Saturday Morning, and I woke up at 4 as usual, then dozed uncomfortably till 6:30. Coffee, and juice with chia seeds was my breakfast. I find it really difficult to eat when I'm nervous, and nervous is my new normal wake up feeling. Not fun. But I think the chia seeds are maybe magical, and they fueled my actions for the morning, which included packing some clothes, most of my dishes, and sorting out a few more bags for the goodwill.
I got to the goodwill and the bank and back before D even started to stir, and spent the rest of the morning sorting and packing, tossing things and just generally moving stuff around my apartment. It was fine once I got going, and I barely felt nervous at all!
I am going to miss this place. I love this apartment! If I hadn't lost my job and been plunged deep into financial uncertainty by factors outside of my control, I would have loved to stay here. The room where I sleep is made almost entirely of windows. I will definitely miss that when I go back into the dark depths of Edgehill House, but I hope I can lighten things up in there now that it is all mine. Paint the walls white, hang some mirrors, and maybe even put in some bigger windows someday. I am trying to get excited about the move and the potential for fun decorating. Maybe I will pick out a new mural for the living room or cover the wall in mirrored tiles like my Grandma Bea had in her parlor. They had yellowish veins in them, like marble, so you couldn't really see your reflection clearly. But I did love looking at room reflected in them.
I found some interesting things while I was cleaning and sorting. There were a couple of unfinished objects in the knitting piles - fingerless mitts that I only knit one of the pair. I think I'm going to throw them away. A blouse I made from a pillowcase with a knitted yoke - I distinctly remember the feel of the yarn and the slip stitch pattern. The top never fit, because the pillowcase was too small to go around my body to begin with, but I separated the pieces and tossed the pillowcase. The chance that I'll get around to sewing a new bodice onto the yoke is slim, but the memory in that strip of knitted fabric wouldn't let me throw it away. I found the hospital bracelets from when I delivered Delia. Those seem like something I should keep, but I really kind of hate them. My memories of childbirth are almost totally unpleasant, as are my memories of her infancy. Part of it was certainly postpartum depression, but a lot of it was the unspoken resentment my spouse held for me getting pregnant in the first place. A resentment I could certainly feel at the time, but he did not get around to explaining it to me till I left him last year. So I kinda want to throw them away. Maybe I'll ask the kid if she wants them instead.
I found a framed picture of Harley and 3Jane, the cats we had so long ago. They're both gone now. Sometimes I feel like when Harley left I lost some of my ability to love things. If it were true then maybe I could find his remains and make a potion out of them and somehow get it back. Though really, since he left and never came back I wouldn't even know where to start looking. I put the picture with the other pictures I have framed over the past year. Precious windows into the past. I resolve to hang more pictures in Edgehill House this time.
I also found plastic bags with locks of hair. One is Keith's, and I think the other one is probably mine. I don't know why I kept them, I'll probably throw them away too. I feel like throwing everything away sometimes. I gave a lot of things to the goodwill, things that someone might find useful or interesting. But not plastic bags full of dyed purple hair.
The kid finally dragged herself out of her cocoon around 3, and we had a chance to talk in the kitchen while we each made our own foodstuffs. She made herself a breakfast of English muffin and fruit, I made some lunch out of bacon and zucchini. There was a photo album from D's babyhood in the pile of stuff I was sorting, and I asked her if she wanted to look at it, which she did. She is not ashamed of her baby pictures, which is good. I got the feeling from talking to her that she remembers her childhood as happy. There's a meme going around the FaceBook that says "My goal is to give my kid a childhood she doesn't have to recover from." I understand the sentiment, but I really hate that meme. Nobody is perfect, and all parents are going to influence their kids both negatively and positively. My childhood was mostly safe and happy but I have to understand how it made me who I am. Part of growing into a functional human is changing the negative patterns or behaviors that I carried away from it. I look at some people in my life and wish that they would just start trying to recover from their childhoods. And I guess that meme stings me a lot because even though I did the best I could, I know my daughter is marked by my failures. I can see them in her teenager attitudes, and I can't do anything about them now. The only thing I can do is be the best person I can be, trite but true, and God damn if it isn't so very fucking hard most days I just want to lie down for a while.
So, the apartment is about 40% packed I'm estimating, and I have to live here for another week, but I'm going to try to get a little bit more done today. I have this feeling that if I just accomplish enough I will start feeling good about myself again, but Mark says that's bullshit. There is some kind of spiritual breakthrough I have to make before I can just love myself. I thought I was ok with myself before I lost my job but it turns out I wasn't. I'm absolutely terrified about going into business, and I wish there was something stronger inside me to help me stay upright while this business thing tries to come together. I feel like a moron when the money people start talking, and I can bake bread for hours at a time but I don't know anything about financial projections - even though people are trying to help me I still can't make one. And I have to be strong and stay positive and be a light, right? Even if we fail in our venture the very worst thing that can happen is that my house gets foreclosed on and I have to move in with my Mother. We would have a lot of fun watching all five of the cats learn to get along with each other. :)
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