What Lives In Dark Corners

I believe that homes are reflective of our mental landscape. I think we build around us a place that is similar to what our interior psyche looks and feels like. I think it's more complicated than that. I think sometimes we react so strongly to what's in our heads that we try really hard to fix what's wrong in our heads in our homes: enforce extreme order when what we feel inside is mad chaos. So as a reflection of who we are I think it takes an astute being to recognize what they're seeing.

I spent one afternoon this week sorting through my old clothes and accessories. I had boxes of trash and treasure massed together, spilling out of a closet. I didn't want to let go of any of it because I worried that being fat was temporary, like a glitch, and that I would soon be able to peruse this mass with more accuracy.

That's not the truth though. That's just what I told myself. The truth lives in darker places for me. The truth is that there were boxes that I was scared of. Literally scared of. I don't deal well with dirty chaos. I had one tin that has been filled for years with a miscellany of hair accessories, used ones and new ones; safety pins, broken jewelry, perfume samples, scraps of ribbon, earring backs, single earrings, jewelry I hated but felt guilty discarding; paper bits; chopsticks;all of it vaguely greasy and dusty with age.

I have been avoiding that tin for years. Diligently packing it up for seven moves, never opening it. Never getting rid of it. Just dreading it.

It's ridiculous. I know. Balanced people can relate because you don't have to be mentally ill to dread going through old boxes of crap. But being mentally ill makes it into a kind of personal Everest. Dangerous. I feel the same way about paperwork. It preys on my mind. It lives there in my head as well as physically in my house. Breathing itself into dreams. Into thriving nightmares.

I like collecting things. I will always collect things. But I do it cautiously now. I do it as a museum curator does rather than as a magpie does. It keeps me more comfortable. I don't like all the corners to be full anymore.

With creepy things like this thirteen year old gummy bear who I had wrapped up in a custom made cardboard coffin. I don't remember why. Philip might know. I only know that it was definitely a coffin.

This is how gummy bears age in dark places; I believe that is a patina of mold and old matter combined. Not moist enough to attract bugs or decay as proper moldy things do it has done so in a wholly unique fashion. This has traveled silently at my side for hundreds of miles. Why? What significance can it possibly have that is worth taking up space in my head and house? I'm not sentimental. Or, rather, I should say that I am selectively sentimental. I know lots of people who hold onto things because it reminds them of sweet times. I personally think they are motivated by other causes because I think the truth lives in darker places for other people too.

I have only just begun. I've been wanting to do this for a long time. I already feel cleaner and a little freer- like the vice grip that's been strangling my head is a tiny bit looser.