So I've been rearranging, cleaning, clearing out my room. Well. The clearing part is a lie. Making room in my room, I guess, is what I'm really doing.

It came of the realization that my bedroom was a time capsule: a box of trinkets perfectly arranged to fit a person that once was, not the living, breathing person sleeping there now. I am not who I was in high school, and living spaces are supposed to reflect the people occupying them. See: Discomfort. Awkwardness. A haunting sense of living out of place.

So one insomniacal night I set to work: moving, rearranging, letting go.

Because that's the hardest thing for a pack rat like me, the letting go. Once everything is changed, you can't go back. You can't look at it again, can't walk through it again, can't know your world in the same way ever ever ever, once there is a change. But (eventually) there is the realization that there was already a change, and it's already different, and it's already uncomfortable. May as well repot and hope for the best.

I'm learning that moving the furniture was the easiest thing. Now it's down to poring through the little things and deciding what stays and what goes, looking at the walls that have become background music and deciding what is still relevant. Even putting something in a box to be opened later is like a death sentence, and I a murderer. But the soil must be changed out, the dead leaves removed, the roots pulled apart to make for a healthier bloom. So I persist, hating life.

My point tonight is I was taking down the collage in my closet. It was a door-sized conglomeration of magazine clippings full of helpful suggestions and healthy tips for exercising and losing weight. The irony lay in the centerpiece: an article on relaxation. Nowhere does it say anything about keeping a contingent of "should bes" next to your skinny dress. Or on having a skinny dress in the first place.

As per my established routine, I began carefully pulling each page from its years-old taped-up post. The ginger coaxing, however, soon turned into impatient grabbing, which quickly devolved into aggravated ripping. Before I knew it I was tearing down a Berlin wall of adolescent low self-esteem I had never even realized I built. And it felt good. I felt good. Damn good.

Lesson learned: Change is Good. Or, if not entirely Good, at least Healthy in most respects.

ink :: graphite