Why yes, I am.
Friday, 21 December 2007 06:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59"Feeling a Little Manic, Are You?"*
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Sunday morning, I got up at six and started picking up the clothes piled up in my room. I dragged them down to the basement, sorted them into piles of things that needed washing and things that just needed a little refreshing (which I just run through a rinse cycle).
I don't know how many loads I did. I do know that I bagged up thirteen grocery bags of clothes and put them in the car.
Since then I've gotten rid of those bags, and done eleven more, and gotten rid of them. (I'm donating them to the Gaia Earth Movement, and there's a box just down the street, which helps a lot.)
Today I did three loads of wash.
I own a ridiculous amount of clothes, I make no bones about that. But I'm a little crazed (I can tell because in my head, I can perfectly imagine this ungodly mess of a house perfectly organized. Believe me, this will not last). So I'm a little crazed, and I'm taking advantage of it by getting rid of clothes, and reorganizing drawers.
In Shirley Jackson's last, unfinished novel, the heroine's husband has been dead some time, but it's only recently that she's left their home and gotten rid of his stuff. She was nervous about doing this because she was concerned that he might come back and want to know where his things are. Since the book was never finished, I don't know whether or not this was a reasonable concern. I do know that I feel the same way.
Last night I dreamed about Pat (which I've been expecting since Sunday) and yes, she wanted to know where her clothes were, and I was a little panicked and feeling guilty. (And, for the record, we were in a car, which is right. We spent a lot of time in cars. I don't think it was one of our cars, though. I think it was one of my parents' cars, from when I was really young. I don't know what kind of car it was, except that it definitely wasn't my mother's Dodge Dart.) The ones that make me saddest to get rid of are the things Pat owned before we ever met. They feel like the piece of road just before she reached a crossroads, and there was a path she could have taken that didn't include me. And maybe that would have been better for her, and was I ever kind to her, was I ever anything but selfish, is it my fault she's dead, or that she was sometimes unhappy? And I go to that place for a while, feeling like I'm watching some other life dying before my eyes.
So, anyway, I'm kind of manic. I took the day off work today and this is what I'm doing, and I have four more days off. I cleaned out Pat's closet, and I'm hanging my clothes in there. My goal is to own nothing that I would be unhappy to find was the last piece of clean clothing in the house, so I'm not only getting rid of clothes of Pat's that don't fit me, but things of mine that I just don't like.
There's still too much of it. My underwear is getting a little shabby, but otherwise I have enough clothes to last me a good long while, as long as my weight doesn't change. And I don't think I'm quite manic enough for that to happen.
If I start getting the urge to go out for promiscuous sex, or to spend myself into a huge hole, I'll let you know.
*my mother
-:- -:- -:- -:-
Sunday morning, I got up at six and started picking up the clothes piled up in my room. I dragged them down to the basement, sorted them into piles of things that needed washing and things that just needed a little refreshing (which I just run through a rinse cycle).
I don't know how many loads I did. I do know that I bagged up thirteen grocery bags of clothes and put them in the car.
Since then I've gotten rid of those bags, and done eleven more, and gotten rid of them. (I'm donating them to the Gaia Earth Movement, and there's a box just down the street, which helps a lot.)
Today I did three loads of wash.
I own a ridiculous amount of clothes, I make no bones about that. But I'm a little crazed (I can tell because in my head, I can perfectly imagine this ungodly mess of a house perfectly organized. Believe me, this will not last). So I'm a little crazed, and I'm taking advantage of it by getting rid of clothes, and reorganizing drawers.
In Shirley Jackson's last, unfinished novel, the heroine's husband has been dead some time, but it's only recently that she's left their home and gotten rid of his stuff. She was nervous about doing this because she was concerned that he might come back and want to know where his things are. Since the book was never finished, I don't know whether or not this was a reasonable concern. I do know that I feel the same way.
Last night I dreamed about Pat (which I've been expecting since Sunday) and yes, she wanted to know where her clothes were, and I was a little panicked and feeling guilty. (And, for the record, we were in a car, which is right. We spent a lot of time in cars. I don't think it was one of our cars, though. I think it was one of my parents' cars, from when I was really young. I don't know what kind of car it was, except that it definitely wasn't my mother's Dodge Dart.) The ones that make me saddest to get rid of are the things Pat owned before we ever met. They feel like the piece of road just before she reached a crossroads, and there was a path she could have taken that didn't include me. And maybe that would have been better for her, and was I ever kind to her, was I ever anything but selfish, is it my fault she's dead, or that she was sometimes unhappy? And I go to that place for a while, feeling like I'm watching some other life dying before my eyes.
So, anyway, I'm kind of manic. I took the day off work today and this is what I'm doing, and I have four more days off. I cleaned out Pat's closet, and I'm hanging my clothes in there. My goal is to own nothing that I would be unhappy to find was the last piece of clean clothing in the house, so I'm not only getting rid of clothes of Pat's that don't fit me, but things of mine that I just don't like.
There's still too much of it. My underwear is getting a little shabby, but otherwise I have enough clothes to last me a good long while, as long as my weight doesn't change. And I don't think I'm quite manic enough for that to happen.
If I start getting the urge to go out for promiscuous sex, or to spend myself into a huge hole, I'll let you know.
*my mother