Saturday, October 1, 2011

What I Did On Summer Vacation

School has been back in session for a while now, but now that it's officially fall I thought I'd pay tribute to the old "What I Did On Summer Vacation" essays our teachers had us write when we were kids.


My summer wasn't all that much fun, but it was spent wisely.


I discovered earlier this year that the house I had been living in was what I could only call "diseased". It was a nice home, but had some serious foundation problems caused by water damage that took a while to become evident. Once I was advised that there was moisture in the structure causing mold and mildew, I realized why I had been feeling especially ill since moving in. Luckily, I was able to get out of the contract to buy the house since the owners had not been honest about some very material things regarding the home, but it took most of the year to find another suitable place.


It's not as easy as you might think to find a place when you have a pet, especially a dog like Booger. Because Booger is part pit-bull, and there are issues in some communities that actually have ordinances and/or policies against certain breeds of dogs, it became challenging to find the ideal property. The homes I viewed without those restrictions often didn't have a fenced back yard (an important requirement for any dog owner) and it's astonishing how many homes there are for lease or purchase that simply aren't move-in ready.


I wasn't prepared to spend the summer painting or replacing flooring, so that added to the list of requirements. You might think that a buyer's market would mean there would be an abundance of homes to meet anyone's needs, but depending on your requirements, sometimes it just isn't the case. A lot of what I saw looked like homes that had once been very nice, but that the previous owners hadn't been able to afford to maintain very well and they had become badly in need of major repairs.


Fortunately, I found the closest thing to perfect in a home and was able to move over the summer. That's pretty much what the whole summer was about - handling details, packing, moving, unpacking and all of the endless details that come with "moving house", as I learned there are some who refer to the task.


There's something unnerving about packing up everything you own and moving to different surroundings, regardless of how close or far away the new location. It's almost as though you are doing surgery on your life and you're forced to juggle your regular responsibilities with a huge, gaping incision exposing all of your internal works as you do so. The task is made all that more difficult when you happen to have obsessive-compulsive disorder and struggle with the need to feel in control of an out-of-control world. I won't go into details, but let's just say it takes about five times as long to "move house" when you have O.C.D. as it does for the average person.


Somehow, (and with the help of some really nice friend-folk), I managed to get moved in a reasonable amount of time. What's amazing is that, for the first time, I've also managed to get almost everything unpacked and put away in a reasonable amount of time, not so easy to do for those of us who are spoonies and run out of energy before we run out of things that must get done.


In the past when I've moved, I've never completely gotten unpacked even several years down the road, because it seems there's just enough time to get things "barely livable" before it's time to go to work, sleep, eat, run errands, and everything else that must get done each day before I'm out of energy and/or time and there's nothing left for unpacking boxes.


This time around, I've learned that it's ok if I only unpack one box a day. I gave myself permission to start unpacking and stop at one box, rather than feel as though it must all get done in one long marathon session. That's not easy for me, but mastering that one skill has really paid off. The moving part wasn't easy, but the unpacking has actually happened in a way that almost made it seem effortless... gradually over the past couple of months, things have taken shape one unpacked box at a time, and now I'm able to enjoy where I live as a home rather than a storage warehouse of unpacked boxes.


I've talked to several other people who tell me they never quite get unpacked. Boxes sit for years, their contents forgotten, until they are finally opened and things discovered they wish they had been able to use all that time, if only they had known where they were.


I'm not talking about hoarders, here. I'm talking about regular, everyday people who, once they have unpacked just what they need in order to live, are simply unable to find the time, energy, or motivation to finish unpacking.


I know a guy in Las Vegas who has literally lived among unpacked boxes of everything he owns but his clothes for about ten years now. He eats at restaurants so he doesn't need his dishes. He's got his bed set up. The only thing he has unpacked are his clothes and his toiletries. Everything else (dishes, wall hangings, personal items, books, memorabilia, decorative items) remains boxed up just as it was the day he moved in. He doesn't seem happy with it, he just hasn't found the motivation to get unpacked and make a home for himself.


We have discussed this predicament many times, and he doesn't seem to know why he lives this way, especially when he doesn't really enjoy it. Perhaps he's just overwhelmed with the seeming enormity of such a daunting task. Unpacking boxes, figuring out where to put everything, cleaning what needs it and creating a functional home can be intimidating for anyone. I think the desire to do so requires a certain amount of satisfaction in where one is physically/geographically, which he seems to have, but it also requires a certain amount of engagement with one's surroundings, which I think may be what he lacks. Engagement vs. detachment can be just as important when it comes to one's environment as it is with people. If you don't find a way to make your home or work space an integral part of you, you're left with a feeling of displacement. Or, perhaps, feeling displaced is what makes it difficult to engage with an environment of any kind.


He and I used to work together in think tanks, and there was a lot of travel involved. It can be difficult to adjust to one predominant "home" location after years of being sent all over the country and/or globe to sit in a room with a bunch of other brainiacs and try to solve problems, hypothetical or real. Each project would often have non-disclosure agreements and restrictions on what could be discussed outside of the project room. When the project ends, you move on to the next, compartmentalizing sometimes disturbing data in order to focus on the next task.


Perhaps there is something symbolic about un-boxing everything for the first time and living among your belongings as part of who you are instead of keeping them boxed up, out of reach and useless as anything but large blocks of dead weight. I'd say I've come a long way in doing the same thing with other things in my life that have previously weighed me down, and it's nice to discover that what I previously thought was dead weight is actually a part of who I am, and that even though others may view some of those parts of me as "junk" or "undesirable", they are my own, and I no longer feel the need to keep them boxed up.


There was a time when I kept many things compartmentalized by necessity, either for work or personal reasons. We all have some of those things. However, I've recently become comfortable with taking them out of the large moving boxes filled with packing peanuts and putting them in my mental shoe boxes full of memories I keep under my mental bed or in a mental closet for my own viewing only. They have lids, but the lids are easily removable. Instead of weighing me down, they simply remind me that I have lived a very full life, with many secrets that others would never believe unless they discovered them in a hidden shoe box themselves and read them, one by one.


They may be hidden, but they are no longer "packed". I've managed to find a place for all of them to live, not confined in useless boxes, but well integrated as a part of who I am.


A.