Moving on, moving in: The reveal. The god-awful, naked reveal

Here it is. The basement. 

Posting this photo is like taking off all of my clothes and jiggling my mama belly at taxi drivers and moms I know in SUVs and young guys who think they look especially hot in tricked out Hondas while they are pressing on the gas to enter the expressway. 

I'm a mess, I'm screaming while dancing nakey. And I'm not even saying a word.

But I'm not really a mess. And I'm not a looky-loo lady at the intersection of the expressway and Hoarders HQ. I am a woman with a real life that has been packed full of experiences. Some of those moments have left me wiser, inspired, healthier, happier, ready for more, centered, still. Others have left with me boxes and boxes of binders, wedding china, someone else's skull collection, important papers saved methodically on discs that can no longer be used on any computer anywhere, newborn clothes worn only once, college memoribilia, toys nobody plays with anymore.

I am like you. Even if you are a methodic minimalist, if you've already de-cluttered your home, haven't been divorced, aren't storing several lifetimes of stuff in a locked-up closet -- I imagine we are a lot alike. We all, to some extent, hide pieces of our former selves in the basement. 

My basement just happens to have dumpsters full of real stuff in it, symbols of the stuff I've pushed way down to the deepest levels of heart and mind. 

And because I think we are alike -- whether you fess up to it or just nod compassionately, write about it or tuck it away secretly in a journal, spill it out in the confidential confines of a $275-a-partial-hour therapy sesh or laugh about it with a big group of girlfriends after too much Malbec -- I am revealing this photo to you of what I've been ignoring for nearly six years. It's not easy. But there it is.

I want to fast-forward to reassure you that all this stuff has been better organized than it looks, piled by category of Baby, Kid, Dishes, Furniture, Holidays (and it has..ish).

I want to underline that some of this was saved in hopes of Another Baby, A House, A New Relationship, perhaps a One-Day Wedding (and it was).

I want you to know that I pulled lots of bins out, opened their lids to air out the contents and mildewy smell because it was time to stop shoving them aside into semi-catalogued teetering stacks that towered from the icky carpeting to the flaking ceiling. 

I want to explain. But none of the words or tears or rabbit-frantic looks of panic and embarrassment would make this go away or look like a design show swooped in to give me relief and Ikea shelving. 

I want to yell that I have it all together. Upstairs. Occasionally. In the hours after the cleaning ladies work their magic and after a very big donation drop-off.

This is my basement, as it is today. This is what I am dealing with, one bin, one box, one binder at a time. 

You can judge me. I judge me. In fact, that self-criticism has made it harder for me to go down and there and just deal, and easier for me to do my laundry in the one sort-of organized corner and then scurry out like the rest wasn't there at all.  

It has made me ban the Not Boyfriend from seeing it (this is his first viewing, too) and allow only a handful of family and friends into the catacombs of my heartache and hopes. Dramatic? Indeed. Time has definitely made it even more so.

But I know that somewhere in your home or garage, but mostly likely, your own mind, there is a place that feels cluttered and overwhelming and you are afraid will make others gasp if they witness the messiness inside. Maybe if I show my own mess, it will open the door for you to open your own door to that shameful basement that's packed full of your life.

Maybe not. That's OK, too. But by revealing what's under all my lipstick and clicky-clicky heels and nostalgic words about my life is a single mother, I'm putting aside the self-criticism and welcoming in the self-committment to tend to this room. 

It's going to be hard. It's also going to be OK. And it will probably never be empty. But I'm going down there bravely, nakedly, and I am going to let you see it all.

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Comments

[Tanis Miller]

I don't have a basement. But I have a closet and a BARN, that's right, an ENTIRE building which resembles this. It contains my mess, my hopes, my dashed dreams, my future, my past and many many tears. It's an embarrassment and a reality and it's just waiting for me to one day tackle it. Good luck on wrestling yours into submission. Life isn't tidy. Basements shouldn't be either.