Cider, Bank Statements, and Relationships

A bottle of my favorite Fox Barrel pear cider is sitting on the coffee table next to my propped and crossed feet. Ginger and Blackcurrant, crisp and delicious. The olive green label reminds me of the T-shirt a friend wore yesterday. The shirt (and friend) remind me of what I did, who I saw, where I went, what I felt and thought yesterday. An eventful day, to say the least.

So I'm having trouble concentrating this evening... As I write this I feel exhausted at a deep, deep soul level.

Moving will do that to you.

Not just moving. The whole transition, the change, the transformation, the purging, the letting go, the releasing. Oddly, sorting my possessions has become a therapeutic metaphor for all the other emotional shit. This afternoon the heap of my belongings dwindled while the “throw away” or “donate” piles swelled. While I'm not very sentimental about my stuff I unconsciously attach much of my identity to it. This is a part of my life's footprint. What will I be remembered for, what legacy am I leaving behind, how do my belongings describe who “I” am? And how many old bank statements do I have? Holy shit, so many. 

Believe me, I'm aware of how narcissistic this all sounds.

My point is this: as I process the end of certain relationships and find closure with old paradigms, letting go of the material things gets easier. As my focus shifts to what I want to create, what kind of mental and emotional space I need to dip into my life with a soup ladle, the old stuff naturally drops off. Not to say I'm forgetting or stuffing that old stuff. Far from it. But obsessively focusing on a broken machine can constrict or bloat it until it's the only thing I see.

So this is a balance between the letting go and the creating. What a revolutionary concept.

Sometimes those processes (destroying the old, creating the new) happen simultaneously. Or they overlap. Maybe a relationship ends first so healing can begin before the next one. Maybe we discover an opportunity but in order to reach for it we realize that something else has to give.

I'm uncovering how I want and need to be in relationship with others. Intimate, romantic, friendly, casual, in passing, all of it. What does it mean to be in an equal relationship? When do we hold each other at arms length, when do we put on the masks, when are the masks necessary, when do we say no, when do we say “fuck off,” when do we say “I love you,” and do we really really truly mean it?

In that whole clusterfuck of thoughts, I have to acknowledge just how many objects, thoughts, people, and hopefully habits, I'm letting go of. What a bittersweet process... Each of us has a perspective, a set of feelings, a set of opinions, and a set of justifications that follow our actions. There's nothing inherently wrong with this. All those aspects of ourselves weave, tangle, break, mend, grow, cross, and sometimes separate permanently. Even when the “right thing” seems so illusive, I'm so grateful for what I have and cherish. Like Fox Barrel cider. Not exactly cherish worthy, but still damn tasty.