I haven't been able to sleep in my bedroom since November. There are a number of reasons for this. Well, firstly, it's a disaster, and that's the main reason, but it's an umbrella that arches over many other, more painful issues. All related to grief and grieving.

Let's set the table without the grief centerpiece. I am an insomniac; I have post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety (all being treated by prescribed meds taken responsibly, stress reduction techniques and daily exercise).  And, admittedly, I have the propensity to be a slob. My husband would call me a slob. I hate housework. I'm "too busy" to do it. Okay, so now that THAT'S out of the bag, I feel more comfortable talking about the bigger picture.

I have this habit of saying "long story LONGER...." but it's true! I try to truncate my stories, but I find so many details are essential to the telling of the story that I run off course.  Right, where was I? Ay.

Right, my bedroom. I call it the Grey Gardens. Seen the movie? You know then. Every time I've travelled in the past year I have never completely unpacked. I've done a lot of travelling, mostly involving trips to CT visiting my father. Coming back emotionally exhausted, and never really knowing where my head was, I'd unpack enough to find the dirty laundry and essential cosmetics......and that's about it. I knew I'd be on a plane again fairly soon, so why bother with the *whole* unpacking thing?  This has created indistinguishable clothing piles. I used to be able to keep track of which was clean, and not, and call it a messy bedroom. It's way, way, beyond that now.

I can't bear to touch the clothes I wore while my father was alive on our last visit. They sit in the boxes I mailed back to MN after the funeral because I had to stay on longer than of course I'd planned. I don't even want to touch the *boxes* that sit in the middle of the floor, as if they contain physical energy that will hurt me. There are piles of nebulously categorized clothes on my bed, so many that I sleep in a "nest." Reading this makes me sound like a hoarder.  What I really want to do is an old-fashioned "Do-Over:" chuck it all. Donate it all.  And it makes me realize I fortunate I am, that I have so many clothes.  Stuff I don't need, don't wear, can't bear to touch.  Then there's the fact that I've dropped a lot of weight since the fall, and things don't fit.

So there's the clothing bit. I could purge and purge big. This would help the overall Grey Gardens atmosphere.  However, I am so overwhelmed because I realize I've been hanging on to this stuff as if it's a connection and a crutch, and that putting things away means An End. See, this gets heavy, fast.

But then, holy crap, there are these other boxes, more recent ones, taking up residence in my bedroom, too, in purgatory along with my clothes, suitcases, and trunk. Long story short? Boxes of things from my dad's house, from the most recent trip--the 0h-my-god-my-dad's-dead-and-I-am-cleaning-out-his-house trip. The things my father saved that I am now saving. The sweater vest my Nonni knitted for my father that he never wore. My Poppi's glasses. My father's report cards, newspaper articles from his high school diving days. And most painfully, there are journals. These have kinetic energy that pull me in and then sucker punche me. I want to put all these things in a good space, a reverent space, but I don't know what that space looks like, or where it is. So they sit where my husband put them. I mailed them to him from CT.  I was gone, have been gone, essentially, since mid-December, with the exception of a few weeks home in February.  Now home, it's April, and I look at them, wait, get a little stronger, and a little closer...and shake my head no. Not yet.

But then, today, gingerly sifting carefully through one of these boxes, I found a journal I had given to my mother in 2005, a transcription of my own diary through the second of her three near death hospitalizations due to her alcoholism. I could not resist reading it, as if my own handwriting would be less painful. Wrong. Reading and re-living that experience caused me to grieve for her all over again.  It reaffirmed that I am not ready to deal with *anything* in the boxes, because I don't know what's in them, even though I was the one that packed them.  My father saved the journal I gave my mother. It must have caused him immense pain to have a transcription of what happened. How could I have been so cruel to either of them? Is this the action of a loving daughter? So tonight, I am spiralling into sadness; I realize I did not do it to hurt my parents but to make the experience tangible for us--as if living it were not enough. Alcoholism runs in families. I have the gene, as did my maternal grandparents, my maternal aunt, my sibling.  My mother's legacy, as I mentioned in an earlier post, was to free my family from the tyranny of alcoholism. Back in 2005, I saw myself heading down her path when she entered the hospital in October and I was angry at her for it.  I was also angry at myself: how could I possibly be leaning in a direction with such a visible destination? Took me a while, but I've figured it out. I don't have to head in that direction. But I am so sad I projected that on my mother and gave her something "out of love" that was very ugly. And now I am the owner of this document to my insensitivity, along with the things I mentioned above.

It's good I found it. It's good I read it. A reminder of lots of things. Como se dice?  The power of words; the visceral nature of personal items kept by one and passed on to another; the fear of unpacking; the need to surround myself with *stuff* in the presence of loss...that's a lot of lessons for one messy bedroom! My bedroom is a macrocosm of my mind, a physical manifestation of the messiness that life is for me right now.  If it's true that in grief we're supposed to allow our hearts and minds to be in whatever state they happen to be, do I have to tread as gingerly with my external stuff? Since I'm getting help for the internal, why not ask for help with the external. I think that's called "reaching out." Ah geez. Personal growth from Grey Gardens? Hell, yes.