I opened one of the ten boxes left from my move. It was a HUGE box. I expected to see books in it from graduate school (which ended 8 years ago). You see ever since I left NC, all of my things had gone from storage to apartments then back to storage again…and finally in an apartment again. So in my mind it made sense that only memories of my years in NC would be in this box. To my shock and horror, I had papers, research work, and books dating back to 2002…when I was still in COLLEGE!!! Good time to say WE ARE…PENN STATE! ?? Bad time to say I hadn’t lived in PA since summer 2003 and here it is July 2017 and I still have remnants of college and years after still with me! ? I recently read and posted an article written by a woman who explained how being a minimalist and uncluttering the physical things in her home changed her life AND HER SPIRIT. ?? It took me 3 hours to unpack and toss out every single thing in THIS ONE BOX! I never got to the other 9. ? Page after page…book after book…I got so frustrated. Realizing that I’m a neat pack rat is no easy realization. I mean it’s no wonder I can’t make any real decisions about the Ex Factor. He got lucky to meet a pack rat 7 years ago and it’s worked in his favor. Every manipulation depended on him banking that I would not be able to let go of anything! The good. The bad. It would always stay with me and so would he. I mean why the hell do I have research reports still with me. I’ve moved from PA to MD to VA to NC to NJ to VA again back to NJ again with all this CLUTTER! No wonder my heart has felt so overwhelmed and conflicted all these years. I’ve built an island filled of shit that had one use for one season and managed to keep piling more shit on…never taking anything off. Not even the small unimportant stuff! I’m surprised I didn’t find any of my high school or grade school papers in this box! ? I need you to understand something. These things were not kept as special keepsakes. No. They were purposely kept BY ME to ENSLAVE MYSELF to every VICTORY and every DEFEAT! ? That’s when it dawned on me…that the reason I cannot move forward is because I have not truly forgiven myself for all of my mistakes in life. It’s like if I hold on to the good and the bad…I give these last 7 years purpose. ? Why had I not freed myself? I just don’t know the full answer to that. But tossing out the items in this box after carefully examining each thing to make sure there was zero value in them…I know that decluttering is the start of my forgiveness process. I cannot stay stuck in time. Yes there were good days and if I was only taking those moments of greatness with me as a sign of being grateful I had those moments…saying thank you to the universe for those smiles and days of laughter…this would be healthy. But behind each moment of greatness…there were ten doors filled with pain (the papers equaling thoughts I held onto) that I painfully relived since 2002…with 2009 beginning the Dark Ages in my life. Mid 2013, I started to see a light at the end of the tunnel not realizing that while I had physically moved forward…mentally I was still enslaved… ~KJM on Charm School Monday. This is just a beginning process. I had no idea that my life was so cluttered. Are you cluttering your life?
