She Packed up her "Things"

I sit here on the floor lost in the company of large brown boxes surrounding me, packing tape by my side. An assembly line of plates, cups, coffee mugs, wine glasses and dishes sit patiently waiting for their turn to be carefully wrapped in recycled U-haul packing paper and placed in their new home, the dreaded big brown box. As I pack the framed pictures of my family and friends smiling faces in bubble wrap and place them in the box, I feel a warm tear or two slip from my eyes and slide down my cheeks. I suddenly find myself reflecting on my life. At this age, I didn’t think I would be moving every year anymore. I was hoping I would be settled, possibly a family in tow, and living a life that I really wanted, one that would make me feel fulfilled, one where I was fulfilling my purpose as I see it. I guess it isn't time yet.

 In two weeks, I must leave my current home and find somewhere else to go. After a person has lived alone, one gets used to the privacy, the space, and the independence. It’s hard to give all of that up. Everything is up in the air. There have been a lot of changes in the past few months that have made me really step back and think about every aspect in my life.  It is interesting how my home and the “things” in it have become so personal and important to me. Why? I started to think about “things” and I came up with the conclusion that we as people like to be comforted with “things” we love, things that have memories attached to them. We like to be entertained. We often tend to measure our success on the things we have attained. It’s the American way. There is a deep, often unspoken desire to be coddled, catered to, and distracted. “Things” can often do that for us (or so we think). As I close and tape up each box with all the things I have worked so hard to obtain, I feel as though I am taking a small piece of my happiness and placing it in the box next to all of the random odds and ends. At the realization that my things have been tied so closely to my happiness, I had an "ah-ha" moment where I understood there was a problem and had to look deep within myself to fix it.

As I have battled with anxiety and depression in the past, I started to feel the cloud of gray seep back into my life and I knew the destruction had begun. I just crashed, stayed in bed, moped, cried, felt hopeless, and then started to become numb to it all. All of the regular depression stuff crept back in. Oh, so familiar. Then came the fight, the inner jolt that said, “Hell no. Don’t go back there.” Of course this inner jolt was not so delicately prompted by people in my life who love me and told me I had a choice to make, a choice to be happy and thankful for what I have, or the choice to allow the depression to take hold and run for miles. I may not have been ready to make the positive choice that specific day but their words didn’t leave me. Instead, the words resonated in my sad and frustrated heart until I came to grips with the fact that they were right.   

As a person who comes from a family that is not thrilled with any type of change, I am a product of that environment for sure. Even considering a change causes me to look so far into the future that I lose track of what is here, what is right in front of me, right now. I tend to go into “plan” mode. This is where I desperately need to come up with a definite plan to follow, to grasp ontp, in order to feel any comfort in the change that is inevitably going to happen. My plan is my security blanket. It is the only thing I have to hold onto at that point in time. There is a reason someone coined the term “knowledge is power.” Without a plan or knowledge of a plan, I feel completely lost, worried, and scared. When I feel lost, I feel a lack of control in my life. The problem is the uncertainty and the fear that it may go badly.

During the realization of all my faults and worries that were brought on by moving, I also realized that there are many positives. While continuing to pack, I came across a drawing from a sweet 11 year old girl that means the world to me, a beautiful Christmas card from a new friend I made this year, a letter written by my nephew, a heartfelt card written by someone who has shown me love through good times and bad, and received a text from my big sister with some words of encouragement. All of a sudden those “things” meant a lot more to me than my new couches and bedroom set sitting in storage for a while. While I’ve often repeated the quote, “The most important things in life aren’t things,” it does have a much larger and personal meaning when all of your “things” will be wrapped up in boxes sitting in a storage unit. But…on the bright side, it is true. I am able to simplify my life, donate the things I don’t need any more, the things I don’t use, and clothes that don’t fit. I don’t think that the pursuit and attainment of wealth necessarily leads to happiness but often leads to confusion, fog, and waste, and can happen to the best of us when we lose focus on what really matters.

 I am starting to realize and accept that this hiccup in my life may be necessary and may be something to catch my attention and refocus myself on the things in life that really are the most important. It has most definitely been a process to acceptance. Sometimes change is as good as an awesome holiday even when we can’t see it right away. I am hoping this new change will take me in a direction that works even better for me and takes me to the next step in many areas of my life. So going into this New Year with everything in flux, I know I can count on this. Life is beautiful with or without material things. When you do your best to forget about the material stuff that sits in your storage unit or even in your living room, and start to actually live your life, look around, to feel and listen to yourself, you will definitely realize how lucky you really are. So, if making a New Year’s resolution this year, I’d have to say that mine is to become aware of really living and focusing on the good, even in midst of the bad. If there's one thing you can be certain of in life its that uncertainty will most definitely exist.

So, the air conditioning just kicked on and it’s overwhelmingly loud in this little loft. I used to hate that loud noise when I first moved in here. But right now, at this moment, with boxes all around, “things” strewn all over this house, it comforts me and I smile. Happy New Year 2012.