An Ever Shifting Tide Of Crap

I spent much of yesterday viciously attacking enormous piles of pulp. I must have dumped at least 100 pounds of wholesale catalogs, old Max homework, magazines, newspapers we keep getting sent even though I don't read them and didn't ask for them, receipts, and random sheets of paper with chicken scratch notes scrawled all over them. My recycle bin is now almost full. I am not even a quarter of the way through the purge either. My office, which I cleaned and organized last spring, is the landing zone for every single article of uncategorizable shit this household generates.

I am beginning to develop a real strong desire for a house that isn't over-crowded with anything. That carries with it the serene calm of a space that holds no paper terrors. However, we are writers (me), artists (Philip), crafters (all of us), and collectors of other people's trash (Max and Philip), and are not known for our ability to live a spare, quiet, uncluttered life.

It felt good. This is all about reclaiming the balance and flow my life had two years ago. We let everything slip from our grasp, we let it all tumble onto the floor to collect dust, and then out onto our sidewalk to annoy the neighbors. We used to be crazy cluttery people with a sense of order, you walked into our house and even thought he window sills were NEVER dusted, there was no doubt about who we were, what colors we liked, or about what kind of style epitomized our spirits. There was organization underneath the chaos. I could clean my house up in two hours and it would look like a wonderful place that could draw friends in from the sidewalk out front. People visited us. Our house was never Martha clean, but it wasn't a trash heap either.

When our life imploded two years ago we let it slip away. In shock, perhaps. The things we reigned in for our safety and health (cooking food with less fat, drinking liberally and yet with firm boundaries and restrictions, exercise) spun out in a big cheesy stretch of comfort foods and comfort drinks and we let all sense of restraint go because it was too painful to navigate the future while trying to orchestrate lean meals without two pounds of cheddar.

I look around my house now, in the middle of it's transformation-yet still hanging onto the chaos the last two years have accumulated, and I can't stop thinking about the strong dividing line between how life was, and what it became. With it has come unhappy fat bodies. We were never, and never will be, skinny people. We were never, and never will be, teetotaling health nuts, we are people who overflow with life, with geeky enthusiasm for everything that interests us, and the insane mantra "more cheese is always better!" and the happy exclamation "Let there be more beer!". We can't be people we aren't, yet we have covered ourselves up with the excess of gluttonous behaviors, with an overflow of disorder and disharmony, because we have felt paralyzed.

The spell is fading. We are still fat and we don't like ourselves much this way. There's some feeling of having trapped ourselves. We are caught living in the trenches we built and are afraid to come out. To redraw boundaries for a sparer life requires a certain spartan bravery. It requires us to call on self discipline that feels vulnerable and frightening. How can I get through an evening with my tornado child on a "relaxing" cup of tea? I can't help but realize that my life isn't set up in a way that offers relief of stress. There is nowhere to take the child during the witching hour. We used to just go hang out with neighbors. It was wonderful. Here we haven't got that. It's just me and the kid.

The kind of stress we experience cannot be soothed by gentle measures.

The point is that if my house had order imposed on it, it would be easier to clean up fast, it would be a better place for calmness. It would be easier to also impose order on my brain. It feels so far gone that I need another cup of (mostly decaf) coffee just to think about it. There are clothes, boxes of them, that I should probably give away because they don't fit me and what are the chances they ever will? They aren't my "skinny" clothes, because I got rid of those ten years ago. They are my extra larges that, in truth, aren't large enough for actual fat people. Which is what I am now. It's classic, holding on to boxes of clothes that don't fit anymore. Every weight-loss guru, therapist, advice columnist, mother, or successful weight watchers advocate would say the same thing: you must let go of all the clothes that don't fit.

It's the one thing I can't let go of. Because that's me in those boxes. Me. My soul. Who I am. All folded up, waiting to have it's day in the light again. Me now: in the black shirts, the black capris, the endlessly boring clothes I wear, even when I make an effort and put on make-up and jewelry, isn't really me. No one who has met me in the last two years has any idea of what my personal style is. They think of me so differently than I truly am. So I feel fraudulent.

What would happen if I just sent them all to the good will? I can tell you this: I would never stop regretting it. Getting rid of one of a kind skirts I've made, vintage 40's jackets I used to wear, the five thousand striped knit tops I wore every single day...it would be admitting defeat. A defeat that I refuse to bow to. I have not worn a striped shirt since I broke my hip. I haven't worn a neck scarf since then. I haven't worn my cute skirts or my wonderful knickers that I made and wore before they showed up in Vogue.

There are some crafty ladies out there wearing the kind of clothes I used to wear. Ladies who are making fabulous clothes from vintage patterns and from thrift finds that they've manipulated. I see them and I get so excited and inspired and I want to shout out to them all- I am just like you!! You should see what I was doing before I found you all online, before I found this Internet road to connection- I was doing exactly what you are doing! And I want to be part of it all. Then I look down and see that on day seven of the week I am wearing the exact same thing I've been wearing all week-because I own four of the exact same black shirt and I own three of them in brown too.

I'm not actually feeling particularly depressed about these things right now. It feels more like I have stepped outside myself to have a look at my house, my life, my goals, my clutter, my mode, my chaos, and I am evaluating how things got from point A to point B. I am able to see now that it doesn't really matter if our financial situation forces us to sell our house, what matters is to put what we have in order. To do it right now. Reforming our living room was a revelation. It isn't new for us, by the way, that living room now looks almost exactly like our old loved living room looked. What that has done for us is make us feel more at home, it has made us feel that we reclaimed a little bit of who we are. Now when people come into our house, they can actually see who we are instead of the fact that we live in a boring ranch house.

You walk in and you see Philip and Angelina, as they ever were.

Now we have to strip the repulsive wall to wall carpeting from everywhere in our life. From the office, from our brains, and also from our bodies. It feels possible.

The scary truth that I continue to come back to again and again is that I may never find my way to losing weight again. What if I am to remain this size for the rest of my life? There is no vintage pattern made to fit my body. Not even with alterations. There are no cool clothes at the good will that will look good on this carcass of mine. I have lots of fabric and I have pattern drafting skills, plus I'm a professional seamstress, there is no reason not to make myself some clothes.

Except that it depresses me to make clothes with no waist-line. Clothes that will not look good on me no matter how skilled I am at sewing. I want a cape, but I fear I will look ridiculous in one.

I can't worry too much about that right now. I think that if I can de-clutter the rest of my home. If I can paint all the walls, put our pictures up, arrange things well, send boxes and boxes of crap to the Good Will or to the recycle bin, I think I just might be able to face the chaos of my own body, and my own mind. It feels like I'm starting to get somewhere.

A new line must be drawn. There needs to be not just life as it was and life as it became...we also need life as it is now. This life must be different than the one we've been living in the trenches. As everyone knows, life doesn't just shape itself how you want it to be while you sit on your ass waiting for the universe to do your bidding. (More's the pity.) You have to roll up your own sleeves and get dirty.

I really have no clue what the future holds. I have no idea what fortunes await us. If any. The only thing I do know for sure is that there is a fresh breeze blowing around here because I've opened a window. And unlike ex-President Clinton, I most assuredly will be inhaling as much of it as I can.