My #1 goal and desire right now is to clear out this house and get rid of all the excess; to rearrange and organize it in a way which fits my needs and desires; to make it feel like my home, one in which I can feel free to be who I am, and BREATHE.
When I moved into this house, it was, in essence, to provide a home for and care for my mother. When she died, I felt abandoned. And not only did I lose her – which caused me, at the same time, to lose a large part of what had for years been my identity – but she left all her worldly goods here in my possession, whether I wanted any of it or not.
I was grateful to have my sister help me deal with my mother’s things. But when her help stopped abruptly due to her husband’s subsequent illness, I again felt abandoned in a sense. It was not my sister’s fault – any more than it was my mother’s fault for dying. Things happen.
But the reality was that I felt stuck and forced to live in this unsatisfactory and sad condition for a very long time. And I believe it has caused me to become effectively ill. I did not feel justified in my feelings of being abandoned, nor in my seeming inability to do anything about it. I just let it wear me down until I have felt completely suffocated, beaten down, incapacitated, and afraid. I became depressed and unable to take very good care of myself or of much of anything. I stopped being able to pay my rent in its entirety because I stopped doing much of anything. I started hating my life and hating myself. Could this all be due only to a house? And let’s not forget that this all served as a constant reminder of my dear mother and there is not a day that goes by when I do not miss her.
I have been living on in a house that was my mother’s home but with my mother no longer here. I need to make it my home.
To solve the problem of not being able to pay the rent, the decision has been made to rent out my mother’s bedroom and bathroom. This has created some urgency now in getting my mother’s things cleared out. I am grateful that my sister is now able to help me once again because it has been clear that in my current state of distress it would not otherwise get done.
Now that we are working on it though, I have become convinced that I am going to need help to overhaul this entire house and I do not want to stop after just clearing out my mother’s rooms. While there are things of my mother’s in different parts of the whole house, there are some areas that contain only my things and these spaces are in need of the most work in some cases (like in my office). I believe that I need my sister’s help in all of these areas but I have discovered that I have some fear that she will not be willing to do all that I am hoping she will. This is not based on anything other than a fear on my part, but I believe I should make clear to her what I am envisioning and how I feel about the situation, so that we are on the same page.
I thoroughly believe that once this house is cleared out the way I envision it, that I will be better able to work and to create and to take charge of my life again and be productive and happy. I am illogically frightened that I will continue to be “stuck” and that my sister will, at some point, decide enough is enough – and that things will never change and I will stay in a bad place and that is unacceptable to me. I need to determine that this job will get done to its completion no matter what it takes and I have to believe that I am equal to the task. I also want to believe that once it is done, that I will be “well” again.
What I really hope is that the process of doing this will be enough to start making me feel better and that I will gradually start to function better and be more like myself. And that is not an unreasonable thing to think.
I also think it is important for me to believe that this is not all my fault; that I have not always lived in a mess, nor have I been used to living in a dirty, messy house. I did not always live like this. I am not totally dysfunctional, I am simply overwhelmed. It is hard for me to see the details when I am so burdened by the whole, big, entirety of the situation. There is simply too much STUFF and I do not want it. I do not need it. It weighs me down. And most important for me to believe is that I can change it.
So the bottom line is that I want to change it, I intend to change it, but that I need help. And that once it is changed, I believe it will change my life for the better.
