accepting

Clearing Out Clutter

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Okay – let’s start at the blog ending revelation which is I hold on to stuff –

and by stuff, I mean fabric I envisioned making quilts or curtains from, baby jars to decoupage into cool candle holders, letters from old boyfriends, scraps of paper with partial poems on them, grief, fat clothes, skinny clothes, curling irons and hot rollers from the eighties, ideas of how relationships should work, beliefs on where I should be in  my life, misconceptions on what I should weigh, fear of a punishing god or universe, t-shirts to start a tye-dye business, broken clocks, piggy banks, or vases I vow to fix,  fliers from a show I don’t perform in anymore, henna hair dye I haven’t ever used, pills and otc meds that are expired, emails, my tongue during times when I should actually speak up for myself, glasses from two or three prescriptions ago and various other items or beliefs that could fill a black hole –

out of my fear of being expendable. I don’t want to be tossed aside because I might be broken. Or left in a garbage heap because I am no longer in fashion. Or overlooked because I am not the cutest puppy in the bin. Or accidentally sold in a garage sale mish-mash box labeled junk because no one saw me there. Or even worse – intentionally given away because I was no longer loved or needed.

Yeah, I know – sucks to be me, huh? How do you think it must be for those that live with me? Or truly do love me?

Everyone has their own things that scare them and for some reason, mine is the oh-so-fun combo of fear of abandonment mixed with unworthiness to be loved topped off with a good old fashioned dollop of never-enough. Throw in a splash of survivor guilt and cannot quit until it’s perfect and you have quite the supersized unhappy meal deal from a rat invested hole in the wall that only serves entrees pressure cooked to diamond-like crispness.

Wait. Before you call Oprah to add me to one of her hoarder shows, I am actually a moderate case. I can still walk around my home and my car stays relatively empty of crap (on occasion). The unworthiness helps in this area because it is hard for me to believe it is okay to buy myself that used five dollar pair of pants big enough to hide my ass with the stuck zipper, therefore, I don’t acquire a lot of physical stuff to keep, but usually once I do – it will take years to get rid of it.

Which is where I am today.

Getting rid of it.

I have finally said “Fuck it! I am cramped and tired and need some space.” So, instead of getting rid of my family and friends, or changing my name to Toni Fredericks and moving to Kotzebue, Alaska to start completely over, I have been slowly, in tiny increments, clearing away some clutter from my life.

I have given away clothes I no longer wear because they don’t fit or that I plain didn’t like in the first place. I sold off all of my stacks of fabric that I never got around to making the most perfectly sentimental quit to keep me warm when everyone has left me. I got rid of discount handbags I never use anymore and decorative knick knacks I never displayed. I am tossing out what I think everyone else thinks I should weigh and am working towards my very own happy weight. I have chipped away at the granite around my punishing god and am molding it into a pliably unconditional love of the universe. I have purged emails clogging up my memory. If something upsets me or scares me, I try to vocalize it in the moment instead of holding on to it for ten years and then nearly getting divorced or losing someone I love.

I have a long way to go and many, many more things to purge. I am trying not to look at what I have left to expunge but rejoice in my new found free space. I have allowed myself not one, but two handbag purchases over $100. I bought some new pants that actually fit and flatter the junk in my trunk. I have conversations with the people I love instead of fights. I try to let my emotion naturally flow through me until it has abated without stuffing it deep down like an undercooked turkey. I continue to write, write and write some more about these truths and other revelations I may discover for well or ill because this is just who I am.

Most importantly, I am (hopefully) teaching myself and my children that I can love, be loved and let go – all at the same time.

Will the end result be a zen-garden style home with only a pallet on the floor to sleep and one organic cotton frock that keeps me both warm and cool? I don’t know but I am willing to slip-n-slide, make progress and fall backward and cut myself some slack to find out.

Yippe kay-aye …

An Old Letter – I like letters…

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P.S.  I’ll add the pre-script at the front since the letter below was written five years ago and never mailed to Mr. Damon. I mentioned it in my 25 facts and got a comment to post – so, what the hell?

In the interim, I have, of course, seen The Bourne Ultimatum and loved it! The way the end Supremacy overlaps in the beginning is so much like life to me. Before I am through passing through one emotion, another one appears on the horizon that I must also deal with. Plus, I find Matt Damon to be quite an impressive talent. He can brood with honesty like nobody’s business for one piece of work and be hysterically self deprecating in another. (check them out, but please come back…)

I tend to find messages in the oddest of places anyway. Like the other night, I heard this quote and it was exactly what I needed to hear to jump start me out of my self-induced, hormone laden funk:

“You can chose to live in a place of fear or you can believe in the best version of yourself.”

