Pet Interview 1: Just Jake

Words at the front of my mind this morning when I woke: Patterning.  Conditioning. Accidentally on purpose. On purpose, accidentally.  I'm working through a course on 'addiction' to emotional pain alongside the Hermetics course I am doing. Whether that is a wise move, I can't comment, because well, its a lot to sift through and sometimes I feel like it is really about the most self-centered thing I could be doing, trying to shift all of this emotional sludge.  It s like, we get to a point a certain kind of work and feel like 'Ok! This is great! Surely there can't be more work to be done. Surely, surely not.'  And then something will brush against a paper cut of a memory, or someone will trail their lips across the back of your neck, brush your arm, call you something once remembered and its like you've tripped into a sinkhole, after the rush of dopamine subsides or whatever else subsides. So irritating, especially when what I want more than anything is to be twirling barefoot in a field after a lovely swim.  I suppose I'll just have to save that for another afternoon, not too far off down the line. 

I woke up this morning thinking that really and truly, I need to stop spending so much time in the past, in my own personal past or or the pasts of extended family. Obviously, this becomes tricky when you're an archivist.  Some days, I wonder if I became an archivist out of choice. I mean, it seems that it was rather inevitable, the trajectory as straight a path as an arrow shot with no sense of precision.  Was it deliberate? I mean, certainly it was conscious. I don't think I could have deer-stalked a profession with any more precision.  Would I do it again? Most definitely but I would approach it in a different way. Or would I?  I envision a much sleeker, more elegant professional life. Still full of the same experience just...less messy.  Less haphazard.  A girl can dream. 

At my storage locker, I sigh. There isn't so much in here that I shouldn't be able to just get on with it all and yet, I am almost three months past my May 15 deadline.  I run my hands over the library table and feel tears spark behind my eyes.  How can there still be so many tears near the surface? Why does my heart still feel so bruised in my chest? Some days, I can feel an invisible hand squeezing it inside but i can't see to whom the hand belongs.  Some days, I would wonder why I would even want to know.  If I asked them to let it go, would they? 

The downside of treating myself as a client is that I have to actually get rid of the designated items. For instance, I have a folder scraps of thoughts, moments, inane correspondence from a non-relationship, drafts of heinous teen poetry. I should just delete them. I mean, I know it's cherry-picking but honestly...who am I but myself?  I also have emails, voice  clips, and text exchanges from my mum and a couple of other people. I don't read them often. But sometimes...it just feels like clutter. 

Then there are things things that don't feel like clutter: 

*the small blue flowered box that houses what little there is of my first born's time on this astral plane.

*My mother's veil, engagement rings, her childhood copy of Pippi Longstockings

*Daddy's boots, his dog tags, his Saints hat, an old work shirt that still smells like him

*My grandpa's Shawnamarie Apron, some of his books.

*My grandmother's engagement and wedding rings, her favourite cardigan 

I turn my attention to my Dropbox, wondering why I haven't just deleted the bulk of what is in the folders. So much redundancy. The golden '7 years' isn't just for business records or the downward slide of a marriage.