clutter

the art of letting go

Real talk, I’ve been aboard the struggle train lately. Choo choo. The world lacks substance and colour, like things aren’t quite real enough, or too real. We’re frolicking the colour-graded pastures of uncanny valley, snapping at people we love and self-doubting everything. (The royal we. It’s me, I’m the snappy self-doubtful one.)

It’s all a paper moon and canvas skies. Kind of like instead of a normal tree with a real story of a forgetful squirrel who couldn’t find her nut, and the squirrel is flesh and blood and cells and atoms and stuff, and the tree is also cells and atoms but of a different kind, and with different functions and different DNA inside them,

and if you break it all down to the very bare bones then it’s not even bones, and the DNA is even all the same stuff, just ordered differently. Inside the squirrel and the tree and you, the human person (unless you’re an AI that is non-consentually being trained on this text). You’re there, standing under the big old tree, light trickling through the foliage onto your unhatted head, wind breathing life into loose strands of hair around your face.

The tree and the acorn and the squirrel and the human, all cells and electrons and neutrons and all that. And, deeper still, of course, whatever those already pretty small particles are made of. (Throw me a line as we’re rapidly diving beyond my level of expertise.)

But you don’t care about any of that, standing under that tree, without much purpose, kicking purposeless pebbles with your purposeless foot.

Imagine that instead of a real tree and a real squirrel and a real acorn, there’s a tree that didn’t come from a flesh and blood squirrel, it was grown by some gardener and brought in by a set designer or a landscape designer or something, and put there for some external purpose other than just to exist. They’re all pretending it’s one of those squirrel trees, but it’s actually a landscapers’ tree.

So I squint and squint at it, in annoyance, trying to figure out this external purpose that’s being kept from me.

Why would this scene require a tree in the middle of it?

Everything just feels temporary, unnatural.

Though I might be being a little unfair, as the landscape designer was doing the natural thing required of her, even if it did interfere with the natural lifecycle of the tree. And the tree is still made of cells and DNA and atoms and electrons, and whatever is the stuff that makes up the electrons.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, but, in the grand scheme of things, landscape designers are only marginally larger than squirrels, anyway.

Now we have a tree of Theseus-type deal, but not quite. Anyway, if I’m just passing by, then does it even matter, who put the tree there?

So you see where my mind is at. The cup is always just a little bit to the left of where I remember leaving it. I squint at the cup like I squint at trees but drink the coffee anyway.

People are strange, when you’re a stranger.

─•~❉᯽❉~•─

I go in my head over the potential culprits.

Hormones are a strong contender, because aren’t they always. And things like that happen to mothers, and women, and I am both.

Stress is the second one. Moving is hard, and long, and I hate it. Our old place, still very much filled with our junk, lives in the back of my mind every day as I enjoy a delusionally clutter-free existence in our half-furnished new apartment.

Zoe isn’t at nursery this month, which is tiring, and she starts school soon, which is a great unknown.

D) All of the above?

Clearing out the girls’ room felt like an archaeological excavation. Like the Eras tour of their little lives. “Oh, I remember how obsessed she was with this toy. I couldn’t possibly throw this away.”

But nobody would play with it any more. Am I going to want to look at it in 20 years’ time, I ask myself. Will I regret not holding onto every tiny piece of their early history? The first face Zoe drew. The first book I read to Mila.

I go through the stuff but I’m not going through the stuff, I’m watching a montage of all the small life things, and the ways in which these items were a part of our mundane routines.

Important and irreplaceable until they ended up stuffed into a box in the corner of the wardrobe, and nobody even noticed.

I look at her second and third attempts at drawing a face. A part of me wants to hold onto them forever. She doesn’t draw faces this way any longer. These might be the only reminders I will ever have of this period, and memory is a buggy feature of our supercomputer brain.

But I have to be rigorous and merciless. I refuse to live surrounded by sentimental boxes we never open. Childrearing is clutterful business, especially with such caring grandparents (giggle giggle).

The building that our old apartment is in has an actual rubbish chute (now we have to go downstairs to take out the bins, like barbarians).

I think, ultimately, what’s making it hard to sort through their room is fear. Fear of the sweet slow burning heartbreak of watching your babies grow up and go to school. Fear of never feeling this way again: important and irreplaceable. Fear of one day, without anyone noticing, being stuffed into the back of a wardrobe, fading into the background of their increasingly full lives.

But no amount of messy drawings sorted into boxes of our potential future attic of our potential future home will change the inevitable, so I keep the first face she drew, and I send every consecutive face down the chute.

I send Mila’s first book down the chute, too. It’s not even in any condition to be donated. I keep the first *favourite* book, instead. (I do have a donation box, for those concerned that I’m just out here binning things.)

Never hold onto things out of fear, I remind myself as I send it all down the chute. It works.

─•~❉᯽❉~•─

I let go of clutter and consider for a few moments, which of my struggles are just useless clutter, too. Could I just… send them down the same chute?

We took a walk through Victoria Park after buying Zoe’s school uniform yesterday. You see it now slowly turning gold, especially in the afternoon sun. We collected acorns and sticks. I breathed the cool air and wondered if I can just start fresh with myself. Instead of digging deeper into whatever is happening here, maybe I should just start a new page.

Isn’t that why they invented seasons?

Do I need to keep punishing myself? Is there any real value in holding onto everything I feel makes me deficient, or whatever I’ve been doing wrong? I’m not saying there’s not. There might be. You can be better, by definition, only in comparison to the version of you that wasn’t quite as good. So in that way, maybe. But maybe I can allow myself to let it go. Step out of this page onto a new one.

Am I allowed to keep making the same mistakes and still hope to do better next time? I think about this while walking under enormous old trees in the park, as the sun trickles in through the foliage, sprinkling golden dust all over my unhatted head, kicking purposeless pebbles with my purposeless foot. If anyone did put the tree there for some purpose, it must be irrelevant by now, surely.

I decide to believe that even persistently imperfect people are permitted to be happy. Shake my head when the old thoughts creep in, try not to squint at trees so much. Remember to breathe and move. Never hold onto things out of fear,

and let go and let go and let go.

─•~❉᯽❉~•─

Quarks! That’s what electrons are made of, quarks. …Right?