Damage Inc. - Remodel

If we are buried in things, we will be distracted by the shininess, like a baby raccoon or a hyper cat.  Wiggle some thread or flash a shiny object, and the animal forgets everything else and stares, or darts toward it, totally focused.  Darts away from food.  Darts in front of a moving car.  Instantly switches gears.

Downsizing meant admitting to myself that there was too much.  I've only mentioned the physical baggage that we were carrying around, the things that made the people who helped me move over the years cuss me out when it was over, and groan in agony when I asked them to help again.  The physical was the easiest to start on.

Starting on the "stuff" unearthed the real mess.  Years of fear, sadness, financial leaps and bounds and subsequent falls, moves, divorce, illness... the death of friends and the birth of babies, the birth of relationships... that was all under each item, fresh and raw.  It was all waiting patiently to be looked at, inventoried.  It all wanted to fit.  I would have paid someone to have done this for me, because under all the physical was the realm of the spirit, the stuff of the mind, the things I didn't want to look at.  I felt like the biggest fool in the world, sitting in her self-built tower of protection, built on her own avoided issues.  Other people and even my God offered me better places to live, but I would make it here on my own, thank you very much for the offer, and stop pointing out that my sturdy walls look like they were built atop Jell-o.

There is nothing worse than tearing into a house to remodel and finding out there is rotting wood and mold behind perfect-looking walls, floors.  If I wanted, I could just built right back over it all, and keep adding until my world got small enough to manage.  I could keep doing what I had been doing since I was sixteen - add another layer, brick myself in a la Poe.

Instead, I leveled the place.

More in Part II, as well as a disclaimer about my kids and how they have fit into this 'renovation', and a reminder that no, I didn't ACTUALLY and/or literally level the place.