the emotionally trying experience of cleaning my room

after two days of intensive room-cleaning, I was left feeling mysteriously raw and disturbed

7/17/15

Last night I dreamt that my teeth were falling out. It's a pretty common dream, I guess, but I'd never had it before. Apparently it's thought to stem from a life transition or stressful decision, and specifically dissatisfaction with the way one's self is handling said trigger situations.

I woke up this morning in a state of deeply unsettling confusion, mixed with something like horror. It took me a while to remember the dream, and even longer before its freudian implications dawned on me. I'd been up until 3am the night before, sifting through a decade's worth of my own art projects, awards, and other memorabilia. The process had drained my energy and my spirits, and I'd gone to bed in a bleak, vaguely disillusioned state. At 3am I could not have placed the depressive feelings, but my subconscious would go on to battle them through the night.

Now, roughly 18 hours later, I still cannot definitively place this unnerving feeling that's accompanied the process of purging my room of old possessions, but I think it has something to do with the act of renouncing things that I once valued so highly. Yes, it's transitional anxiety, and yes, it's stressful decision making and yes, I certainly feel that a sense of dissatisfaction (or lack of closure) accompanies this, but beyond all of that, I think I've discovered in myself a certain disillusionment with the consequence of material objects. I started this process saying "I'm tired of owning things," with a defiant, almost proud optimism. But through the grueling, draining effort of rediscovering, remembering, evaluating, I've come to champion the new, vaguely dissatisfying but I think truer mantra, "I'm tired of things."

Author's Note

This was a journal entry that I found particularly puzzling. Not the most eloquently formed prose, but I think still an interesting account of how a mundane chore inadvertently led to self discovery.