The Box

For years and years I kept my life in a box. People, places, things, emotions; all tightly packed just how I wanted them to be. Everything had its proper place in that box: things were separated that needed to be, things were buried deep down at the bottom if they were painful or hard to deal with, and things that were bright, shiny, easy and fun were kept right on top. Sometimes things in the box would slip or shift, fall out of their proper place, and I would scramble to put everything back where it belonged.

The more stuff I shoved into that box, the more I messed around with what was in there so it all was EXACTLY where I wanted it to be, the less stable the walls of the box became. I tried to reinforce the box by adding in a dependency on alcohol to suppress my emotions and, when that didn’t work, I tried to run (l literally started running) away from the box, but it was always there.

The night I came out to my ex-husband, the box completely disintegrated and everything I had been packing in it for so long came tumbling out ALL over the place. Seeing my entire life scattered about, exposed for everyone to see, I became paralyzed. I lost all confidence in myself, in my ability to make decisions on even the most basic things, there was so much strewn all over the place that I didn’t know where to begin, so I just stood there.

Eventually, I began picking up those things that had been in the box, but I did so manically. I kept trying to pick everything up, but I had nowhere to put it anymore and every time I picked one thing up, something else would fall out of my hands. I was so busy trying to grab everything that I never stopped to examine what I was grabbing, to see if maybe what I was trying so hold onto was something that I didn’t want or need anymore, something I needed to leave behind.

I am so incredibly impatient, I want to be done with this part already. My impatience is hindering my forward progress. I need to slow down and take the time to really examine the mess that is at my feet and figure out what is important and hold onto those things only. I’m really good at avoiding the things I don’t want to deal with, sometimes my denial is so deep I don’t even see everything I need to, and I know there are a lot of things I don’t want to deal with sitting at my feet. My confidence in my ability to do this part is not very high right now, but I’m not going to use that as an excuse to leave things as they are.