Sunday Scribbling prompt – junk

There is a lot of junk rattling around in this head.  Time to clean house.  Maybe if I throw open the windows and sweep out the dust, I can see what is here and pick what to keep and what to let go.  There is a lot to let go of, but before I start cleaning I have to go back a ways.  Back when this head was calmer and neater.  Back before so much junk crept in and made itself at home in corners and up on shelves where I didn’t notice until it was too late.  So much stuff in piles that I can’t see what might be good hidden under what is unusable, unwanted, and just taking up space.  Stuff that more than fills the head up, changing the landscape (or headscape) so that the colors and design are no longer what I want.  They are controlling me instead of the other way around.

That pile over there in the back corner?  That’s the old family stuff.  I tried getting rid of that years ago but it has the best hang time of anything in here.  There’s a box of guilt on the bottom.  It has always been under everything else in the pile. See that right there?  There is that secret time I was nice on the outside but the inside was all black and tarry mean.  There’s a bunch of that in there.  There are the shiny times too but that guilt can tarnish anything it gets near.

That big book of disappointments you see over on the left side?  If you open it you will see that it’s got dividers for categories.  There is the disappointed by others section and the part where I do the disappointing. The big fat section that makes up the whole front of the book?  That’s where I disappointed myself.  That’s the part that keeps growing.

This untidy lavender room holds small piles of misunderstanding everywhere!  They are all different colors and if I had taken the time to wind them up and put them away, they might not have gotten so out of hand.  Now they are unraveling all over the place and I constantly trip over them.  There’s some of the acting without thinking kind, some of the speaking without thinking kind, and some of the losing my temper without thinking kind.  Beginning to see a pattern?

Turn around and look on the right side.  That’s where I keep all the changes made to please others.  The discarded parts, that I thought I gave up.  I forgot them for the longest, but lately, I’ve been taking them out and polishing them off. I may just take some down from the shelf and see if they still work.  I wonder why I thought I had to put them away in the first place?

I find pieces of memory in every pile, on every surface, and even hanging from the ceiling.  As I rummage through the items that were discarded, I find some jewels that shine even through the dust and dirt from the years. Some make me giggle and others make dirty gray furrows of wet down my grimy face and I have to put them back to look at later.  Some I hold so tightly, loving the lost that is found.  Pictures of old friends and family scattered over the years.

There are a few insights scattered amid the detritus.  Epiphanies for me, even though they might have been well known by you.  Where I got damaged, when I shone, and why.  What makes my vision unique.  Why I cry whenever I hear that one song – you know the one.

No problem deciding what to do with that trunk full of minor irritations.  It has gotten way too heavy and I stub my toe on it several times a day.  I’ll start sacking that up right away.  Straight to the curb – no need to send that to the Salvation Army.  No one needs more of that.

That old trashcan over there?  The heavy duty one that looks like it could hold a lot?  I used to carry that around all the time, offering to hold any garbage others might want to throw in there.  I still carry one around sometimes but I just can’t carry as much these days so I swapped it for that little plastic one.  Maybe someday I can put it down for good. I have enough of my own garbage.
It’s looking a little better in here.  Sometimes you have to do a bit of work to see through the junk that covers up the treasures.  Clean it off, give it a coat of paint, remove the rotten parts and sand off the rough spots.  I’ll keep some of my junk, thank you very much.  It is mine after all and some of it gives the place character.  I’m starting to like it.  Maybe I’ll just rest here awhile.