Filling the Holes

Six weeks after the big breakup XBF has officially removed all of his possessions from my house.  I told him to take his time but six weeks felt like a bit much.  It just felt like the longest.......breakup........ever.  Like for the past six weeks it was over but not over, you know?  So the point at which he was officially done moving was a big turning point for me.  

My house is mine again.  I didn't mind sharing it with him when he lived there...but sharing it with his stuff after he was gone, and having him come back twice a week to collect a few things at a time, it was hard.  I'm glad that part is over.

So the project of the day (week? month?), you know for the five minutes a day I'm neither working nor pulling weeds, is to rearrange things to fill in the holes.  I have walls that used to have pictures but now have only nails.  I have shelves that used to hold assorted memorabilia where now only holes in the dust remain.  I have one and a half empty closets!!!  I have neither the desire nor the money to acquire new things to fill in these holes, but the holes get on my nerves.  So I need to rearrange what I have to fill the empty spaces.

Oh yeah, I guess I should dust too.

This rearranging feels very symbolic of what I'm doing with my life in general.  When I got divorced I filled the hole that my marriage left with another relationship in fairly short order.  This time, as much as it feels like I'm filling the relationship hole with FREAKING YARDWORK....that's not really, entirely the case.  I'm expanding my relationship with The Boy...not always to his liking but it's tough to be him I guess.  And I'm hoping to expand my relationship with myself.  I need to spend a little time on me....working out, going for walks, spending time with friends, reading, becoming confident in home improvement projects and learning to ask for help when I need it, and even self-indulgent time-wasting things like sleeping in and watching TV in bed.  It feels like it's time to be a little nice to myself for a change.  The big work will be in making myself okay with that.  It's easy enough to sleep 'till 10 (I'm a pro at it, let me tell you).  The trick comes in not beating myself up for it for the rest of the day if it was something that I feel like I really needed to do.

Right now I feel like this being nice to myself stuff has to wait until after every last hole is filled and every last weed in every last flowerbed has died a slow and painful death, which would mean we'd be talking about mid-December-ish.  I'm working on convincing myself that every single thing doesn't have to be done before I can stop and take a breath.

So it's a balance between filing in the holes, killing the dispicable weeds, and stopping to breathe.  Balance is not something I'm especially good at.

But back to the holes...the holes need to be filled, though they don't have to be filled rightthisverysecond.  And I have to be very careful of what I fill them with.  Nature hates a vacuum, and it will tend to suck into it anything that happens to be passing by.  I need to be careful to fill my holes with good stuff, existing stuff.  Growing what I have to be bigger and better stuff.  And then, on down the road, should there be more stuff (pictures, knickknacks, a man); I will be more likely to gently and thoughtfully make room in my house and my life.

Today's lunch (filling my pie-hole, to stick to the theme) was a six inch Subway tuna sub on wheat.  Yum.