do it clean

I'm looking for something new, something clean. The clutter of my history is piled up, even now in the apartment I promised myself I would keep organized. I can't seem to get rid of things quickly enough to make space for myself to breathe and think. I am still trying to be someone new who listens to different/ better music and wears less ill-fitting clothes. I want to wake up to find myself trim, elegant, beautiful, and witty - in a bed that is not a tangle of bedding, in a home that has beautiul clean surfaces and floors.

The clutter experts say that your environment is merely an outward representation of your inner life. It's true, everything has been tangled up in there by grief and disappointment.

One year ago, barely out of my marriage, I found myself stunned by an intangible love affair. My feelings, which wanted so badly to grow roots again, could find no substance to cling to. It was merely a ghost in that bed, giving me so much affection that never belonged to me. I let go of it, and I let go of my dad who slid quickly down the slope of cancer and finally gave in in the middle of a hectic summer.

Pushed further from shore than I had been before and cast adrift I gave myself over to long nights of whatever substances were on hand. I stopped vacuuming... I let things pile up until my only release could be escape to a foreign country. I went to the UK, where nothing belonged to me and I did not have to care for anything but myself and a borrowed novel.