I found this little scrap of paper while I've been going through the many boxes which filled when I started refurbishing my place back in September. I locked up memories, everything from the meaningless to the irreplaceable, in no particular order, mixing the important and unimportant according to size, just to get it out of the way.
These assembled collections are time-bombs which have the capacity to completely blow away my psychological armour, and I have to really steady myself to make hard-headed decisions about what to keep, what to chuck.
I fail often.
In the boxes are reminders of my old life which ended six months ago when my relationship ended, and my father died. As I pick through the bones of the carcass, I'm a sucker for sentiment. I can't even dispose of legacy t-shirts without wanting to make something of them, let alone fascinating mementos, letters, photographs, cuttings.
Although I coped with the change, I've become aware only recently that the price of my survival was somewhat greater than the cost of living on my own for six months.
Still, inexorably, the simplification process procedes. Perhaps I should make St Anthony my very own patron saint.
