A Blur

The past couple of weeks have been a blur to me. Work is nutty getting ready to open a new store (it usually is when we’re ramping up to open a new store).  Home is…well…not really nutty…just… I don’t know. Odd?

I look around and see things in this apartment. Things from my different lifetimes. Things that used to belong to someone that no longer exists. At least not in the way he did when those things were acquired. When those things were important.  Now they are just things.

Clutter.

Physical manifestations of memories I’m not even sure I trust anymore.

What I want to do is take a day or two off of work. It has to be days from during the work week. The weekend has its own ebb and flow and I’m not sure this task is a weekend task. But I need to take 2 days. One day to go through it all and purge. Just purge.  I feel like I need to pare things back. WAY more than they are. Things I haven’t used since I got here…haven’t unpacked or even thought about since I got here should be tossed. And I don’t know that I see myself keeping every little thing for some future time when I’ll have a shelf to put it on. There is a short list of things I’m sentimental about. Things that I will move with me from lifetime to lifetime. Those things could likely fit in a tote. The rest of this shit is built on fake memories.

I only say fake because there are times when I think back to those previous lifetimes and remember….remember what I thought I had. What I thought I was living for. And there’s not really an easy way for me to reconcile those thoughts and memories with the man I am now.

Will I have another lifetime? One in which I find someone…start dating…get married?

If you ask me today or even tomorrow…as the remnants of two failed marriages * lie scattered in paper boxes around my apartment, the answer is no.

I have to clear through this stuff first.

The second day of the two day purge is just to make peace with the new place. The minimalist vibe that I feel it possessing. The openness. The absence of bittersweet memories.   A day to just ‘be.’

Those purging days have to come very soon. I feel as though my mind is a bottle stopped up with marbles. And beneath the marbles is an endless amount of sand. With which to build my great sandcastle. While the marbles obstruct the neck of the bottle…some sand escapes, but not enough to build with.  I don’t know which memento, which marble will be the keystone, unleashing the deluge of the new life.

But if I don’t start pulling marbles…I’ll never build that great castle made of sand.

Have a great rest of your Monday,
-A.T.

*I have two divorces under my belt, but only one of the marriages failed. The second one. The first one was a success if only because it gave me my daughter, my most amazing creation.