Packing Light


hope / Sunday, February 13th, 2011

Well, yesterday’s post which (I hope) contained a lot of adulation for my baby and the noises he makes was savagely beaten with the irony stick when he ‘spoke’ to us. A lot. Through the medium of crying and screaming. In the manner of a colic ridden newborn. He howled, and shouted, and mithered, and cried all night. And pretty much into the morning. He’s still sticky as Velcro and cross as anything. Serves me right for getting sentimental.

But today is another bleary eyed day, and a chance for future planning. We have planned a holiday. Just short, but away in Italy and (briefly during a train stop over) France. To make it work financially and timing wise we’ll have to pack light and be ruthless. No prisoners to be taken here, and no excess of clothes or toys or similar. How will we do it? I’ve no idea.
You’ll notice this blog contains a lot of excess baggage, feelings, emotions, worries I cart around with me. They, these thoughts and bloody things, are all paid up members of the crap I carry around with me and can’t sort out club (which clutters my mind and my ever bulging changingbag). I’m one of life’s worst hoarders, clinging to all manner of, often unhelpful, rubbish because I am too pussy to let go. From morbid fantasies, to fears of failure, through receipts (that remind me of the things I shouldn’t have bought) to presents I don’t like but can’t get rid of. My head, my house, my handbag: they are all full.
Spider-boy is as bad, reliving nightmares and refusing to relinquish even the most bashed up and broken toys. He and a friend were playing the other day and *somehow* by *someone* (I don’t want to know) his favourite poster of Cars was torn. He wanted to keep the two unfixable (even with selotape) ripped sheets, and I recognise that terribly, the need to hang on to broken bits, to savour what they were and the sadness of losing them.
Don’t get me wrong, I was messy before I was depressed, and was, like Spider-boy, bound somehow to stuff even at three. But depression definitely underlined and exacerbated my inability to let go, at all, of anything, and an emotional horror to the point of fatigue. It got so bad that a friend had to come and help me tidy our bedroom for a whole day when I was pregnant this time. As she said whilst rifling and decluttering, ‘these things don’t upset me, for me this is satisfying for you it would be terrifying’.
But there’s no room for redundant thoughts or objects, on this trip. I have to plan ahead, make lists, whittle down, exorcise, reduce, re-evaluate. A capsule wardrobe for me, and him, and him, and him. The clan minimally clad. The bear essentials for playing, even though there will be a 7 hour train journey over European borders. I think it will be good for us.
If you’d suggested this to me last year I would have laughed out loud and died inside. The task of slimming down what we need and functioning out there, all together, with just our wits and some spare pants would have sent me wailing into the night. But today I’m excited. I’m hoping the planning and paring down will help us see that maybe, just maybe, we can function together without the detritus we cling to to prove who we are.
PS: Getting into the travelling spirit I’m also going on a blog hop. Scary new country….

 

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