I’ve been told that you can stand to do any task for five minutes and that this is a good way to approach the dreaded house cleaning chore. So, as I spent my allotted five minutes cleaning the refrigerator out the other day, I realized something quite amazing that I didn’t voice until today: my refrigerator is a metaphor for my life at this very moment.
There are, even after working on cleaning it out, still some very, very bad things in there, buried in the dark, almost unreachable part of the bottom shelf and in the depths of the crisper drawers. They are things that I don’t want to look at or deal with, old things that may have, over a period of time, changed from what they were originally to a very different matter altogether. It’s sort of like when something that happened to you early in your life becomes a problem today, because your thoughts and feelings are colored by the event that traumatized you in the first place.
Have no fear. I am working on cleaning the depths of my refrigerator. I’ve dealt with some of the results of grocery shopping gone awry. And I’m working on ridding myself of out-of-date condiments that serve no purpose other than to clutter up my mind (oops, make that space).
At one time in my earlier life, I went hungry. Could that have brought about my uncontrolled need to fill my refrigerator with lots of stuff that just spoils and gets tossed eventually? Could one event have had such a profound effect on me? In any case, as I cleaned out my refrigerator, I also was working on cleaning out all of the outdated, spoiled and useless shit in my head.
Got rid of it for once and for all. Spoiled milk, moldy food, hard bread and rotten vegetables, be gone with you. I am done with you and what you represent in my life.
I envision a new, wiped-clean-of-the-old-crap refrigerator in my future. I will have it and nobody is going to stop me. I will scrub, throw out and finally polish until that clean and shiny surface emerges. I’ll be free finally or, at the very least, able to deal with it all.