The everything drawer

I have lived on my own for almost 10 years now. Dorms, roommates and alone, at this point some of my habits are clear and I should own up to them. One of these is the everything drawer. On the surface I am very organized, if you were to visit me today you would find my desk is clear of clutter, so is my kitchen, the bedroom and the living room. The secret to this is that I put all my random ridiculous bizarre stuff in the everything drawer. Here is an example of what you will find there- a newspaper, ziplock bags, windex, spare keys to the car attached to keys of my last two apartments, curtain rings, one purple sock, an old tea bag, and an outdoor extension cord. This drawer does not have one function; it is spilling over with confusion and smells a little (I think I left some cheese in there once). I bet the other drawers make fun of this one, they all have a purpose and are pretty, while this here is unattractive and kept hidden.

My relationships are not simple; they are full of baggage from the past and underappreciated at times. But hey, where would I go if I needed someone to understand why I was mean to the parent whose daughter reminded me of my sister?

I am cleaning my French doors at 9 pm and having tea because I feel awful and I love cleaning. As the relationship grows in depth it grows a little dark.

Just a reminder to myself and you.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt (Sorbonne in Paris in 1910).

Sunlight and moonbeams

I am 25. It is the last line before I turn the page and the landscape changes. I have fragments of conversations floating in my head like the soap bubbles; I blow on them, ignoring them, refusing to let them touch me for fear of their becoming thoughts that I will have to read.

What is your mother like? Well, she is like me. And then I thought what my mother is like? Honestly she is nothing like me. I adore her, but like me she is not. I look like her. She hates disagreements. She hates strife in relationships; to her the goal is to get along and love each other. She loves children and animals. She seems to understand them in a way that most people are not able to. She loves making people happy, she makes fun of herself. She loves without judgment. To her it is the intensions that matter the most, not the final effect. And in her world, her intensions are always good. I don’t think I have ever heard her apologize honestly. She is fun, she is a charmer. Her humor is intelligent and sharp without ever being mean. She loves to learn and grow and is never self conscious. Her laughter is like music, she holds you without holding you back. She can say my name in a million ways and has a million different names for me. I can hear her voice and know how she feels. She is the most beautiful woman in the world.

Time travel.

So I love purses. All kinds, big/small, black/ yellow. I was recently in France where I indulged my love for purses like nobody's business, but this is not a story about my purses, it is a story about my life. I have so many purses that I rotate them – according to weather, occasion and so on. As I clean the purse that I had used a year ago here is what I find- shopping receipts, old gum, lipstick, notes that I made while riding the bus, grocery bills and to do lists, pictures, stamps, jewelry, gloves, cards that I bought but never send, stamps, airline tickets, lists of books to read, post it notes with directions. It is like being back in time, only this time I don’t feel the stress. I see myself struggling with the everyday, trying to get everything done, trying to be organized and succeeding some and failing some. It is almost like those out of body experiences where I want to go tell my past self that it is going to be ok. As I start another phase of my life and feel the stress and pressure building up I look forward to the day when this too will be just another phase of my life which I will look back upon and applaud the courage it took to step into the unknown. Right now, I just feel scared and frantic.