Destruction

Over the last week I've been considering the topic of DESTRUCTION. 

Several things happened:

ONE: I pulled out the entire contents of my closet to reorganize it and then got overwhelmed.

TWO: I decided that before I could put everything back in, I had to finally "get around to" peeling off all the ancient - and I do mean ancient - wallpaper, seal all the cracks, repaint the walls, add new shelving, sort through my clothes, unpack my winter items, pack up my summer items, and reorganize everything for accessibility.

THREE: I spent three days wishing I had never started destroying what was there to begin with.

My closet looks like Hurricane Sandy swept through.

We rent our home in Austin. However, we have gracious landlords who pay for any projects we're willing to do. Our home was built in the 1920's, so there are  LOT of projects that could be done. With my type-A personality, germaphobia, and revulsion of all things dirty, mildewed, and infested, I'm constantly finding projects and I just can't resist. The state of the closet has been hidden for over a year by my clothes, which got shoved in there when we moved. I was sort of scared to go all the way inside it, so I just jammed the storage bins in toward the back and tugged them out as needed. Finally, last Friday I got sick of digging for shoes, so I pulled everything out - literally hurled it all out of the closet, and what faced me was nothing short of scary. My clothes were homeless, but it was like I couldn't help myself. Once I got started, I had to finish. I had to systematically destruct the closet, before I could put it back together again.

And really . . . we are absurdly entertained by destroying things. 

JOY OF DESTRUCTION from Xaver Xylophon on Vimeo.

Remember Danielle's theraparty, where she got to do something she'd always wanted to do and break plates? Destruction can feel like therapy. It's risky and fun and a huge adrenaline rush. It's the clean up that I hate the most, but in the end you always feel so much better. It's human nature to destroy, but also to rebuild. You can't have one without the other.

And then there's the type of destruction we can't control. Like our pal, Sandy, who overnight hurled the contents of thousands of people's lives out into the street, and shook them upside down. Here in Texas we weren't really affected at all, so it's quite easy - as it is with any natural disaster - to feel oddly removed from the whole catastrophe, but we've all seen the pictures. Please don't think for a second that I'm comparing my minor closet disaster to the magnitude of Sandy's wake. We just both happend to self-destruct at the same time.

Now here's to rebuilding.