I'm going to try really hard not to sound like a whiny baby in this post, but it's going to come out that way anyway. I'm just feeling like I want to crawl under a rock and not make any adult decisions right now. I have begun the house-hunt. It's official. We're moving on from this whole communal living thing. CLH and I scoured crazylist....er... craigslist this evening and came up with the usual overpriced, poorly lit, beige colored, human-sized cat boxes for rent. Note to landlords: I'm not paying you a non-refundable cleaning fee. Unlike your former tenants, I don't plan on actually shitting directly on the carpets, so I'm having a hard time thinking of why I should fork over a non-refundable $400 for "cleaning". Here's an idea: make sure your next tenants have all their teeth and that their hair isn't falling out in clumps; it's pretty much a sure bet that you won't need to call in a haz-mat team to disinfect the place when they leave.
Why don't any of the housing options I've seen tonight seem appealing to me? Why do I want to find my next home in Fiji, or someplace like it? CLH and I even started looking at boats to live on; that's how non-house-dwelling I am feeling right now.
Part of me really wants to take all our boxes, drive them out to the ocean, and dump them overboard with a ceremonial Zen Buddhism mantra about how our stuff is not who we are. And another part of me wants to donate everything to Goodwill, and start ALL OVER. Get rid of every last unmatching bath towel, every collectible fish shaped bottle, every antique nutcracker, and just buy everything new. No more remnants of my past. Just all new. Forks, plates, bedsheets, endtables, everything. All sterile and without history.
I'm feeling everything come undone- every connection to this city, to my clients, to my friends... it's coming undone. The intellectual side of me knows that this is temporary. This is what we call "having a tough go of it". This is the struggle that makes us stronger, the strife that tests the strength of our character. But I want to be done with it. The emotional side of me just doesn't have it in me to fight. I just want my life to go back to being easy.
When I moved two years ago, I completely uprooted myself. I tore myself right out of the upward trajectory I was creating for myself. I was saving money, I was driving less. I was reading more. I was paring down and simplifying. Then I bought a house. Now I find myself surrounded with all this STUFF... my life has been complicated with schedules that revolve around my commute, and what part of the city I will be in when. I'm trying to negotiate traffic schedules, and clients' schedules, and activities I want to do, and I can feel my energy being sapped every time. This is not the chaos I crave. The chaos I love involves travel and writing and the creative process. This is none of those things. I feel like I traded in a life of simplicity for this ridiculously, and unnecessarily complicated one.
I am rambling, and I know it. This is supposed to be the place I come to create clarity, to write it all out and make it all pointed and brief and resolute and entertaining. But, tonight I can't. Tonight it is all spilling out and I am feeling like it would be false to end this cleanly. I have been in a state of limbo for so long; making a decision for myself seems like a foreign concept. I suppose this is the part that I have been looking forward to for so long: being able to choose my own future... making a decision based on want and not need. But I have to admit that this is more challenging than I thought it would be. It is difficult to shake off the last 32 years of bowing down to everyone else's dreams. It is difficult to not know what it is I am supposed to be. It is difficult to not feel shame over this. I am trying to stay positive and remember that all this is passing.
There is still so much of the old me left to contend with.
Comments
oh and hey…. it’s amazing to see your ramblings again! miss you lady!! And I certainly missed your writing.
Boy it took a bit to figure out who CLH was! Glad you’re so organized or I never would have found it….Moving stinks. But I’ve got a strong back if you need help once you find a place. Otherwise, I am no help to you on this. hugs!-T
standing at last in the lush, knee high grass on the other side of the fence, one can look down and see the same rocks encountered, now hidden by the lush grass - on the other side…John– it’s always something
Can you do the hokey pokey and shake it?I know better than that but I wish it were that easy.