This weekend I helped a friend clean (this blog was started 11/08/08). Oh my gosh! Ever know someone who had a clean appearance, but you discovered lots of dirt beneath, and you finally understood why he or she could not finish the degree they'd been working on for several years at 4 or 5 different universities or whatever they couldn't finish? Thats what I experienced with this friend. She had stuff from several relationships, all contained in one area. My cousin once recommended this book to me, "Clutter's Last Stand". The author, (I'm paraphrasing) said that clutter, mess, unnecessary things which we continue to hold onto and not get rid of drains us of energy and basically prevents us from moving on. I know a young lady who has wedding gifts from her first wedding, which she has never used. She's been married and divorced again. Yes she has stuff from the second marriage as well. I think she finally got rid of dress #1, but still has dress #2. I have another friend who has paperwork and such from several relationships, I know another person who has her dead spouses' things still in place. He's been dead several years. I use to keep pictures of my ex-boyfriend's little girl on my desk at work. Funny, I don't know where those pictures are now, and I no longer have those urges to call him just to see how he's doing. Lets face it, seeing things remind us of when things were different, and sometimes they even give us permission to slip into the past when we should be moving forward. I would look at her picture and remember trips to the community pool, remember Christmas in front of a warm fire, remember "mother/daughter" outings, and so on and so on. I would either forget or minimize his lies, cheating, and the things that made the relationship unhealthy.
I kept thinking about the book as I cleaned and kept coming across souvenirs from relationships. At first I was really judgemental about my friends inability to let go of the crap and move on, but after I had some time I began to look at her clutter through the lens of my fat. Its real easy to look at someone else's "clutter" and say why can't she or he just drop that stuff and move on. From the outside it is very clear that the things are cluttering the person's life and hindering progress, but sometimes its all that a person knows. Ok lets stop walking around the pasture and go on in the barn...
Being fat is/was all that I've known. I don't have a skinny moment or star to guide my ship by. I am basically sailing blind. Recently I've developed an obsession, its called looking in the mirror. I never owned a full length mirror. In my apartment in Harlem, there was this beautiful marble stand and it held a mirror that went to the ceiling. I stopped by it in the mornings to make sure things were straight, but never to simply admire how my hips looked in something or how my breast rounded into and really enhanced the look of a blouse. I never just stood and looked at and appreciated my body. I've said for years, that I was going to buy a full mirror for checking myself, never did it. At my job we have these wonderful long panels of mirrors, and a big "ole" mirror in the women's bathroom. I went to the breakroom to microwave a cup of water. Hmmm, 2 minutes, just enough time to go to the bathroom. I really didn't have to go that bad, but it hit me I was going to check myself out in the mirror. With each smaller piece of clothing I fit into, I enjoy the view more. As I walked to the bathroom, I marvelled at how smaller women take this small pleasure for granted. Being fat, I am use to hearing "you have such a pretty face", I'm not use to hearing a man look at me and utter some explecative of appreciation. If you think hard enough you probably have a "star-less" experience. Let me help you out, I'll share a few more of mine. For years I had no reference point for how real love looks in a relationship. I had no idea what a normal courtship looked like. I had no idea what it was like to see a woman put her trust in her man and he reward that with actions which line up with her trust. Sometimes when we have no point of reference and if we've never seen something, we can't imagine the benefits it would bring to our lives. We can't imagine what we've missed not having them, and we settle for less, we don't dare hope for those things, we are actually scared (maybe even terrified) of even thinking about setting sail for that distant shore. This whole weightloss thing is very much a mental battle and the fat is my clutter. Everyday that little voice whispers, "what IS skinny, how do we know we can find skinny, what if we wander around on the ocean for years and NEVER get to skinny, what if we get so loss that we end up back where we started, what if we get to skinny and life is worse than the land of fat, wouldn't it just be better to be in the land of fat and happy than on this unknown journey, are you sure there's something out there, what if there is a big waterfall at the end, and what if we fail and everyone laughs at us? Then some days the voice just says hopelessly, "we'll never get to skinnyville, and if we do, we won't know anyone there." I get it, change is difficult and scary, and when you add in the unknown it can paralyze you into staying some place that's just "okay". I get that my friend holds on to her memories because at least they provide her with clear landmarks, familiar stars. At least she knows these things, people and situations. What she doesn't realize is that familiar and known are not always good, and "good enough for government work" is not always healthy. She doesn't realize that each piece of clutter and leftovers from old relationships is like an anchor that holds her ship in place. She is not able to set sail to better things. I can only entice her to launch out and set sail for people and things that will nurture her soul in ways she can't even imagine. In the mean time, I am working on listening less and less to the crew members on my own ship that cry for a mutiny. With each pound I drop, I'm throwing clutter overboard and sailing on.
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