While I laid on the couch, after my stroke at my parents house, my husband (at the time) packed up everything we owned in our Key West townhouse and put it in a nearby storage unit. Our home was totally dismantled and all my personal possessions were stored away while I just laid there on the couch. It was maddening.
For quite some time, I was able to say – I was homeless. It was true. I didn’t have a home except for the couch that I laid on at my parents house. All my belongings were in the storage unit. I had to go on faith that my ‘things’ made it there. I didn’t have a home and all my worldly possessions were packed in a storage unit by someone else. I was feeling very insecure.
In that time of not having my belongings, I felt an amazing lightness. I felt like I could fully breathe for the first time. Cutting the clutter in my life was unbelievable for my nerves and serenity. For every piece that I owned, there was a sliver of responsibility that was spoken for in my mind. With all my possessions in that storage shed, there was this weightlessness of responsibility that helped so much in my recovery.
I don’t think I can properly describe it. It was this freeing-ness or weightlessness that I felt. For all the things I did have responsibility over, my possessions were not one of them. This was a good thing for me mentally. Those items stayed in the storage unit it for two or three years. Yes. You’ve read that correctly. For two or three years I didn’t have my stuff. It was absolutely liberating.
After years of physical and occupational therapy, a time came when I was strong enough to move into my own apartment with my middle-school daughter. It was the day of reckoning for the things in the storage shed. Would they stay or would they go? My time without my worldly possessions made it so easy to say goodbye to them.
Simplifying agreed with my soul. It freed my soul. My internal self wasn’t all cluttered up with the responsibilities of my possessions. My mind could focus on what was at hand.
When it was time to go through the storage shed, I heavily donated my things. I just felt like someone else could use them, or need them, or take care of them. I did not want that responsibility anymore.
I only kept a small amount. It had to be something I loved, nostalgic or it had to be useful. It was easy when I came to something that I hadn’t touched or worked with daily. It was a definite goner. I donated so many things. My books, my crafts, my clothes, my furniture. It all went.
I only kept what I ‘loved’ and honestly knew that I was going to finish or use. If it was something that I could no longer do because of my new physical limitations, I did not keep it. If I liked it, it went. If I loved it, it stayed.
Looking back now, I wonder how I could’ve been so brave. I see now there were so many things that I hid behind. I got rid of them. It was so liberating.
Purging these items for donation, cleaned up the internal clutter in my mind. I just let it all go. And nothing happened. I didn’t fall apart. The carriage didn’t turn into a pumpkin. I didn’t crumble. I became lightened. I became liberated. I became free.
My new two bedroom apartment houses the things that I love and deem as ‘save’ worthy. This apartment has become an apartment only giving home to things that I love. It makes this home so soothing to me. I am only surrounded by the things that matter to me. I love raising my daughter here and can concentrate better. There isn’t ‘stuff’ just to have ‘stuff’, or furniture to have furniture. We have ‘stuff’ because we love it, has the greatest story to go with it, or we need it.
Possessing less makes us focus on what we do have. Often, we really only use what is no in front of us or what we see. This concept is essential when a medical trauma occurs. It is time to make lemonade out of lemons.
Go ahead and stand at the storage shed. Pick up the pieces, one by one, and decide what to keep, what to give away and what to donate. It is time to re-create yourself. It is time to pull together the useful items and beautiful attributes you want to keep within yourself. It’s time to roll them into one big ball and head off to your new purpose.
