So, here we are again (and yes, that I the royal we). A day before my birthday, many days after I involuntarily began the latest phase of adulting. Adulting is highly overrate, exhausting, and often non-productive. In my irrational and oppositionally defiant mind, it’s an exercise in doing what everyone else wants, playing by everyone else’s rules, and getting minimal personal return. But alas, this is what is required to get through the day, keep a roof over one’s head, and stay out of most negative consequence. Bleh, is all I can muster for the concept.
I seem to have turned a corner in life, in spite of all my best childhood intentions. There is no longer a choice but to function in society as an adult, and I cannot say that I am all that happy about it. For me, being an adult reiterates the circumstance that I am alone, and living life on my own. That being said, I have a veritable support system here, people I would trust with my life, trust to make decisions for me if I cannot speak for myself. I have received help, when I most needed it, from random strangers whose kindness was staggeringly unconditional. I have gotten what I need, but not always what I want, but I hear that is how life proceeds for us all. My jury us out on that, but I won’t get stuck on that for now.
Regardless, many miles have been traveled on some esoteric highway over the past 6 or so months. My contract for IT work ended, not because of causal factors under my control. I have not found another job, although I readily admit my efforts have been rather half-assed. As I began to panic in slow motion about getting older and being alone and having few resources, I decided it was time to sell my mother’s house. Just about that time, maintenance showed up to do something or other in my apartment, and decided they had to report that I am a slob (my words, not theirs). On some level, I agreed, but the timing really sucked and the upshot of that was the “community manager” (a misnomer if ever there was one) sent one of those legally-approved corporate letters about the report, one that begins with “it has come to my attention”. Those are never good letters. They dud an inspection a week later, but nothing much had changed. They sent in some a-hole from the pest control company, who barely made eye contact and paraded around in here with a spy camera-pen. Since nothing much had changed in a week, the manager (who reminds me of Marjorie Taylor Greene) gave me 90 or so days to get with it, and they would inspect again. Not happy, but again – other people’s rules, other people’s time frames, other people’s standards (most of which are unspoken and vague). Another exercise in compliance for the disempowered.
After all that hoopla over the apartment, I took it all on as a competition. I hauled huge bags of stuff out of here, stuff I had not touched in years, stuff I couldn’t remember acquiring, stuff I couldn’t even identify. I rented a 10×5 storage unit and hauled stuff I need to keep there, because I was just moving it around in here and not clearing any space. Then I hired a housekeeping service to clean the bathroom and kitchen and make things look more habitable. And THEN I hired a junk removal company to haul away the sofa and recliner, both of which were in kind of tattered condition and making the living room seem inordinately heavy. I can’t say I was using either of those items, except as open-air storage pile, so off they went along with broken microwave, broken toaster oven, broken vacuum cleaner, and an ironing board I had not used in the last 20 years. Big relief, although it didn’t feel quite as expansive as I thought, but it’s done.
The complex re-inspected a couple of weeks ago, after a second visit from the housekeepers, the place was ready for anything. The pest-control company sent a different guy, who actually smiled and tossed a couple of words in my direction. After all that, I have not heard a single word from the MTG-look-alike or anyone in the complex about whether my efforts were satisfactory, or more is needed, or you failed the inspection. Nothing. I wonder if they are disappointed – I was told when I re-signed my lease a few months ago they could rent this place for way more than what I’m paying. I’ve been here 22 years, so I guess they feel they are losing money. Whatever, but the crisis was averted and that’s all I wanted.
As I was going through all of this mess (literally) with the apartment, I finally understood that I was still grieving. Grieving my mother, who had lived here with me after Hurricane Katrina, and the horrible job at the horrible bank. This was an external representation and expression of shame, guilt, grief, anger. All of those emotions were filling this space, nearly squeezing me out of here. There was no place to walk, no place to sleep, no place to prepare food. It was one click shy of what I had seen on the Hoarders show, and the only reason it wasn’t that bad was because I knew this was a rented space that didn’t belong tome. I did no structural damage, no holes in the walls, things were not stacked up from floor to ceiling, no piles of junk over a couple of inches…but it was not a livable space, not a rational space, not a space that I wanted to be in. As my mother used to say all the time when I was a kid, all the junk was a reflection of my mind. I didn’t want to be in there, either, so needed to fill it up so I didn’t have to notice what wasn’t there. Or something like that.
So, now that. I have a reasonable living space, I’m figuring the my mama’s house won’t sell until 2024. WRONG. The realtor, who my cousin recommended and who is like family, moved the place in 3 months. I had to kick in all kinds of repairs and updates, and wound up coming down several thousand dollars after the home inspection, but it’s done. The sale closed earlier this month. Great, No more property tax, no more fretting over insurance, no more sweating through hurricane season with or without flood insurance. I’m free!
Well not exactly free…more like tied with a spider’s silk thread. I was totally unprepared for the emotions that would spew like a fire hose once I parted with that place. That was the last vestige of my childhood, and every time my life fell apart in my youth it was there. When my grandmother died, when my mother went nuts, when my dad left, when I graduated from college and came home a drunk, when my dad got married and didn’t tell me, when the new step-monster called me and told me to never ask him for money, when my I got bludgeoned out of the closet because my mother read my diary. All of that happened in that house.
When I realized I would have nothing tying me there any longer, I went into orbit for a little bit. I kept telling everyone that I felt untethered, which is true. The interesting thing about that, however, is that I always resented being tethered. Back in the day, it didn’t feel like a tether, it felt like a chain. A chain that bound me to everyone’s expectations, rules, perspectives. I had to leave there to find even a part of myself, on my own. There was a part of me that really believed I would never live my own life until after my mother dies, but now she’s dead and I still don’t know how to do that. Ain’t that a bitch?
So, here I am, wherever that is. I’m more stable, or at least less emotional, than I was a couple of weeks ago. I was in full-grief mode, grieving my mother, grieving my childhood, grieving my father, grieving what could have been, what I wanted things to have been. But what I thought I wanted back then were the dreams of a child, who didn’t understand how to dream big and who had only the dysfunction and trauma of her own small world to explore. A child who had her few dreams bashed and ridiculed and dismissed because that’s all the adults in her life knew how to do.
I suppose now it’s up to me to figure out exactly what it is that I want to do. The world is scary but I’ve been scared before, and I’m still here so anything is possible. Anything. I know a couple of things about how to discern next steps, and one of them is to not discern anything. What feels good? What feeds my spirit? What gives me joy? Pay attention is what I’m trying to do now, because it has always been so incredibly easy to ignore my feelings, to ignore red flags and warning signs, to presume that I am incapable of getting what I want, that it’s stupid to want it. Nobody with any sense would want that, is what I was told. That’s more of the junk I need to haul to the dumpster, because it doesn’t make for a livable space. Not at all.
The Sound Hole 