Life is so hard sometimes. In the past ten years, my life has been uprooted 4 times. Some have been less painful than others, but it seems to happen to me nonetheless. Some have been out of my control and the others are not. I've spent my whole life trying to please others. I work tirelessly to achieve approval. And yet, I haven't learned a thing.
I spent the last day reflecting. It is a terrible thing, the memory. I've been strong for days now. But the act of reflecting brings up a lot of old demons that need to be slaughtered. This week, we lost just about everything we had in the biggest natural disaster Australia has ever seen, the Queensland Floods. We managed to salvage certain things, but not much. We don't even fill a room with the amount of things we saved. And as for the stuff that was left in the house, we still probably can only fill a room with them, if but only slightly.
We've been called rather selfish. My husband and I. Because of the things we did salvage. We managed to save all our gaming consoles, games, blurays and boxsets. Which will help our insurance considerably, since the cost of the lot is somewhere around 30k. But in our haste, and maybe in our own selfishness, we didn't manage to take much that was given to us. Especially by our family. And mostly from my husband's kids. In a crisis, people interpret your moves as what your heart feels. In all honesty, I think it's what your brain feels. You look at something like 13k worth of games, and think, "Well, that's more money that what the TV is worth, that should be saved." As it goes, insurance is only going to cover so much. And because of that, we opted to go with that sort of stuff.
But here I am, again, trying to make excuses for our shortsightedness. My husband got gifts from the kids that we simply didn't take with us. And at the end of the day, when the kids returned to the house to see those items destroyed and still in the house, and the games gone. Immediately it says, "We don't care about you."
It's a painful thing to come to grips with. We had some time to save more things, and we simply didn't. There's no real need to analyse it. Honestly, in the heat of the moment, no one is sure what they will do until they get to that point. And so, we left many things behind that we struggle even now to come to terms with.
Thinking back over the last few days, I realised something pretty big for myself. And it's this:
Sept 2001: My parents lost their home and I was forced to move in with my store manager at the time. Because time was limited, I chose the smart things to take with me. The stuff I thought I couldn't buy again. And as such, I left a lot of memorable things behind. There was limited space, and my parents only had a small storage shed to fill the rest of our things in. I tucked away a fair bit of stories that I'd written, and Mom left a lot of the stuff that I thought I might like when I got a place of my own. They stayed locked up in the storage place for over 4 years.
Dec 2003: After two years of being required to support my parents financially, I had had enough. I moved out. My parents had purchased a second storage unit in the same place that was full of things from my childhood. When I moved out, I took even less with me. Leaving behind a multitude of further memories with them. The storage unit got repossessed since I wasn't around to make the payment, and I lost even more. Including my stories...
May 2006: I moved to Australia. By this time, I was without the majority of my childhood or memorable things. A few clothes and such, but that was pretty much it. I had a ton of books I had collected, but none of them had any sentimental value. By this time, my heart had already been broken so many times, that I stopped caring altogether. I sold my books, movies, games. All of the things I couldn't take with me in two suitcases. And then. I moved. To the other side of the world. With no major worldly possessions, except for one thing... My flute.
Jan 2011: The floods. I salvaged my flute. It had been with me the longest. It was the only thing I was emotionally attached to that wasn't already on my ring finger. And I took a picture of my father. The only good one I had.
And there you have it.
Ten years now, and I've learned nothing. Every time something has happened in my life, the first thing I cut away is the memories. And to what end? All that is left is this empty shell. Sure, I have a flute. And it's been with me for going on 15 years now. But do I play it? No. Why do I feel the need to keep it?
Perhaps for the same reason Charles Foster Kane kept his sled. To hold onto something when I was still pure.
My life has been great since I moved to Australia. I don't want for much, and I've been so blessed with the people and things that have fallen right into place.
Yet, I feel sometimes, empty. My life has no meaning. I successfully do a job, come home, love my husband, and sleep. All the in-between is fairly meaningless. Gaming, watching movies. Ten years ago, I would have told you I was going to be a famous writer. Now I have all but given up on that dream. (Not saying I didn't keep all of my writings in three different locations just in case something happened to it in one or two places.) Ten years ago, though, by that same token, I would never have believed I'd be living in Australia, married to the most amazing man, and stepmother to two good kids.
Life takes you down paths. And every once in a while, the paths actually lead to a tunnel. The key is. You gotta actually follow that tunnel to the light.
And that's what I intend to do now. I have learned a few lessons this week.
Mostly, that my heart has been closed for far too long. Instead of accumulating things, I should have been accumulating memories. And instead of focusing on the bad, maybe I should focus on the good.
I might have lost my home, and almost all of my wordly possessions. But I still have my husband. I have my health. I even have some amazing family and friends. It's about time I start collecting memories instead of things. It's about time I fill that empty shell.
