Mysterious Odour

I've had a smell this week. It started at the weekend. I thought at first it could be me, because I've been ill and off work and in the house with the windows shut. But then I decided it wasn't me, AND it started getting worse.

You start imagining all sorts of things, like forgotten food festering somewhere. Or dead vermin. I looked (as best I could)... Nothing obvious. I looked harder (as hard as I dared)... Still nothing. The smell continued.

I kept the windows open. I burnt joss sticks. Then I burnt proper incense...and more incense. Still the smell. By which time I was getting a bit frantic.

This morning I found it. It was just that I'd put food in a bin bag that was elsewhere than in the kitchen. Bag gone, smell gone. So glad it was nothing more unbearable !

Losses

I've lost something really important. It happens a lot when you live like I do.

Yesterday morning I was in my garage at 6am looking for what is lost. I don't really have any real hope of finding it, but it's an important 'something', so I have to look. And I worry.

Mess is a lovely big stick to hurt myself with. The whole time I'm counting losses I can tell myself all sorts of negative things...

"You should keep track of important stuff !"
"You're stupid !"
"You're a slob."
"Look at the way you live ! It's not fit for a pig, even."
"You must be a pig, or worse, to be living this way."
" 'Normal people' don't have this problem."

Our own negative messages keep us trapped.

Life continues amidst the shambollic wreckage

I'm still here. Been very busy, so haven't had time to blog.

I was speaking to a friend (who has visited my home) recently. She was telling me how her other friend (who also has squalor) recently decided to move house to escape her mess. My friend reported how lovely her mate's new home is and how she had told her not to mess it up. No good telling us though.

As a side bar, this other person with squalor didn't get anything packed or sorted right up to the arrival of the movers. No wonder her new home is great, she probably left her life behind at her old address for someone else to work through.

Moving is an option I consider from time to time. But then you still have to throw out and sort out. I don't know why I can't do it. I want to do it. I try to do it. I get overwhelmed by it and stop, usually at the point where it's all become much worse rather than better because I'm only half way through the process - everything has been dragged out of hiding but nothing has gone to the bin. Then I just get more depressed and feel so much more shitty about myself (themes of self harm going on there, of course, as is uncomfortably routine for me).

Still Here

I'm alive and kicking still, but mad busy with Life and work presently. I'll get back to my various blogs shortly.

Still Here

Perfection and the Art of Self-Defence

I cleaned my bathroom today. Not a 100% job, but then I am trying to learn to cut myself some slack as regards 'perfection'. Being afraid of not doing a good enough job is a barrier to doing anything at all, and berating myself for my shortcomings is harmful to my health, so I am going to give myself a credit for doing what I did. My bathroom is currently cleaner than another (public) bathroom I loathe and regularly desire to complain about, so I did good enough for today.

Still wrecked

My lounge is still a wreck presently. Mostly it's clothes. I didn't have chance to get stuff to the laundry last week, so now it's all over the show !

My head is a bit the same way really. Now there's no surprise !

Wreckage

The house was a complete wreck by Friday of last week. It's still pretty bad.

I've had a weekend away, and travelling always results in piles of clothes and other belongings as I desperately try to work out what to take with me and what to leave at home. Surprisingly, I am capable of being quite systematic when it comes to making decisions about what I depart with, since I prefer to travel light and am nearly always using public transport.

I had a great weekend though.

Too many things

It feels like I have too many things in my head and heart as well as my home at present. I'm meeting myself coming back, and it is really hard not to be over critical of myself for not getting round to doing it all.

I'd really like to bake a cake. Not a big deal, right ? It is when your kitchen is one of those places stuff accumulates, a tidal pool where junk washes up on shore. It's one of those places where thing go to die, too. I used to have a mixing bowl, but it slid off a pile and smashed and I never replaced it. I used to have some cake tins, but they rusted from neglect (I didn't replace those, they are still somewhere in my kitchen). I had flour once, but I struggle to get into my kitchen to use it, so the flour grew legs one day and had to be binned. (At least it got to the bin before it was able to carry itself there).

A lot of what I would like to do falls into a similar pattern when I start looking to do it... I'm sure there's a message in there for me somewhere.