Aug 24

 Fits and starts. Yesterday I had a bit more energy for a while. Today I have struggled to have much at all. I have pathetically taken 5 or 10 minute bite sized chunks out of tasks - mostly cleaning stuff and throwing it out. But it's slow going. And I just leave it in place and come back to it a few hours later when my energy resets a little.

As I go, of course, I pull through some items and things of the mutts. Each one has a long attachment of memories to it. For me. As a nutcase. Two of their favourite sticks. Now long long discarded. Their teeth marks still in them. One half gnawed to death. The last two big sticks they tackled. The original dog bed Athena had. Her first. And one of a pair that sat then forevermore under the kitchen table, a den of sorts, where they would go to chill out at times. Ares first puppy blanket. Tiny. Covered with paws.

What. Do you do with it all.

I threw the dog beds out. Old. Buggered.

But so many memories. And part of my life. Part of the DNA of my dogs.

Throwing them out is not like disposing of the junk through the door into the bin.

It's a wrench. It's awful. It's like throwing a bit of them out into the garbage. I can feel every step on approach to the bin. And chucking them in. Like throwing an anchor out and it pulls you along behind it. Awful.

And each bit is like another underscoring of that which is gone. A finality. A line between what is, and what isn't. This is part of a life you no longer have. It sucks to be you. Fuck you.

I struggle with it. A lot. I have an intense attachment to some of this stuff. The thought of throwing it out fills me with sadness and doubt and all I really want to do is keep it. Like some miserable museum.

But for the most part. I am throwing it out.

I am keeping Ares first puppy blanket. I cannot throw it out. It seems an impossibly awful thing to do.

It's just a thing. It doesn't matter.

Except it does to me. I am aware it shouldn't matter and how stupid it is. And yet. My emotions are tied to it.

It is hard.

I have Ares dog tag on my key ring. It is always with me. Athenas was lost in the woods. Otherwise I would have hers too.

I Suppose it is this way whenever you deal with cleaning out the stuff of someone you have lost. Memories. Attachments. We cannot simply throw our emotions into the garbage. They are part of us. And so perhaps the physical manifestation of them also lingers in that same space.

Part of what I fear and horrifies me about this process is the slow blurring at the edges and forgetting of memories. All those things are beginning to fade. And it's awful. Even though many are unimportant. The pattern on a dog bed. It is I think connected to the bigger whole. That understanding that you are losing them in their entirety bit by bit. Watching the tide come in and erode the sand castle. It is horrifying to watch something that you hold so dear slowly eroded. Torture, really.

In the dim depths of my past, my first hardcore head over heels girlfriend I had, I ended up throwing away almost everything I had of her. At the time I thought it was the smart thing to do, as I had caught myself after the relationship had ended, attaching to physical things, and those things would hurt and yada. And really, she didn't deserve that level of grief. So I threw most of it out. A cleansing. I regretted that decision many times over the years. But eventually I came full circle and realised it was the smart thing to do after all. The breakup of that relationship fucked me up for years afterwards ( and very arguably also changed who I was forevermore ). In fact. I'd probably say it was a good 10 years before most of it was resolved. And more than that before it had passed into nothing more than an unemotional memory. I think if I had kept hold of things it would have been harder and longer, even though, by any normal counting, it was still a pretty hard path out of that relationship.

Here I am. A different loss. A different relationship gone. But. Its ending is also different. And I am struggling to let go of each thing in turn as I come to it.

I still have Athenas blue ball in the bathroom. Covered in teeth marks. I don't think I will ever let it go at this point. A permanent fixture.

In many ways it reflects the place I am stuck in perhaps. Unwillingly, unable, to move on.

I do not want to lose them. Even though I have already lost them.

There is also, as I discovered recently, a negative space to ditching all your stuff. A cleansing that cleans down to the bones. It also disposes of yourself. The things that you have done. The person you were, you are. It also dissolves bit by bit as you eject stuff. Until, perhaps, in an empty room, you are nothing and no one. Not one record of what you have done or who you are exists. Like you never existed at all. There is in there somewhere, a very nihilistic and self destructive end point. Whilst the notion of being non materialistic, and minimal often seems like a good idea in todays world, and one I would agree with, there is I think also a sting in the tail there. That you are in the end just erasing yourself. Not just the shit around you. The secret is I think, that the things around you do end up being part of you, or vice versa. It is your story. Your existence. Yes it is just materialistic things. But it is the mark of your footprints through the snow. It shows your path, the journey, the ups, the downs, the proof that you were here, that you had an impact, you were real. Without it. You become unreal. Untethered. A spectre haunting a place.

It is a small revelation to me. That materialism, whilst often a really stupid thing, isn't just this shallow materialistic magpie drive. It is something deeper and more fundamental at its best and in places. It is actually pieces of your soul crystalised out into an object. It is a set of memories, emotions, and places that are tied to a physical anchor.

The buddhists say you should hold onto nothing. Let it all go. Be at one. But then. When you look at it from on high, the buddhists end goal is actually very nihilistic. To be nothing. To be a tree. To have no impact. If you believe in a spiritual higher place and nirvana, maybe that makes sense to be at one with it, to reject everything worldly, to not engage or be engaged. But. If its just animals. Monkeys. Fucking around with fucked up brains. Then that active drive to push yourself out of existence is not spiritual enlightenment - it's just pure nihilistic self destruction.

I think buddhism nails a lot of things. I also think it gets somethings very wrong. Particularly when it wanders off into the weeds into pure bullshit of imaginary higher plains of spiritual existence.

In the end I think. There are some things. Some bits of material that we need to keep. Just as proof that everything isn't a dream if nothing else. A bookmark. In the story of our life. That you can refer back to. And tells you that it actually happened. And all the things that were part of it. And that. I think. Is incredibly important to who we are. Most stuff we have, we don't need. It is junk. But. Crucially. Not all of it. Some bits of it are actually very important.

I don't know. One day at a time. I have no clue what I am doing. I am just surviving. No purpose. I am not alive. I am instead, just not dead yet. There is a difference.

Hmm.

Tired again. It is late afternoon and I am already exhausted. A handful of hours up. And I am done.

That certainly doesn't make life easier to deal with. A chronically fucked health situation.

Sigh.

Push it out of your head Johnny. And sleep.