when you don't fight it

Despair is what happens when you fight sadness. Compassion is what happens when you don’t.

I have been surrendering to the deepest despair I have ever known. Day after day, I do nothing but use the toilet, rummage a bit in my kitchen for easy-to-eat food and sleep. 

I have completely let go of any shoulds.

I have a week-long house guest coming on Friday. Way way way in the back of my thinking I have planned to do a deep clean and, while I was at it, get rid of a lot of the piled up 'stuff' I don't use. I have about forty CD's that are all loaded on iPods so why not get rid of them?  I don't own many books but I own too many. I only have about two dozen books I care about. It's funny how books find their way into my home. Where do the ones I don't care about come from?

And the clutter in drawers, baskets, closets. How did all that stuff get here?

I was so sure that having this week-long house guest would motivate me to transform my place into an immaculate home and help me purge any bit of stuff I don't use.

Scarves I bought from neighbors at a building 'garage sale'. I bought them mostly to please the neighbors. I will never use them. Sometimes I think these scarves would make good fabric for doll clothes but I don't do anything about it. I think "I might give them to a preschool or afterschool program that does real crafts, like sewing. Like Waldorf World. But I do nothing.

Or all the kitchen 'stuff' cramming my limited cupboard space. I use very few kitchen things so why do I have mounds of unused stuff?  I had the fantasy I would clear out every cupboard before my guest arrived. So far, I have not cleaned out any.

I did achieve one big task, although the amount of work involved was pitifully small. I cleaned out my one storage closet. Turned out that closet was only crammed full of empty amazon boxes. It took about ten minutes to break them down and walk them down the hall to the recycle room. Then I refilled the closet with detritus from other parts of my home. Still unused stuff but now, at least, out of sight.

I had vague plans to clear out this close so my house guest can hang anything he might wish to hang, like a dress shirt and put his suitcase in there on a stand I have that fits in there. Not gonna happen. I'd have to organize lots of stuff packed into the stand. My guest will just have to deal with my mess. He can hang the few things -- he always travels very light anyway -- on the hooks on the closet door and he can keep his suitcase under my built-in kitchen table that I use for counter space and never for a table. If we eat a meal here in my apartment, we'll eat it at my desk, which is also full of clutter but I will do a slapdash clear away.

When I realized, only the day after Xmas, that I only had five more days to clean, I realized that my cleaning plans would have required at least a couple hours every day this month. I realized it is too late to do the master clean I had hoped to do. And, yes, my motives were selfish. I wanted to have a spic and span home.

Instead I have stuff in every nook and corner that I never use, never even think about. My closet is crammed with clothing I don't remember owning and I sure don't ever wear it. I have urges to just dump it all in my grocery cart and hall it to a tharift store. I wouldn't miss whatever is crammed in the back half of my clothes closet. I live from the front half of the closet. What is all that stuff and why do I have it?

The salient, important point:  I have given up pressuring myself. I will clean out the fridge, which seems minimally decent for a house guest who will store his half and half in my fridge. I will clean the bathtub, for he will use it. And clean appliances.

But all the stuff, the clutter, the mostly useless detritus is probably going to be here when he arrives on Friday. I am open to a surge of energy.

However. All I have done for several weeks is sleep all day and most of the night. I don't see that changing before Friday.

Oh well. This person loves me a whole, whole lot, as I do him. It will be fine.

And I am finding I can love my surrender to my depression. I used to beat myself up about how depressed I am but I have let that go. It is what it is. I am what I am.

I am unhappy and I like, for the time being, sleeping as much as I possibly can.