Wow! It's been a year since I've checked in. Two years ago in packing up the house that I'd lived in for eleven years I shed many possessions that had accumulated almost without awareness that they were there. It was a large house, much bigger than required for one woman, one dog and an itinerant lover. It was a house that consumed huge amounts of time and effort to clean, to occupy and in fact, to like. There always seemed to be an echo, of an unhappy past that resonated through the walls, a dark brushstroke that ran through the rest of a picture made up of mostly depression blues and dark shades with the occasional splash of passionate red and happy pink and yellow.
At night, the sometimes dead still quiet was interrupted by gunshots from adjoining neighbourhoods, or loud music, or raucous behaviour from the other tenants. We crouched silently hoping that whatever trouble, would go somewhere else. But on occasion we too were visited by trouble, pipes that broke flooding the house, break-ins...it all became a huge chore.
In deciding to change my life, it became apparent that change meant physical location too. In liberating myself from a hated job, I also had to separate myself from the past, the memories and bad energy of that house and move on. Again.
In moving, many things got left on the pavement for the trash men, many things were gifted to friends and even strangers, things were weeded down, and then sorted again. It all had to shrink to fit into two rooms and a little. Ruthlessly I winnowed, to the point where too ruthless. But maybe, not ruthless enough. Because it still all seems like a lot.
Two years later my dog has gone across the rainbow bridge, of all that I've left behind, his loss is the greatest. I'm finding that there are less and less things that I wish to hold on to. Strange, those dearly held things that end up residing in boxes, collecting dust. I'm reminded of helping friends to clear out houses after the death of a loved one, of doing the same, emptying a house after my parents were gone. What to keep, what to let go. going through boxes of old photographs, letters and other precious things. That have no meaning to anyone but ourselves, or sometimes a few who know what they hold. And realising that the detritus of our lives is left for other people to clear.
Stranger too, letting go of people, reconnecting with people, not holding on to people. After years of taking care of people, dropping my life to make myself available, hoping to fit in somewhere, it's as though I'm allowing myself to be free again.
And in doing so, sowing the seeds for whatever is next. And so the adventure begins again....
