I have my home back.
It’s not done yet… there are a few more projects for the short-term, and three remaining large long-term jobs too.
But it’s good enough right now, this morning.
Sometimes “now” is all you can count on. And “now” is good.
Now my home is filled with more red paint, fewer belongings, very little junk, and has floorspace everywhere. It’s a pretty amazing state of things, after so long of just feeling like my skin was crawling and walls were closing in on me.
Any horoscope’ll tell ya that a Libra needs balance, order, and pretty things. I’ve had none of the above since last March-April. Like, 2008.
I can’t explain to you what it’s like when my back was in so much pain that it’d take me two to three minutes just to walk across my 25-foot-long ’50s apartment. I can’t explain what it feels like when THAT’s the level of pain for a month, and nothing’s put away, ever. I can’t tell you what it’s like to be absolutely horrified of bugs but in so much pain that I couldn’t even crush a cockroach, let alone stem the tide of them moving into and infesting my apartment last fall.
I don’t even know where to begin on explaining how overwhelmed I began to feel then, and how much that sense of being overwhelmed mushroomed as my injury I thought would be a week at best wound up taking NINE MONTHS to rehab.
I couldn’t even do a fragment of what one needs to do to keep bugs at bay between October and March. And then, with all the clutter I’d had, clutter I’d planned to eradicate in October with a batten-down-the-hatches cleaning flurry, being on top of “bug-ridding” was virtually impossible.
It’s like the bug guy told me, “having clutter has absolutely nothing to do with having bugs, but it has everything to do with getting rid of them.”
So, you can’t possibly even begin to understand how much this has taken over my life in the last 10 months. I’ve been in a world of discord for a very long time, and to have it finally almost at an end… it’s a mighty sigh I’ve heaved.
Experts will tell you, the quickest way to feel as if you’re in control of the world around you is to take control of the world you live in — your home. Chaos and disorder at home can make you feel as if your life is exactly that from top to bottom.
When I decided to Seriously tackle the weightloss last year, this is where and how I began. In February, I took the month to tidy my home as best I was able (I’m not very good at organizing, and because I execute it badly, it tends to come undone quickly), and I painted three rooms/areas of my home so I’d have a “fresh” perspective on my surroundings.
Then I lost about 35-40 pounds over the summer. Then I blew out my back because I was ignorant about how to stretch. But the point is, it spurred on some great achievements, it really did set the pace for empowering me on many levels.
When my home is along THESE lines — reasonably clean and ordered — I have the time to do other things, but most importantly, I have the mental freedom to focus on other things.
The older I get, the more I realize how much these little distractions add up and become massive mind-probing meltdowns in short order.
I have NOT liked who I’ve been in the last month as a result of the endless chaos. I’ve been tired, bitchy, not very social, bad at expressing myself, and feeling completely hamstrung by my own existence. I knew it was entirely environmental, so I didn’t beat myself up, I just used that as motivation to get past it.
This weekend I’m left with the task of tackling two big, last remaining piles of clutter; one on my desk, all papers that need to be sorted and tended to, and a pile of weird shit on my hutch. Later this fall more painting will happen, but I intend to bribe people with cheap, bad alcohol and unruly company and sucker them into helping me next time.
In the meantime, for now, my world makes sense again. And I was beginning to wonder if it was just a porn-ish fantasy, that myth of orderly life… Apparently not. So does this mean the unicorn hunt is on after all? Hmm.