I am having trouble with the packing

I am stuck in the purgatory between thought and action. In my case now, this in-between place is manifesting in my making lists. These are the type lists that are never ending; the type of lists that becomes trees, with many branches; the type of lists that keep going and going…. prolonging my packing. It’s just that two weeks on the road, away from work and home, feels a bit like reckless abandon. And I suppose my list making - as opposed to the act of just throwing two weeks of our lives into suitcases - might be serving to mitigate the discomfort of my perceived recklessness. And might be providing me with some sense of emotional preparation. A part of me feels like there should be a ritual – running around our house and kissing the ground five times, maybe – to help honor this act of leaving our home and heading out west for a while. To create more of a space between the transition of home and adventure, between belonging and longing.

Leaving people and places, transitions in general, have often been like this for me. Even the simple tasks that happen daily – leaving my home for work; leaving my work for home – have a feel of heaviness. The way we just tear away from one place/one event/one friend or group of friends and rapidly move on to others on a daily and sometimes hourly basis without acknowledgement of the emotional impact this might have on some of us, just seems wrong to me.

As a kid, I had OCD that would often show up in its severity during times of transition. At bedtime, I would go downstairs and check that the doors were locked, the stove was off, and the lights were off. My checking would last awhile – the doors, stove, and light switches were checked at least a few times, because once would not do. The light switches themselves had their own dancing ritual, too – their own transition ritual from on to off at the mercy of my fingers, at the mercy of my mind.

I would also get stuck in doorways. Leaving one room and entering another felt sometimes impossible. My mind created its own ritual for this, which often involved stepping back and forth between the hallway to my bedroom (or any room I was entering/leaving) before eventually leaping into the new room. Moving from one room to the next was reckless abandon.

Perhaps this is why the residue of childhood OCD occasionally kicks in now in my adult life during transitions….to create some sort of ritual to say good-bye to the place or people I am leaving, and hello to the next place. To prepare me for leaving comfort, maybe. And entering something new.

As an adult now, it is rare for me to give in to these transition rituals. Though I occasionally do still feel the urges. When I was a kid with full blown OCD, I felt a lot of shame for these “symptoms.” Not knowing there was a thing such as OCD (and not knowing that others also engaged in this OCD thing) and living in a world with constructs of “normative,” I just thought I was crazy…that there was something very wrong with me. Now however, I often find myself wondering, when it comes to any of our so-called symptoms, what the symptoms themselves might be telling us about what is wrong with the world? Maybe my childhood OCD flare ups during times of transition said something about the hectic state of the world…. about the way we suppress emotions on a daily basis in order to just keep going. Without pause. Maybe my OCD in its exaggeration was really a loud scream - “WTF are we doing Y’all??”

 Maybe we should pause more often in the in-between spaces of our lives – hanging out in the doorways. And the negative spaces.

After I pack; after I wind down the work week; Hazel, Nora, John Mark and I will be driving West. But first I will be making lists, running around our house, and kissing the ground five times.  Or maybe this blog entry will do.

Stay tuned for more of this blog, which will not just be about the destinations…. but the space and time in between – the small details that are, in essence, the journey. Our journey. Our car ride, our doorways where we hangout– this is as much what I hope to remember and look back on.