The Abyss and My Closet

With three months until this dream becomes a reality, the list of things to do is long enough to make one’s mind spin.

I’ve been steadily adding to the Operation Sell All My Shit And Take Off Into The Wind With My Dog to do list. Even as I add to it, I try not to read it. There is so much to do.

I am excited and completely terrified. What does it mean to get rid of all the belongings that I have clung onto for years? That dress that I wore to college graduation and have hauled around for 15 years that I’ve worn twice? The 10 dollar earrings that I have never worn once and somehow they have survived 3 moves?  There’s more stuff that I won’t list out. You get my drift I’m sure.

Our stuff, in a sense, defines us. We feel a certain way when we look at it. We create a story about ourselves when we touch it or wear it or smell it or think about it.

We are our stuff. If this is true and in the process of giving up all of my stuff … I am shedding pieces of myself. I am shedding my identity and my past.

*SPOILER ALERT*

I am having an existential crisis about this.  Read this line again because it’s happening. To me. Right now. In this very moment.

Have you ever leaned over a cliff or the edge of a high building and, while you know that you won’t fall … and in that same fucking moment … your gut drops, body panics and it pulls you back away from the edge?

This is where I am and here we are. My ego is becoming acutely aware of the inevitable dissolution of MYself that will come along with the purging of 36 years of stuff.

Part of me envisions this beautiful journey where I am going to be magically free. I imagine the wind blowing through my hair and sea breeze caressing my skin and glitter and unicorns showering from the sky as Brisket, my mini Australian shepherd, and I saunter all over the planet. Then I hit the edge of the cliff, my ego goes into survival mode and the vision gets dark.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK BRAIN. YOU’RE KILLIN ME SMALLS.

I am jolted into a vision of emptiness. Aloneness. A vastness so deep that it shatters what’s left of me and, without roots or any real home, I drown in the sea of nothingness that I’ve swam out into alone. I feel it happening, I’m doing this to myself and my psych will begin to spin uncontrollably without any coordinates to right itself.

I then take a deep breath and realize I am still here. I haven’t left yet and am acutely aware of both possibilities of being THE true version of my future.

In the end, there is only one way for me to find out. I have to go forward into this journey. My soul is being called. Faith in myself and trust in the abundance of the universe to catch me if I tailspin are the only tools I can carry with me.

I can’t not go.

Last night, after a few glasses of wine (Yes – this is your queue to get your own glass of wine and belly up sister. We got this), I began to purge my closet. I started to say goodbye to my stuff. I said goodbye to myself. It wasn’t so bad really. With the lubrication of some Cabernet, it actually happened on a whim. THANKS CHARLES SHAW.

I pulled out a few things and then a few more. I asked two questions:

1. Will this be going with me in a backpack?

2. Can I simply buy a new one if and / or when I come back?

If the answer to question 1 was NO and the answer to question 2 was YES then it went in the give away pile.

Before I knew it, 2/3 of my closet was empty.

Just like that. Gone. Bye.

When we get caught up in the image of what the future might hold, the opportunity to manifest tragedy is wide open and tempting. In reality though, all we have is today.

Repeat this to yourself: all we have is today. Because I’m repeating it a thousand times.

I thought cleaning out my closet would be a grand and painful activity. It wasn’t. The main activity that I need to do is reassure myself that when Brisket and I embark on our journey into nothing and everything, at once AAHHH, is that we WILL find ourselves simply on the path of next steps. Nothing more. Nothing less.

We will not die a slow lonely death of suffocating into nothingness. We will take it one day at a time. One new face, new place or new breath of air followed unceremoniously by another. Or in Brisket’s case – one butt sniff at a time.

I get to have faith in that.

To find peace in that.

The terrify alternative can easily be fed and manifested if I choose to put my energy there. If I do that, I’ll surely end up staying right where I am, surrounded by all my belongings, telling the same old stories about the same old me.

That is not what I was put on the planet for.