Out of the Closet and On to the Floor

I decided to organize my closet in an attempt to start the new year afresh, but I forgot that even though my closet is very small it holds many things... piles upon piles of things.

One hour, two cups of tea and four Electric Feel repeats later I sat on the floor surrounded by things I had not wanted to deal with in the past year. Because that, essentially, is what my closet is for. Things I don't want to see, read, touch and feel, I put away behind closed doors to deal with another day. Things that I love I keep out on shelves in my living room and cluttering the top of my heirloom dresser. This habit ends now.

In the process of clearing my closet I came across 24 bank statements and Master Card bills from 2007/2008 that I had never opened. Why? Because back then I knew I had no money and a growing debt, so why bother opening a letter from the bank telling me how sad my financial status had become.

I also sorted through three years of newspaper clippings. All of them had been shoved into a box. Why? Because I had written them when I thought I had a future as a newspaper woman and looking at them one year after graduating and still not having a cubical at the Globe and Mail to keep them in made me sad, so I had buried them away. Now they are neatly folded and stacked as they deserved to be kept.

I piled up clothes and broken elastic bands, little nick-knacks kept as keepsakes when the memories themselves should be enough to sustain me. I thew out a ticket stub from a concert I went to with a boy I liked. I chucked out pay stubs from the worthless job I had in the service industry which so frustrated me, but also introduced me to the love of my life. And all the time I wondered why do I always do this to myself? Fill my life with unimportant possessions hoping that one day they will come in handy, one day I will need them again. I realize I'm not the only one who does this. Maybe we all need to start over this year and clear out our closest; our physical and emotional ones. Get rid of the junk and free up some space for new experiences.

I did find one thing that I'm really happy about. A book of poems I had written. Why was it in the closet? Because whenever I get depressed I turn to poetry. I write down things in poems so they don't plague my dreams anymore. I'm happy I found this book in the closet because it made me realize that I haven't had to write in it for a long time. Finding it made me want to stop my useless hoarding habit and start a new habit; writing poetry whether I'm happy OR sad. Just writing it for poetry's sake.

Maybe one day I'll post a poem on here.