Decluttering



I am done prevaricating about decluttering. Tomorrow it starts. Cupboard under the stairs first - all out and sorted into piles: charity shop, to be stored in the garage (the baking tins I don't want to get rid of, the picnic stuff) and the stuff that needs to go to the tip.

Then the kitchen cupboards, another session to go though the the bedroom cupboards and the office. Tomorrow night the house will be clean and tidy so that when I come back from Norfolk on Saturday I will feel calm and happy when I walk through the door instead of cringing at the mess.

Being tidy makes me less anxious and anxiety is something I am working on beating. That nub of fear that lurks at the pit of my stomach has to go. I am tired of laying in bed, sleepless, as the nub germinates and puts out insidious tendrils that grip my innards and invade my brain, whispering, ' you told them that a hundred times before, they were just being polite, you are a bore,' 'he betrayed you,' 'they are laughing at you you pathetic, old, ugly...,' 'how are you going to sort that tomorrow, you can't do that, you are useless,' and on and on. Or the most dangerous voice of all, the Mummy voice - 'you've done really well, you deserve a treat,' 'there, there, never mind honey, eat this  and you will feel better.'

When I get the compulsion to binge I always follow it. If I defeat it once, it will appear later and I will follow it then. It is always a lot of food eaten quickly and mindlessly. When I finish I feel calm, the anxiety goes. Then later the guilt comes and the voices.  

I am sure that I need to have therapy to deal with this. I tried CBT once but I didn't follow it through, lots of reasons, one being that I didn't trust the therapist the other that keeping the diary of moods and causes that they ask you to do was seriously dragging me down and I don't want to deal with all of that on top of everything else.

I know that I have some seriously fucked up ideas about myself and the way I interact with the world. Recently I have tried to consciously slow down, to relax, to 'go with the flow' rather than jumping in first . Because of this I enjoyed Christmas enormously, time spent with friends and family has been sweet.

The picture is the Farne Isles from the beach between Bamburgh and Seahouses. This beach is my happy place, it is where my soul is free. It represents my aspirations, where I want to be, how I want to feel.  

Tomorrow I start the decluttering, the sweeping of the cobwebs, the clearing out, the creation of space.