#90 - Throw. It. Away.

“I don’t need like, literal help with the cleaning but could you just come supervise me while I throw things away?”

I am not good at asking for help.

It’s a mix of “never 'let ‘em see you sweat” survivorship crossed with “if I am not perfect in my own life what can I possibly offer others” virgoism (read my birth chart this week and once again feel fucking sniped by co-star, straight up telling me my rising Pisces is contributing to my “masking” and like…I’m already going through a whole acceptance thing around my autism so thank you, co-star, for vaguely contributing to my understanding of self. also, I have SO MUCH virgo in my chart it’s laughable). Still, I’ve been trying to be more ~authentically vulnerable with the people in my life recently rather than bottling it all up and expressing it in writing.

Anyway, I asked. So my wonderful friend came over and sat in my living room while I fretted about the apartment, moving clothes into one big pile, and determining what I had to put out on the street. I thought it was going to be some enormous dump, like I would be carrying out boxes and boxes and taking up half the sidewalk. Ultimately, I stooped a giant cat scratcher and an old hand-held vacuum. I put the shelves out that I had acquired on a walk a week ago. And that was…it.

My first instinct was to feel embarrassed that making such minuscule changes had taken me so long. But the reality is, it did. And now it’s done. So truly what is my sense of shame attempting to accomplish (besides continuing to cement the Irish identity that I feel so vaguely removed from these days)?

I finally threw out old shit. Expired foods, unusable clothes, and random trinkets from my past that I haven’t been meaning to hold onto but felt…bad about throwing away. I know too much about the waste cycle, I know what terrible places landfills are, I compost and recycle and am conscious when making any purchases because I truly feel a wash of guilt when I place things in the trash. My ‘good person = least wasteful’ equation was not helpful at all. It was causing me to allow these tokens of a past life to remain where they no longer belonged.

It took two hours from start to finish to get everything out the door. Three cigs, five trash runs, and two very happy neighbors who were thrilled to discover their new treasures on the sidewalk. Turns out, the beast wasn’t that big, my narratives had given it far more power than it could have ever reasonably claimed. But I still needed a little help to fight it, so thankfully I got over myself and just fucking asked.

“It shouldn’t be this hard.” Okay, but it is, so what accommodations would make it easier?

“I should be able to do this on my own.” We’re like, a tribal species who have been forcibly ripped away from community in order to make it possible for our jobs/capitalism at large to sell it back to us, what else ya got?

“Asking for help is annoying and unnecessary for such a small thing.” Despite all of my personal evidence that I actually love helping my friends in whatever ways I can, I failed to turn my feelings around giving/performing those acts of service around and assign them to other people re: helping me. And it turned out, no one was judging me for needing help with this, except for me. Just like I wouldn’t have judged them if the situations were reversed. (Counterfactuals are so helpful when it comes to mediating my anxiety.)

I really have been attempting in the last year to unlearn my projections onto others. I don’t have to show up pre-apologizing for being annoying. It’s kind of like how pointing out how loud you’re chewing suddenly makes everyone too aware of it. In trying to get ahead of what I assumed people’s thoughts were about me (that I’m annoying/embarrassing/overall Too Much) I think I was actually just giving them a confirmation bias.

Also, I wouldn’t actually want people in my life who would think of me that way. It’s uh startlingly clear to me that my stunning lack of self-worth was what kept those people in my life before. In my desperate attempts to not feel alone I was willing to be treated with derision and contempt. But uh, yeah that wasn’t great and just further eroded what little sense of self I had managed to escape my childhood with. Not great! But people in pain find each other, and sometimes they take their pain out in ways they never meant to, and the weirdest/hardest part of that is realizing that it might not make them Bad People, but just regular people who did bad things in their attempts to drown out their own pain and suffering.

And once the things were thrown away, I felt free and emboldened to continue making the space I live & work in even better. I bought a cute lilac extension cord because the reality of my plug placements isn’t getting better and my minuscule but persistent annoyance about the current ugly extension cord that splits my living room in half whenever I need to charge my phone can be solved for the low low price of $6.99 if I let myself have the nice thing. I can’t mount things on my walls with screws, so I’ve managed to procure the stickiest hooks in the world and now my mechanical keyboards are fun 3D wall art! And I finally invested in a handheld carpet cleaner because my cats are always going to have hairballs, and I bought some pastel file folders because all of my Important Documents shouldn’t be stuffed in envelopes and shoved out of sight anymore, and I’m allowing myself to go Full Whimsy when it comes to my habitat.

Anyway, this morning I woke up in my clean sheets and didn’t have a bunch of “I really should get around to dealing with this” objects immediately swarm my vision. I went and did early morning laundry, got two iced coffees, and watched the sky turn cotton-candy pink.

I love where I live. And that has never been more true than right now.

I love my apartment, and I love that it’s all mine and it’s a space that I’m determinedly improving over time. There is no ~transformation weekend~ big movie montage. I’m chipping away at it though, painting doorframes pink on random evenings, scouting furniture whenever I step outside, and being honest with myself about my systems and what I need to make this place fit my needs rather than attempting to force changes in myself for the umpteenth time. I’m always gonna drop my bag on the nearest flat surface when I walk through the door, so why not make that a designated space? Why not buy a second coat rack? Why deny myself the simple fixes I can make??

There is no reward for unnecessary suffering. There are other ways to build character besides self-denial.

It’s okay to be nice to yourself, it’s good to ask for help, and we all deserve to feel safe and happy in our homes. (Apparently, the moon being in Virgo makes this a great time to clean and I definitely leaned into those vibes this week and feel refreshed. Thank you…planet alignments!)

Truly wishing you all a lovely lovely Friday filled with self-cleaning sinks and juuuust the amount of caffeine!

✌️ 💚 & 🫧