Molting

epiphany (noun): an intuitive grasp of reality through
something (as an event), usually simple and striking

I recently received an epiphany. It has taken me a long time to get to this place. Oddly enough, it is a shot of reality regarding my clutter. One might expect an epiphany to be of a more profound nature than that, but it has been quite profound for me nonetheless. I have suddenly realized the reason I haven't successfully let go of all of my clutter during past de-cluttering episodes. It is time to for me to molt. I need to allow myself to let go of all the little representations of past versions of myself. If it doesn't fit me now, both literally and figuratively, then I need to release it and move on with being who I am right now.

We are all made up of past experiences (good and bad), people we know and have known or encountered along our life's journey, places we have been, ideas we have entertained, etc. Who we are changes daily, even though we aren't noticing it. Sometimes we wake up one day and notice that wiry gray hairs have moved in on our heads. (That didn't happen over night.) Or we realize we have dropped an old hobby somewhere along the way. Or we don't really like sweets that much...when did that happen? I used to ride my bike almost every day as a teenager; I wonder when I stopped. When I put my bike away that day, did I know it would probably be the last time? Things like that just happen, and we hardly notice until we are looking back from the other side of life changes. It's like we get pulled by the undertow...the way we can stand and play out in the water at the beach and look up five minutes later only to realize we are thirty yards down shore from our stuff.

I got swept up in the sea of life's sweetness many years ago, and yesterday I looked up and noticed am one hundred yards down shore from most of my stuff, and now I am realizing that it might be okay to just leave it there and move on. I am not who I was twenty years ago, when I was collecting bookmarks, pencils, and those big obnoxious buttons we always wore for camp or school spirit. But I still have a box of bookmarks, pencils, and buttons. I am not who I was fifteen years ago, when I was entering a life stage wrought with worry over who was "best friends" with whom and where I fit in the mix. But I still have unpacked boxes labeled "Nostalgia" and about a million photos of my friends from different life stations, most of whom I do not even keep in touch with now. I am not who I was ten years ago, when I was finally settling into independence but feeling the weight of its consequences bearing down on me. And yet I am only recently letting go of old class notes I never look at, letters from financial aid, mail from the dorm years. I am not who I was five years ago, when I was still pretty newly-married, still working and taking classes on the side, slowly chiselling away at my hard-earned degree. Isn't my degree the only thing I really need to keep? (And sadly, it's in its box in my closet.) All of my accumulated stuff that mattered at the time just has a way of growing into a beast that wants to eat me up, or at very least snuffs out my utmost enjoyment of the present.

Every day brings change, as it should. And I have been changing all these years, which I knew. But the connection I never made before is my stuff...the baggage I've collected along these life phases...just keeps hanging around even when it no longer fits with who I am anymore. It's time to shed these layers of Past that are suffocating me so that I finally feel what Peace is in my home, so that I can finally feel what the current me is like when unburdened and free to let go when letting go is what nature intended all along.

Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still. -Italian Proverb