pages of my empty notebooks will be filled with poetry and prose from some imaginative and unrecognized artist. Or to-do lists full of cross-outs and check marks. Math equations. Drawings in the margins of notebooks purposely purchased for their lack of margins.
I hope inspiration is found in those pages where I could not find mine, in a time I was so desperately seeking it that I was convinced buying more of them would spark something within me to create.
The only thing I’ve heard repeated from that famous book about decluttering your life has something to do with surrounding yourself only with things that serve a purpose or give you joy or whatever.
Staring down at so many boxes stuffed away, filled with letters and cards and photographs., I realized that the only purpose they serve is nostalgia. They are reminders of times I have forgotten so often I only remember I’ve lived them when I pack and unpack from one place to another.
As my friends entering their thirties struggle with facing their love-hate relationships with nostalgia, this is the one box I’ve decided to keep. It never took me over. It never gave me an excuse to escape the present.
It never made me want to change the person I am, only resign to accept the person that I have been in the places I have been to, with the people I have met along the way, that have led me here, for better or worse.
As I write this, I’m remembering the very first thing to sink to the bottom of the trash can. An old Folgers can, full of expired prescription medications and coffee grounds.
The internet says to make your unused prescriptions unusable, undesirable, indiscernible before throwing them away. I still have the thirty prescription bottles sitting in a bag, waiting to be stripped of their identities and donated.
The years of lost sleep, panic attacks, migraines, anxiety, depression, mania, balance and crash flew by me like some heavenly beast in pursuit of prey, and for once, I felt better.
Thanks for reading…
