I was reading through posts on a forum the other day, and came across something that really hit home. One of the members had posted this question:

“If you’d given up and were pretty sure you were at the end and you let things go and get really bad (house, yard, etc.) and then you kind of decide maybe it isn’t your time yet, how do you even begin to fix the things you’ve let go?”

I realized that it described where I’m at exactly. I’d given up. For years, I’d simply buckled under too many demands and not enough support.  I simply stopped pushing back and let life happen to me. I really did get trampled by the passage of time. A whole lot of time.

That’s really been coming home lately as I see how things literally just piled up, one thing on top of another, over the course of years. I hadn’t realized until very recently (like, in the last month, or less) just how much I’d really given up. I’m finding areas where things were simply dropped where I stood; things like empty bags. Clear evidence that I didn’t have enough caring at the time to even put them in a recycling bag in the next room.

It’s hard to not be sucked back into that apathy as I look around. I know that I’m making progress. I know that things are improving. But there’s still so very much to go. How on earth did it ever get this bad? How could I have seen it happening and done nothing?

So many feelings tied up in these things, too. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a small thing will open a door and a flood of emotion will well up and overflow. I think that’s why it’s so hard to work at it for very long. Being buffeted by these unexpected bursts of emotion is tiring, and can quickly become exhausting. The tiny little sparks build up, or the large burst explodes unexpectedly from something entirely mundane though it had been, until that very moment, completely forgotten.