Guess where? It was Mac (Gary Sinise – whom I also totally respect as an actor) from CSI: NY.

Music also plays a big role and I love it for both the Bourne series and CSI: NY – but that’s another post. So, without further ado, here is my letter to Matt Damon that I never sent.

August 19, 2004

Dear Matt:

This may or may not seem odd to you, but that does not matter to me today. I have an intuition to write to you, and, for today, I am listening to that voice.

Over the last couple of years I’ve been struggling to find out more about my own inner truth. It has not been easy and I have had many days where I want to give up and let the person inside of me I don’t like rule my head and heart. Two years ago, I saw you in the The Bourne Identity and (here comes the whacko part) – your sincerity of performance truly spoke to me. When you looked the mean agent-man in the eye and chose not to be “that man” anymore, it was like an epiphany for me. I took that as my motto for the last two years that I don’t have to be the woman I once was – I can be my true self, the one originally intended at my birth. (Please note that I was already on an inner journey when I saw your movie – I don’t want to come across as if I am not in touch with reality or belong in a padded room. I was formally seeking answers regarding my personal identity and your movie happened to be released at that time.)

Today I saw The Bourne Supremacy. Again, I come away with such an awareness of my own search that I want to thank you. The humility you embrace in letting your inner energy display the emotion and grief your character suffers without resorting to trickery or overt machinations is inspiring. The line at the end when speaking to the daughter of the couple Bourne murdered (I’ll paraphrase, for regardless of what you actually said – this is what I heard) – “when the truth gets taken from you, you find a new one.” Without going into too much detail about my own sob story, that is basically what happened to me – my truth about being a whole person who could thrive in this world was taken from me when I was very young. I found a new one immersed in fear that I lived by for way too many years. I have seen glimpses of my original truth throughout my recent journey and try to live it each day.

I realize that you did not write the words or direct the film and that you are simply doing your job by portraying the character that Robert Ludlum wrote so many years ago. However, it is that portrayal that brings these words and film alive, and it has reached deep into at least one person far below the surface level of a great action film. It has touched my humanity and search for my own past truths in order to live a more full life today.

Thanks again and I look forward to The Bourne Ultimatum.

Sincerely,

Kathleen

P.S. See, I’m not so wacky. Just a woman searching and finding answers in any and all possible locations. Where do you find your answers?

Peace.

Lost things…

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I used to have this beautiful gold necklace. It was a gift in honor of a very sacred occasion. It was given to me, for me on that special day out of love and pride. I cherished it. I was still very young and I wore it most of the time for about as long as I can remember.

Then, at some point, I lost it.

I have no idea how it happened and it was long while, I would guess, before I even realized it was gone. I went to put it on one day and it wasn’t there. I searched everywhere – it’s not like I have a lot of jewelry or many places I would have kept it.

It was just gone.

It made me very sad.

It still makes me sad.

I reactivate my search efforts every now and then thinking it will show up or reappear out of some blissful magic.

It never does.

Most days I don’t think about it. Yet, on the days I do, I can almost pinpoint the place I last saw it. It was on top of the medicine chest in our apartment in Manhattan. Hidden away from sight. Not sure why it was put it up there, but I think it was and now I see it in my mind’s eye laying there covered in dust and cobwebs. Almost lonely from not being worn, the gold glistening so hard in the harsh light of the bathroom hoping somebody will notice it and rescue it from its obscured, lost place.

Then, if my thoughts are extra fierce that day of regenerated seeking, the internal argument begins.

“You should just let it go – you’re never going to find it again. It’s gone.”

“But what if was accidentally put it in that old black leather bag I carried then? Maybe it is stuck in the side zipper pocket?”

“Did you check there?”

“You know I did.”

“And was it there?”

“You know it wasn’t. Maybe it got stuck in between – ”

“Why can’t you accept that it may be just be gone?”

“See – even you said – ‘may be gone‘ – that sounds like there is room for hope!”

“There is always room for hope, my dear. In this case, you may need to switch that hope into to finding a new necklace.”

“But I didn’t find this one – it was given to me as a gift.”

“So, you’ll get another gift that is just as special.”

“That is not possible.”

“Well, who’s leaving out hope now?”

Needless to say, I don’t like losing things. I have enough brain chatter going on without adding the constant anguish of not knowing where something is. Or if it even still exists.

So, if by some chance of fate, you are reading this from your second floor brownstone apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan, 89th and Lex, check above the medicine cabinet, will ya?

If you find a small gold crucifix, shoot me an email, please?

If there is nothing there, well, honestly not sure what I would do with that information…