We all go through difficult periods in our lives. We experience things which test our resolve and shake the foundations of our world with epic proportion. As painful as such experiences are they are an essential part of life and spiritual growth, and admittedly while I do not find any comfort in that at present I will respectfully bow my head and accede there is truth in it. I find it hard to believe people suffer only for the sake of suffering and for no other purpose; some things just hurt too much and wreak too much debilitating devastation for there to be no lesson to be learnt from it. My mum as often told me ‘Things always happen for a reason’ and I believe I am coming round to this way of thinking, however slowly.
When I was younger if something was on my mind and I had a problem which needed to be solved – it was usually something internal that I needed to work out for myself – I would change things around in my bedroom. I would in effect spring clean my room in an attempt to spring clean myself spiritually. Some how by moving all of my furniture in to the hall way, usually involving a great deal of pushing and shoving and sheer stubborn determination to move it (I have never gone in for small pieces, the bigger, sturdier, heavier and older it was the more secure I felt) I could physically sort through all my belongings and see what I was going to keep and what I was ready to let go of. Regardless of the weather I would tie back my curtains, throw open the windows and prop open my bedroom door so that the wind could blow and carry away with it the cobwebs of my unneeded past.
I am sure mum loved coming up the stairs to find the top landing almost impassable and being more or less unable to get to the bathroom or to her bedroom. She would not say anything to me, no words of reprimand for the mess I was creating or the dust I was disturbing (I have always had dust fairies living with me, they keep me company and make leaving messages to surprised readers fun). She would survey the piles of clothes, cosmetics, cuddly toys, the mounds of books and folders from school and college and my various bags all heaped in barring disarray and carefully pick her way around it all. She would not even raise an enquiring eyebrow because she knew it was some thing I had to unravel and reorganise by myself. She knew that maybe after a few days when I had straightened things out for myself and in my own mind, there was every possibility I would go to her to talk it over, explaining and learning from it all.
It would take me hours, a whole day to go through everything I owned and to decide whether to keep it. Often what would happen is that I had stumble across an item - a letter, a toy, a top, a card, a near empty bottle of perfume, a photo – that would unleash a memory. It would prompt me to take a few moments to relive that moment or moments and I would be assailed by all that accompanied it; the tears, the laughter, the touches, the conversations ... all bittersweet. Holding it in my hand I could feel the physical and emotional weight of it, I could feel the impression it left on me inside. The heavier it felt within me the more inclined I was to set it aside to bury again for a little bit longer. Somehow I would just know that I was not quite ready to deal with it all yet but that it was only a matter of time until I could. I am not sure what made me know this or be so sure of it, instincts maybe, but I would know it somewhere inside myself. The more demanding the memory and the feelings evoked, the more difficult to fulfil or cope with, the more burdensome or oppressive it was the more I understood that the time was not right and I was not ready to let go of it yet , a longer spell was needed before I could.
Gradually as I worked through the physical trappings and markers of my life everything would be arranged into neat piles; things to stay and be displayed, things to buried in that Pandora’s box in the bottom of a cupboard or wardrobe for another time, things to be donated to others, things to be thrown away and let go of. Next would follow the herculean task of designating the things that I chose to keep with me a place, a home for them to reside for a period of time. Some items I would want to see on a regular basis as a reminder of my life so far, of love, of pain and understanding, of experiences shared and growth, of happiness and sadness, of humility, of pride and lastly but perhaps more importantly of hope. Other things I really would need to put in a box, securing the lid as tightly as I could before hiding it away underneath my hanging clothes in a dark corner. The memories and the hurt encased by four sides and a lid of cardboard were just too raw, too full of anguish, of sorrow and searing hurt that went too deep to be faced with on a daily basis. I guess then growing up I had not yet learnt the sadistic habit of surrounding myself with my hurt so that I could regularly reopen wounds just as they were healing.
The disarray and havoc I unleashed for a whole day on the top of our house was a part of my own journey. It was a part of me stamping my own identity on those four walls, of choosing what to display to others and thinking of what it might say about me and if I was ready to reveal that much. It was about taking stock of the things that were happening in my life and around me and making up my own mind about them. It was about determining my own feelings through how I dealt with things and how I reacted to them. While sorting through my belongings afforded me the chance to rearrange the physical trappings of my life and to make way for new things it was, more importantly, a way of doing the same mentally and emotionally. My hands and my mind would be busy feeling the weight of objects at the same time as my heart would be feeling the weight of the emotion that tied me to it. My heart was in the process of spring cleaning my soul and ridding me of things that prevented me from being able to continue to grow. I could not move on and progress until I had freed myself of the burdens of memories and feelings that kept me rooted in a place that I longer fitted in.
In short, those four walls became a reflection of my life so far, of the path I had trod and the pitfalls along the way, but more poignantly it reflected how I had been shaped. Ultimately those walls became a reflection of the new me. Rearranging my belongings was not merely a part of me growing up, or of getting to know myself, but of coming to terms with the knowledge life has a way of letting you know there are experiences that you need to go through and that there are lessons to be learnt. It is a bittersweet thing to concede that there is a measure of knowledge in life that can only be acquired by living through something alone, through accepting understanding can not come through the advice and words of another.
By the end of the day when I changed my bed linen, bathed and crept into the comfort of my bed surrounded by my new outlook and reflection, I would feel unburdened, purged if you will. A contentedness would suffuse my inner world and hope would return to nest until I had a need to go through the process again.
I think – for I am not sure given that it is always three steps forward one back on this journey – that I have begun to spring clean. Tentatively, I say that I believe I am beginning to immerge from my chrysalis, changed and having metamorphosed into a new version of myself. I no longer have as many physical things and belongings to go through as I did, perhaps that is why I find it so much harder to purge now. Perhaps I am not sure because I have yet to learn how to go through the whole process emotionally. Perhaps because I have nothing to physically discard I can not let go of the emotions, perhaps moving forward is a matter of learning how. I don’t know for certain. This could be yet another time in which I take three steps forward with one to be taken backwards lurking somewhere on the horizon, but I know that I long for spring. I long for the scent of freshness, for the faint promise of warmth and summer behind the bracing wind wafting through my open windows. I long for the fleeting appearance of the sun in the sky while the birds chirrup. I long for the crocuses and daffodils to remind all with the brightness of their blooms of easier climes to come.
