Housecleaning

This week I cleaned house, for real and in my head.

After a lot of activity the last few weeks, I took a little time to clean out the stuff running around in that empty skull of mine. I'd seen some behavior from friends I wasn't too happy about and it made me think about my own manners, language and baggage. Turns out I can be sort of a judgmental shit, always on my high horse because of the path I've tread. All of that crap has been good character building kind of stuff, but everyone's tired of hearing about my horrible ex-husband and his departure and my selfish and thoughtless ex-boyfriend and his crack whores. If I can't ever let go of the things that have shaped the person I am, I will be held hostage by them. Respect for them, okay. But more time spent than that is waste.

So this weekend I gave up about 15lbs of guilt. Actually, it started with a conversation about egg plates and ended with me throwing away about 2000 pictures from about a dozen years of my life.
I'd been hanging onto pictures - perhaps thinking someday someone would want them - long after the stories in them had expired. Even my wedding dress had seen the inside of the dumpster three years ago, but the evidence remained threaded throughout my stuff. Out it went, in some ways as much for Todd as for me - and these last vestiges of the person I was then went too. I came home lighter, the welcome more welcome the kisses more ardent. The last of the boxes pulled from the dank flooded basement gone through and placed anew in a safe, lighted home.