Stop holding on to the things that clutter my home and my life

In an outward manifestation of the mess in my mind, the room I used to study in has become a garbage heap.

Well, getting a diagnosis of cancer might certainly stir the crap in the brain a bit, and make one not care so much…Part of the problem started when I was packing for returning to New York, to finish grad school, and then I was diagnosed. So the floor of my study is strewn with stacks of books, and boxes, and things I was going to ship to myself out there. Now I just stumble around them.

This room used to be my parent’s bedroom when I was growing up. And my mom continued to sleep in that room until she went to hospice and died of cancer 4 years ago. It’s somehow the most peaceful room in the house, now.

I’ve lined one wall with bookshelves, floor to ceiling, and they’re full, briming with books and things. I have a desk, that used to have my Nikon microscope on it, when I was taking microbiology and working on my unknown bacteria identification project. I have a drafting table, that I used to do my architecture school projects on, complete with parallel rule, drafting lamp, etc…it’s now where my laptop and printer sit.

So, I really want to do an excavation of this room, and clear off the desks, and find a way to put these anesthesia books away, find room on the shelves for them, and donate all the things in the closet that I haven’t been able to part with since my mom died (some of her clothes still exist there, they smell like her and I can’t bring myself to handle the clothes for the scent of her perfume that wafts up to me when I touch them.)

It’s a long haul project.

I filled the prius yesterday and drove to the goodwill to donate. Last year, we had over $2000 worth of donations with clothes, computers, books, and so forth. It helped on the tax returns, that’s for sure.

phoney friends have a way of eating up a lot of valuable time, and then turning their backs on you.

Recently, this has happened with two such “friends”

Both, from Southern California.

I’m going to have to re-enact my moratorium of friendships with people from Southern California, as (it seems) every time I make a friendship with someone from the LA area, they turn out to be great, while they need something (advice, help moving, entertainment, someone to go bar-hopping with) but when YOU need even just company, or someone to bounce an idea off, they’re gone.

You know what?
I’m deleting several “friends” from my email addressbook and cell phone and my life feels less complicated already.

yay!

I’m still not over the feeling that she might, at any moment, come back and want her stuff.

I still have the occasional dream that she comes back and is asking about where this is, and where did that go…all of this guilt for sending her stuff off to the local donation charity places.