fear

Clearing Out Clutter

/ autumncircles / 5 Comments

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 …

Let them eat steak

/ autumncircles / 9 Comments

I recently came across a familiar situation where I was faced with the opportunity to not do something I didn’t want to do. Toss in a little bit of having to do something I needed to do, but am not generally good at – and you have the makings of yet another blog post.

Let’s see how I fared, shall we?

In case you don’t know, I suffer from many “issues” one of which being I have a very unstable stomach. Food, which is supposed to be my friend, can in many ways be my worst enemy. Not only do I have the pudge-potential syndrome, I also have the irritable bowel one. Food choices are critical to ensure I do not end up writhing in pain for days. However, food is also my go-to mood adjustment device. Happy? Have a cupcake. Sad? Eat an entire bag of potato chips. Enjoy camaraderie? Scarf down enough Chili’s chips/salsa/ranch to feed a small nation. Totally depressed? Eliminate food altogether – which is clearly as harmful as eating too much.

[If at this point, you are thinking I need some sort of therapy – please, please refrain from suggesting that road which has been traveled ad nauseum. ]

This bit of background leads us up to the other evening when I was having dinner with some folks I am very close to. Food issues already range from the comical to the serious over the course of my life, so the fact that I have dire choices I am faced with making three times a day plus in between snacks only enhances any sort of meal-enticed environment around others because I then have to throw in the fact that I believe my choice must not offend or upset anyone, in anyway possible.

For many reasons, one of which being I had recently had the stomach flu – considered akin to a near death experience for IBS folks, I was not feeling all that great when I arrived at the dinner. It was soon revealed that we would be dining on good old fashioned steak and potatoes. No other choices offered.

I immediately thought, “Ouch – red meat on an already fragile stomach? Nope, cannot do it.”

Which was immediately followed by, “Fuck. This means I have to say something about it. Fuck.”

For just about anyone else, the solution is simple – state that you cannot eat the steak but would be delighted with the baked potato and be done with it.

If you have read more than one blog post from me, you also know I do not consider myself anywhere near the realm of normal. Telling someone that I am unable eat what they have prepared or don’t like the way they cut my hair or think the brakes they installed are not quite right or disagree with them over anything in general can be as difficult for me as brain surgery is for a statistician while at the same time producing some sort of self induced traumatic esteem injury.

[Again, if you have that tiny little urge telling you to suggest therapy for me – please don’t, pretend you did and simply allow me my eccentricities.]

I gave it a try anyway and said that I would not be able to eat the steak due to my stomach still not being totally healed. Whew! Look at me – gonna be tummy cramp free!

Then, when dinner came and my plate was being loaded and even though I’d been very clear that I was not going to eat steak – I was offered steak like parishioner is offered communion. I, again, said, “No, thanks. Remember, my stomach?”

The steak was held out in front, hovering in the air like a Matrix special effect by a pleading host.

“Are you sure? Just a little bit won’t hurt you will it?”

Did I maintain my commitment to my internal organs and refuse to eat the steak?

Or did I crumble like a tin can under the weight of an 80 ton tyrannosaurus rex crashing through the jungle on its way to a veggiesaurus slaughter?

Lost things…

/ autumncircles / Leave a comment

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…