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| This old, buried-in-the-mess pic pretty much sums up how I feel.... |
Since I wrote last I've been up to my earholes in what was supposed to be a quick studio clean-up. But it's now Day 6 and the room's nowhere near being functional.
It's my own fault; I let it get this way. And I know now that I can't help it. Still, understanding this doesn't make me like the situation (or myself) any better....
Although I'm proud of myself for taking this on and (so far) hanging in there, I hate that I'm the type of person who doesn't know how to keep things from getting to this point in the first place. And it disheartens me to realize that I live in a whole HOUSE that's like this now, with someone who is my equal in the Magpie Department. Not a win/win, I'm afraid. But I'm hoping that this first step will somehow set the snowball in motion. (Here's hoping the avalanche doesn't bury us both.)
I've always been this way. I was a messy and unorganized child, quiet and still on the outside but with a head full of Tasmanian devils. The mess in my wake must've been how I sorted them out? I dunno.... I do know that at any given moment my bedroom/school desk/locker/backpack/notebook/sketchpad looked like the aftermath of a cataclysmic disaster.
Just ask my mom. Out of anger and frustration she'd occasionally take a shovel to my room and gut it down to its bare bones. I'd go in there after the fact, see the newly unburied carpet and horizontal surfaces, and feel an odd combination of heartbreaking dismay and fierce gratitude. (I might've been in shock....;->) The picture perfectness of it took my breath away. Who lived HERE, I wondered! This girl has it all together, she's in control! But what did I know about her, really? Everything about her had been erased....
I swear all the pleasure of having an organized space lasted for about a minute. And then I'd begin to fill it up again.... And it's not like I even saw what I was doing either, until things were back the way they were. I'm guessing now that the clutter was 'safe,' somehow. It must've been necessary.
I know my mom probably attributed my frustrating messiness to 'laziness' on my part. But I think it had -- and still has -- something to do with how my head works. In my Mind Palace it's like a surreal episode of 'Hoarders' (x about a hundred....). No neat files for ME. Still, although it might take me a moment or more to find what I'm looking for, it's there.
Sometimes I dream of paring things down to a crazy minimum. Have a single set of clothes with a single set of pockets.... Art supplies? Forget it -- give me a stick so I can draw in the sand. Nothing to save, nothing to store, nothing to take care of.... Don't anyone let me near a cardboard box! I'd just fill it up.
But I would die from the simplicity of it all, I know it. The boredom would kill me. And before that happened, I suspect my thoughts would dry up and vanish until eventually my Mind Palace was empty -- no longer palatial but a single little room, until that, too, was gone. And then it'd be like I never was....
....?....
....*Thinking*....
Well, huh....
Something tells me there's a big, invisible Triceratops somewhere in all this mess, and I've just stubbed my toe on it.
Guess it's back to work for me.
...
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