purging the clutter

I have a naughty dog who likes to pee in my crawl space, despite his doggie door. despite having a large back yard enough room for fifteen dogs to all go piss on shrubs and trees and fences, he wants to piss inside. i am displeased tonight.

I have been purging things from my house. general disorder and clutter wear on me, mentally. I do this about once every five years, where it feels like EVERYTHING MUST GO. The only way for me to come out of depressions is to make major shifts. I am better at not ending relationships in the midst of depressive episodes now. that took a long time to hurdle over.

i am lucky in that i own nothing of value, really. i have mostly thriftt store items decorating my home and so it' not a big loss when i let go. it gets easier to just box it up and take it to goodwill, knowing it already had a second or third life with me and will move along the conveyor belt to some other home.

i don't know why i write any more. i know i have to, for some reason. i have learned that a depressed mind is an unquiet mind, despite the silent way i go about life these days. i was once loud, obnoxious even, and would write or tell anything to anyone. then a wall slowly started building and since then, i have become a quiet person. my mind, however, is not quiet. it runs through scenarios and obstacles and past traumas and failures every day.

i think the need to declutter is to give my very real life a larger, more vast space for this mind. i need an echo, something large and empty to speak into. besides my partner, i am mostly alone. i don't gravitate toward people or social places. i think i used to in order to feel i had a place i belonged, but i really don't crave that in my mid-40s. i don't really crave much of anything, but writing and reading, the occasional classical music listening... a walk, fruit. i really like fruit now, which is not something i ever enjoyed much in the past.

[still pissed at the dog for his naughty pee jobs]

you'd think having a mate in the mental health field, i'd be more prone to talk to him about when i am not well. you'd think that, but the opposite is true. i find myself having surface conversations to avoid telling him i am not doing great. you'd think a partner in the mental health field would notice small signs or ask important questions, but it's just not true. maybe i'm just too prideful or maybe i just don't want to have anyone make a fuss over me any more. i feel like i ran out of my fussing over chances long ago.

being lonely is a gift, really. it's sort of easy to eschew responsibility and just wander off into whatever i'm doing that day. it's also a curse in that i never feel known, looked after, respected, missed or maybe, probably, truly loved. i guess that's just the way it goes. i'm fortunate to have a home, a car, insurance, a computer to write, sweet dogs that unnerve me, a tasteful life, nothing too frilly or big. the same with people. it's a tasteful one or two people i trust. there is not pretense there. they know my mental health sucks. they dig me anyway. nobody in my life expects me to be anything i am not. i worked hard for that. when you have BPD, you have to be so transparent for so long, eventually you really do just stop saying much of anything at all. giving back all those personalities to the wind... you kind of become the wind. untouchable, ungraspable, this wild and unseen force.

i am so protective of my recovery that i don't make mention of things like common grief. losing both my parents and still dealing with those losses, 2 years after. Mother was hardest of all. Dad just sort of disappeared. Mom dying after i cared for her for 5 months, watching cancer eat her, that wasn't really what i was expecting. i was hoping she might live forever, i guess. or until i was old. right where i am sitting writing, she laid there and died in my arms. not something you just get over, especially living in the same house, sitting in the same spot she took her last breath.

i'm glad i have my computer back up and running. it feels like an old friend.
i am grateful i have this naughty dog and my two other old, not naughty dogs. after doggie girlfriend died last month, it has been hard to really connect to the dogs. what a loss that was.

she was my sweet girl. :(

anyway, maybe one day i'll have the balls to talk to a partner about depression without being terrified. maybe someday i can just be fully in a relationships without my secrets and silences or muffled resentments that turn everything cold and indifferent in my unresolved mind.

maybe...