Luxury:
I never truly understood how many things I stressed over,
worried about, or lost my temper over were, in fact, luxuries. The amount of time I would spend on things,
so they would be “just right.” Towels, I
used to have multiple categories of towels with each one having a specific way
that they had to be folded. I’m talking
serious parameters here. The size of the
fold, the placement of the fold when it was on the shelf and this was for every
single type of towel from bath towel to kitchen washcloth. Today, I have two categories of towels, clean
and dirty. I brought this level of
intensity to pretty much everything in my life.
You can’t just lay out crackers and cheese, it must look pretty. My 200 or so CDs, all in alphabetical order
by group name and then within the group: albums in chronological order. Yes, I’m serious. DVD collection? Please, by genre. There is more to how I arranged those, but I
think my point has been made. Hopefully,
before everyone realizes how totally sick I am.
So much time, so much energy spent on these things. The ability to waste time on proper towel
folding procedures, that is luxury. Luxury
isn’t the fancy car and clothes. It is a
state of being. A freedom to be a crazy
as you desire, since you have the time.
Today, my moment of luxury was making the kids load the dishwasher so I
could get back to studying. Luxury is a
full night’s sleep, I had that one a couple days ago. Thanks to my migraine and excellent
meds. Luxury is those moments when I
feel normal. My organization fetish is
not gone, I just can’t indulge it anymore.
Between folding laundry or spending a little free time with my kids, OCD
loses. Between finally organizes the
bookshelf in the boys’ room or doing that assignment that is due tomorrow, OCD
loses. I know that I don’t really have
OCD, since I have the luxury to ignore it.
I am grateful for my luxuries now, I never was before.
Deserve:
This word is poison.
Before, if I had a busy day, then I would deserve a break. I deserved the right to not make dinner, to
not help the kids with this or that. I
think of all the times I used the word.
I deserve new shoes. I deserve to
be treated better by that cashier. Now,
I hear it often by people talking to me, “You didn’t deserve this. You deserve to have… You deserve to be…” It is all poison in my ear. So what I am supposed to do when I deserve
something and then don’t get it? I can
get angry, bitter, depressed, or I can acknowledge that crap happens. It’s not about whether or not I deserved it. It happened and I have to deal with it. We all have to deal with something that is a
result of something someone else did.
Sometimes you might have to deal with something that just happened. An accident or an illness. Would it do me any good to dwell on the issue
of whether or not it was deserved?
Regardless of how much I try to ignore it, there really is so little of
my own life that I control. Tomorrow,
the kids might not eat breakfast before they go to school (since I am gone
before them, I can’t make them). My
youngest might throw up. My oldest might
give me attitude. I might get trapped in
an endless spiral of what I deserve. I
can’t live my life in terms of deserving or not. That’s not living at all. And I think I might be ready to live my life.
