3 outside the skinny blog

In my new agenda, Tuesdays are Home days - except that today I HAVE to get to the grocery store and pet store for food - after Mondays being Neale Woods days. Tomorrow is Joslyn Art Museum day, then Thursday's another footloose/home/whatever day. This Friday I'm not going to let anything stop me from getting to the zoo.

This frenzy of activity (that's a mild joke) is a result of some slow-cooking thoughts and feelings I've been evolving through over the past few months. I think from the moment I realized I'd been nesting, things have been shifting around in the back of my head, or the pit of my stomach, or wherever, and slowly I've been coming back into the world and away from the profound isolation and physical inertia I enjoyed for all those months. And I really DID enjoy them. I'm an introvert, which to me means that prolonged contact with other people, no matter how beloved and no matter how much fun we're having, is an energy drain. Extroverts, in this definition, are people who are energized by human company. It has been tremendously enjoyable, my solitude, all these months. And now I'm more or less recharged, and looking forward to gettin' out amongst 'em a little more.

My years in AA taught me that self-isolation is a dangerous thing for an alcoholic, and so I have been trying to pay attention to whether my inner life feels OK, not afraid, not unwell, or unhealthy in some way. I think I've avoided that, with a little help from my friends and family. I've be re-learning to trust my own instincts, particularly about when the time is right to do certain things, such as, getting rid of a memory-packed object around the house that I really have no other use for. I've found that in such cases when I turn my thought to selling it or giving it away, if resistance rises up in me (I feel it like a wall going up in the pit of my stomach), if I drop the idea and get on with life, eventually - maybe after months and months - the time comes when it's OK to get rid of the thing. To say good-bye to the object knowing the memory will stay with me (and not take up any room in the house!).

This means my house and my life progress very slowly sometimes, but after a lifetime of following other people's rules and commands and requests, I'm learning to follow my own lead now. It seems to be taking me good places so I'll continue. It is taking me a long time to get used to this life of truly being independent. It's a good process, and now I'm enjoying it. I am so very lucky.



Doll picture from

©2000 Denise Van Patten - http://collectdolls.about.com