Stay home they said….you won’t get sick they said……I refuse to listen to any more of their “Do this or that” propaganda.  More political than healthy.  To keep myself occupied at home I tried to do things to help my teachers but didn’t have much to do from home.  Time on my hands.  For years, literally years, I promised to clean my sewing/storage room.  Started in the closet with all the decorations I never used because I couldn’t get to them.  Cleared out a few things.  Found part of an old bed…..no idea where the rest of the bed went…from the location about 10 years old.  I still dodged the rows and rows of boxes with stuff in it.  Lots of stuff.  Scary stuff.  There is a reason, I never open these boxes.  My son-in-law is reminding me that if I keep doing what I always do, then I will continue to get what I always got a messy room.  Dive Dive Dive……..all hands on deck….Part of my mind is screaming, “Are you out of your mind?”  Yup.  I opened the forbidden boxes.  What a delightful time I had looking at childish hand prints and lovely cards from decades ago that I moved carefully and preciously through many moves.  My children have their own children and I am looking at their hand prints smaller than their kids.  I started feeling fairly smug.  I can do this.  About Mother’s day I was cruising through boxes finding lovely memories what a wonderful time I had.  Then I moved to another closet with all my photography work from school.  I graduated with BFA in Photography.  Ten years of classes.  Mixed in were family photos.  I noticed over the past several weeks my nightmares are spiraling out of control.  I prayed like I usually do and my mind is fairly graphic….you can skip this part…..It fairly screamed at me, “You just ripped off 3000 scabs of course you feel lousy.”  Who boy all the things that were scary and serious.  Nearly losing my job, cancer, ex boyfriends and ex girl friends from children, daughters’ ex husbands photos stored and never delivered…..tons of guilt crashing down like a depth charge hitting my submarine.  I shredded and shredded and ripped and threw away hurt, fear and frustration.  No small wonder I felt terrible.  I survived.

I restarted my one-a-day picture blog.  I filled three large notebooks with beautiful prints.  I felt my love of photography surging out of the depths I buried it because I didn’t fit the model of “photographer”.  Photographers are business people.  I am not a business person.  But my love of photography isn’t about business it is capturing my point of view.  Emotions in print.  Exploring a place by closing in on the parts the make up the whole that is greater than the parts.  The cool part that I stuffed in a closet and forgot about it because what I did was different than expected by the World.  The very depths of my soul shook.  Bury who I am does not benefit me.  This cleaning is more than organizing stuff in a room, it is dredging up dreams, desires, aspirations……seriously scary stuff.