“Sometimes you've got to let everything go - purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything . . . whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you'll find that when you're free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.” Tina Tuner
I made the decision last week really. When working on the kitchen with RG. I knew it was only a matter of time before I
had to go and toss out all the remnants of a life that I was unhappy with. However, as unhappy as I might have been, I
am not one to ever eliminate anything without great thought and
consideration.
I know myself and I talk about how easy it is to eliminate
things from my life. To take them out
and set them aside and move on as if they never existed. I wonder what anyone who truly knows me would
think about that statement. If anyone
who was looking into my eyes and said it was easy for me to just pick up and
move on would think. I wonder if my eyes
would say I am lying even when my voice and mind say I am not.
Nothing is every easy for me to move on from. Nothing at
all, is easy to walk away from. No
matter how hard or aloof I try to be. I
have said it before and I will say it again in the words of the great Kurt
Cobain “I wish I was like you, easily assumed”!
However, I am not. And no matter
how much I try not to feel I do. Even at
a level such as cleaning out my kitchen cabinets. I still rue and lament tossing out my very
first can opener. Yes it was rusted. Yes, it was gross, but it was my first.
The boy who bought had some much hope in 1999 while he was living
on Stokes Avenue. Even when the neighbor
girls would run by him as he was coming home singing gordo, gordo to him. Even though he cheated his way through high
school Spanish he still knew the word for fat.
It mattered not; he was going to change his life. He was going to have the life he dreamed of,
he was 22 and the world was his. That
was for a can opener, to this day he rarely used. So how would he react when he got into more
sentimental items?
However, I knew in my heart many things like the can opener
needed to go. Not just because they were
collecting rust, but because they were things I was holding onto to help me
become the person I want to be. I was hoping
beyond hope that someday my holding would come to fruition. That I would keep these things as an I told
you so. Fuck you world, I was worth it,
it just took me longer to bloom.
There was the first T-shirt I bought in San Francisco in the
summer of 1999. It was a tidied and it
was Star Wars. I loved that fucking shirt
and I wore the shit out of it. I
remember one Sunday at a park in SF I was wearing and some hot chick was like “Oh
my god, that fat guy has on a tidied Stars Wars shirt! What a loser!” It didn’t matter because it was my shirt and
I was a Star Wars nerd and any chicken who couldn’t appreciate that especially
in San Francisco wasn’t worth my time. I
held it against my nose and smelled it.
I looked at it one last time and I tossed it into the pile. So that it too could be some vague memory of
a life once lived.
I could sit here and tell you a hundred stories just like
that one. The aqua blue short sleeve
button down had a tale. As did the Navy
Blue PWC fleece, I mean how excited I was when that thing showed up in
Bloomington. I got out; I really had
gotten out of Indiana with a big time job!
I was so pumped. However, that
was just another thing that had to go.
15 storage boxes of stories about thing I had grown out of. I would guess through the weekend I purged
about $5000 worth of clothing if not more.
All with the inevitable question of why? Why toss out stuff that might fit again one
day. Why not hold onto it. Why not keep
the dream alive. That dream of the
previous life.
The truth is even now I am not 100% sure why I needed to
purge it all, I just know that I did. I
need to clean up and make space. Not because
I have failed to believe that I can lose weight. That I can get my ship right and continue on
my path. Not because as I told my
roommate how depressed I have been because I just don’t feel like I have come
far enough yet. No, this was depression
or lack of faith. If anything I am
fighting the demon depression head on, and I continue to recover faster and
faster from its strong grip. Faith, my faith
or believe I will have an amazing life has never faltered. I know I am on the path. Things on the path and through the rabbit hole
aren’t always what they seem.
The truth is the need to purge was because I realize now I don’t
want to go back to just being thin or being able to fit back into my old
clothes. I don’t want to sit here and
hang onto anything. No, I want to create
a new life. A life that is far less than
ordinary. I want to race, I want to run,
I want to fly. That life isn’t in boxes
in the garage. It isn’t in old appliances.
It isn’t hidden away. No, it out
there in between me and my tower, and that old broken life had to be purged. It had to be thrown out. There is no going back. You can never go back. You can’t change what is. You can only change now and what will
be. You have to put every ounce of your
energy into the here and now, and into this time, and this place. The old alliances are dead. They are gone. There is nothing to go back to. You can’t fix this, only I can, and only I
will.
I purged old toys, and games that reminded me of another
time and place. I tossed out the first
race t-shirt I ever got from W2W in 2005.
I tossed out all my W2W T’s because the truth is I just don’t wear
cotton T-shirts and the truth is I don’t want to fit back into something, I
want to earn and grow into my new life.
With new adventures, not the old ones, that are the memories that make
me, me. I can’t stop now. I have come too far. I kept only those things that can aide me in
my fight. I have not stopped the dream
of being who I was born to be. So, yes,
I purged. I purged because a change is
on the horizon.
So, there we are… Perhaps neither of understand any more
than the other what the purge was really all about. However, I can say this you never really stop
loving or caring about something. You
just learn to live without it. So,
sometimes purging is the only solution we have.
Sometimes it is the only way to re-start and start over.
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