Burning One Down

My daughter had just fallen asleep. A difficult task considering the sweltering Oklahoma heat in July. She was sweating heavily because my central air had finally given out. A situation I was dreading but couldn’t do anything about. I kept checking her temperature obsessively just to make sure she was ok. My checking likely contributed to her fitful slumber. Her temp was climbing ever so slowly. I don’t know when it got to my action point because it is really hazy. I took my floor fan out on the porch and plugged it into the socket outside thinking somehow I would find cool air.

I went back inside the house and picked up my baby. I stood on the porch swaying back and forth with the oscillation as if that was going to help. The fan was only pushing warm air across the porch. It was over 90 degrees in the middle of the night.

I kept going over my life and thinking about the things I should have done differently that could have prevented this moment of desperation. I realized trying to change that show was fruitless so I started to pray. I prayed for comfort and control over my daughter’s rising temps. I kept trying to get her to drink more water whenever she would wake up but even that was warm.

Then when I was done praying I decided everything had to change.

Ev-ry-thing!

Last night I was going through some papers I have been dragging around with me for several years. My family knows the ones. The ones I was obsessed with ordering and reordering and scanning and reading and researching and . . . and . . . and . . .

I have been through some things that might make a good novel someday. Though you’ll likely not believe much of it. I was getting rid of most of the instructions and regulations and intentionally vague directives. The rest I am having a hard time letting go of. The rest represent four of the hardest years of my life. It is literally my baggage. Well, my box-age.

It is a printer paper box full of every shred of whatever I thought even remotely relevant to my fight. It isn’t light. It has been pushed around my living room so I can vacuum so many times I can't count. I have stubbed my toe on it. It couldn’t live in my closet because that was also full of things I didn’t have time to go through and get rid of. So my box-age sat in my living room for everyone to see. Anyone who knew what it was tried to ignore it.

I had people actively asking me to give up but what was in that box was a matter of life. I was as desperate to change every shred of paper in that box as I was determined to cause my life to change that night on the porch. It has a tendency to consume. We have all met those people consumed by some cause they can’t let go of. We have seen people destroyed by the thing they are dragging behind.

Early this year the rock wall gave away. When it did a flood of changes came with it. It was so shocking the way everyone expected that since I had prevailed I would instantly give up my box. I can’t for a variety of reasons.

First, it has been with me for so long. There is a certain amount of comfort in the things you have control over in your life. Reorganizing, sorting, adding to and taking away from that box was the only thing I could control when it seemed everything else was in a vortex.

Second, the water has rushed by and largely soaked into the ground but some part of me can’t believe it is all over. I guess I am holding onto the box just in case I need it to preserve my life again. Like there is still a deluge that lurks behind the wall I have come through. Usually described as paranoia.

It was so hard for so long, it is difficult to think it was over so quickly and I came out alive on the other side. The other side likes to move on like nothing ever happened, like I was never drowning. In a way this box is the only way I know I wasn’t crazy, I really endured that. If I get rid of the box all memory of what I went through only exists in my heart.

I have other baggage as well. Anxiety from relationships, a certain amount of traumatic stress that resurfaces because of my career. Someone I met this year who I look to very much helped me to see that I can let some of it, possibly all of it, go. A month or so ago I looked at one of those bags and thought, “hmmm. This isn’t useful and it is hurting me to keep ahold of it. Let me set it down.”

I set it down and walked away. Every now and then, I start to feel the anxiety but I remind myself that I set that bag down and I need to leave it where it is. It is a work in progress. Eventually, I want to let the others go as well. I want the work to start in a tangible way with my box-age. Truth is, even if I keep the box, I am the only one who will know and I don’t really want to rehash it all again. I can’t move forward in a positive way if I feel the pain every time I look at it. And no one can console me over it. So I need to destroy it so it can be distanced from my memory as well.

I want to burn it page by page in a fire and watch it rise up and disappear.

Things have to change.

Things have to change.