Getting Lost in the Closet and How to Get Back Out

Closet.

The word conjures up several different images. Skeletons in the closet, cleaning out the closet, coming out of it...

As Peter, Paul, and Mary would put it, it’s what’s inside that really counts. A room is reflective of the individual who lives in it. But if that is so, what does my closet say of me?

Shelf upon shelf is filled with mementos, clothes, and everything else that I could not fit under my bed or in it’s proper home. Plans for the future are cramped into a space with mismatched evidence of my past. Of course, none of it makes sense. Yet, I know the moment that I clean it out, I will see everything clearly. There will be no mystery of my closet left. There will be no more surprises about myself.

In that regard I am what astrology would call a true Pieces: disorganized to the point that it is predictable, relying on intuition and mystery to fuel dwindling inspiration.

I need my closet to be messy, or my bed, or my room. I dislike being so open and apparent. A messy room is a lived-in room. A pristine room is filled with so much potential. But I digress.
The closet.

My bane, but it could be your best friend.The things that matter most are placed forward, your clothes organized in some order that you prefer. Is it organized by every detail, or by generalizations. Such as shirts are shirts, with  your favorites closest to the door.

My issue is not the ability to clean my room, I fear what cleaning makes me become. The moment I allow myself to clear this gaping closet, is the moment I release the true perfectionist out. Shirts will be organized by color, length, and type; socks perfectly aligned and separated in a similar fashion; shoes, sandals, and slippers aligned in height and popularity.

And once I conquer the closet, I would have to clean the rest of my room to a similar perfection. My dresser, bookshelf, and CDs will have to suffer a similar fate. Let us not even mention the filing cabinet.

My lack of action is not because of the lack of energy, rather than the containment of personal idiosyncrasies. I know exactly what my closet would reveal. That woman is far more obsessed and exacting than I make myself seem to be. All these past years I have been trying to relax and ridicule myself into a state of Zen-like balance. Learning to take myself less seriously can only go so far, and looking into what I call my core personality may throw me back into my old habits.

No, I do not want to clean out my closet. No, I do not want to revert back into what I was before. I hook myself onto details in order to avoid what I was molding into being; not crafting my own path.
In the meantime, my method of attack is to approach the closet, my mess, my life, with an exact distance of interest. Interest of purging, but an emotional distance to the project. Perhaps there is a name that others use to this method, but I would argue that I hold too much meaning to too many things. Thus I always wait for the right days to clean, or to drop things from my life. Otherwise, I spend hours sitting on the ground reading old notes from middle school, rather than emptying the box in front of me.

No, I have not come across Narnia or dead bodies in my closet. Avoiding the gravitational pull into that black hole is difficult, but the anchor of my real life will always be right by me. There are crumbs leading me back to the moment that I have to leave. Otherwise I will get stuck back in high school, or elementary school. My mess is my creation, and thus of my own madness.

What do you think your closet says of you?