A few hazy evenings ago I got home and went straight to my Macbook Pro in my bedroom to put down some thoughts from a sudden inspiration. I was barely five minutes into my writing, when I heard some scraping sounds behind me, and I turned just in time to see some creepy crawly slip behind one of my paintings on the wall. I decided to leave it alone, thinking I had some time before it came out and I could always get to it later. Then the damn thing came crawling out and it was a f—king HUGE ASS COCKROACH. Literally I was like, OMG OMG WTF WTF OMG OMG WTF…
And to make matters worse… just like the penguins I create in their lovely world in the sky… it liked to FLY!!! ARGH!! I hate cockroaches, and I’m kinda scared of them (probably from the childhood trauma when I was 6 and one sprinted literally across my bed WHILE I WAS IN IT…), and as long as they stay away from me, I’m totally cool. But when it’s fluttering around my room, landing on my stuff, taunting me with its giant twitching feelers, there isn’t much else I can do except squeal in terror and attempt to nuke it with a whole lot of F bombs. Which clearly didn’t work.
Anyway, my brother happened to pass by my room at the time, so he got a roll of newspaper, and before he proceeded on my behalf to whack the bejeezus out of the little devil, I quickly closed the wardrobe door that was kept open by a jacket that needed to be dry-cleaned from 6 months ago. The newspaper attacks started from the top of the white cabinet where I kept some books and other trinkets from traveling, where my Tennessee license plate was displayed together with a Statue of Liberty and a pig with sunglasses, both made from those stress ball kind of material. Together with a Coca Cola football from almost 20 years ago, these items ended up on the floor as my heroic bro removed them to gain access to the monster, and as he whacked at it, there was a little poof of a dust storm.
The cockroach flew across the room to the chest of drawers outside my bathroom, where I had hung a t-shirt and running shorts on one of the handles. It hid between the shirt and the drawer, and after Aaron moved the shirt, the terror ended up on the floor behind extra bottles of liquid Dove and Pantene, and under the drawers. I grabbed my flashlight and followed it under my table, which housed a basket of scented candles I was never going to use and some paintings in an ArtFriend plastic bag that was disintegrating. This was when Aaron seized the opportunity of the space beneath the table to destroy our common enemy (whacking it a few times more than necessary), and it received a watery farewell down the toilet. *insert MAJOR SIGH OF RELIEF*
I wish I had documented the process (like the social media pro that I am, ahem ahem) to better illustrate this little story, but this post really isn’t about the victory over that nasty nasty thing. That really wouldn’t be all that interesting because I’m sure you’ve got your own heroic tales of taking down this vile creature, perhaps even more entertaining than mine. But as I looked over the aftermath of our victory - the stuff strewn on the floor, the dust under the chest of drawers and on top of the cabinet, the hoarder’s paradise beneath my table… the one thought I had was: Why do I have to many things? How did I come to have so many things? And why are they still here?
And that’s just what the eye can see. What I normally pretend not to notice is the wardrobe filled with clothes I don’t wear, the cabinet filled with trinkets that have no use, the junk in the drawers I tell myself I'll use someday, the box full of old journals and stories I wrote from the first half of my life, old photographs from late-teen-early-adult years, old letters from friendships exist now only on Facebook, a bagful of stuffed toys, and earlier artworks and song lyrics that were messy and awkward and abandoned halfway - all signs of a life spend accumulating unused things and unfinished projects. Signs of a half-lived life, halfway gone, and still half-fucked. And if I were to die tomorrow (which, let’s face it, is a very real possibility), who would I leave behind to deal with this mess, and what can they do with it but to get rid of it anyway?
It was ultra clear to me - I can't LIVE like this. I can’t LIVE knowing that someone else would have to clean up after my messes, to continue to pretend that it doesn’t happen, to lead a life filled with unimportant things, unfinished work and half-arsed efforts. The real battles cannot be fought when there are all these incompletions and clutter in the way, all merely distractions, excuses, and self-created obstacles to keep me from what really matters, to keep me from fighting the good fight. And perhaps right now my good fight is about these things, to sort out the messiness of my existence, to cut out the fluff and get to the core of what’s real and what’s truly important.
In the words of one of my literary heroes, Paulo Coelho: "It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn't matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over.”
So what do we really need to let go of? Why do we continue to attach ourselves to things that only clutter our worlds and hold us back from our truth? Why does the mess exist in the first place? And even after we declutter and sort things out, how many times would we have to continue this work before the mess is finally gone?
I’m still searching for my answers, and I may never know all of them in this lifetime, but one thing is for sure, I definitely need to de-hoard and declutter, so that at the very least, if I were to encounter a cockroach in my room again, there will be fewer places to hide, and I increase my chances of winning the fight.
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