This weekend I cleaned out my closets. Both physically and mentally.
In my physical closet was old clothes and memories I have kept with me of my first 50 years of life. I am not even sure why I had some of it.
The old clothes that are too big went first..that was the easy part.
There were recipes I took from my mothers house when she died, hand written on pieces of paper and note cards. Recipes given to her by and named after people I have never even heard of. I am not exactly sure why I took them.. maybe because cooking and baking with her was the best time I ever had with her and if there was any part of her I wanted to be as a mother, it was that part. I don’t think that worked very well! I threw them all away.
There were Diet books from all the diets I had tried desperate to use to loose weight I had gained when I was married. I lost 40 odd pounds after I filed the divorce and have not gained but 10 of it back. I think there may be a message there but I don’t want to speculate on it.. I just dont think I will need those books again. I threw them away.
There were souvenirs from places I went when I was younger and on my own.. France in High School, Japan and Puerto Rico in the Marine Corps.. these I kept. I was proud of myself having those adventures on my own. Of family trips during my marriage I have pictures of my kids. Yes I took all the family pictures when I left the marriage. I was the one that took them, developed them, put them in albums.. they were mine. I gave him the videos.. he always liked those best anyway. I of course kept the albums during this cleaning as well.. they were some of the best times of the marriage.. and I had planned all of them.
Basically I threw away all the stuff that did not make me smile or was not a reminder of my own accomplishment.
Then I did a mental inventory of stuff I had gathered in my brain closet.
In the past year I have shaken with fear of losing the old life which was no longer happy and facing the new one alone which I was not sure would be any happier. I have crie d over this fear. I have run to a bunch of new doors that could be paths for my new life, opened them and waited for someone to push me through and cried again when no one would. I have faced old demons and created new demons, I have struck out in anger when I percieved my demons to be larger than me, cried again because of the harm my angry actions caused. Then sat empty for the last 2 weeks, crying when I remembered it all.. no longer feeling the victim of others but now the realizing I was the victim of myself.
So out with the old and in with the new. This time I am going to do it slower and calmer and try to face it with less fear and more rational thought processes. I have started back on my anxiety medication ( I stopped taking it about 2 months ago-defintely a mistake) , made an appointment with a new therapist..one that hopefully will be alittle harder on me and not become my friend, and I took a chance to star ta women’s divorce support group. I need the support of other women going thru this process like me, and they probably need me. Finding another man right now is not the answer.. I need to find myself, my own peace and the life door I want to venture through.
Oh yeah, I threw out the Match.com on-line dating web site too. They kinda made me crazy with their matches and the men I met made me nervous.
Now that my closets have been cleaned, I may have some room for the new me!
