One of the last things still in my bedroom that I'm giving away is making me funnily nostalgic. It's nothing big, just a duffel bag that is from the luggage set I got when I went to college. It was the most versatile piece of that luggage and so has traveled everywhere I went for many years. When I got new luggage a couple years ago (the old stuff was difficult to fly with because it didn't have pull handles and when we went to Phoenix last year I was not able to drag my tippy old luggage around for the 10 hours or so of travel we were doing each way.) I don't get very attached to things, but that bag and I have been a lot of places together-college, camp, grad school, a conference in Detroit, many visits to friends in Pennsylvania, and at least 2 trips to Florida, along with being used in multiple moves--besides all the ones to and from college and camp and grad school, it's moved with me from Ohio to Michigan, my first home in Michigan (grad housing) to the trailer that was my first home of my own, Michigan to Ohio, my mom's house to northern Ohio, and northern Ohio to my current home.
The weirdness that goes with that bag is just part of what has happened to me because I have very few "things" from childhood. My father didn't release much of that to us because we wouldn't stay with him. And then for years I never was settled. Along with not having clear memories of significant chunks of my life since bipolar started about 20 years ago, and
anything familiar is important to me. Nonetheless I don't need the bag and so it is going. (That, and frankly I try to get rid of things like that because I find it somewhat pathetic that my mind wants to attach the meaning of memories to things when my brain was too impaired to make real memories. I need to focus on what I really do remember and what those things mean to me; I can't re-do those lost years and as Dr. Mind has reminded me many times I really am better off not remembering. Since he is able to remember half the years that I have so little memory of (other years I have limited but clear memories) I try to trust him on that.
The thing is that I'm soooooooooooo tired. I did a lot yesterday with painting, plus my allergies are bad and I can't take Zyrtec, which works much, much better than Claritin for me. Zyrtec is a derivative of one of my anxiety meds and if I take them together I feel very sedated and depressed. (We learned the hard way a few years ago because nobody put together how I was feeling with the meds until I picked up a different brand of generic zyrtec and read a warning about not taking it if you are sensitive to the other drug. I had Dr. Brain investigate and it quickly was apparent why I'd felt bad for several weeks, something we'd been calling an episode.
I really don't feel like doing anything. I think I'm going to take meds soon and try to get to sleep early and see if that helps. I have no idea if it will since it won't make the allergens go away.
I am so grateful for the 3 day weekend. I really needed this time. I wish we hadn't painted yesterday and I'd had 3 whole days to relax, but I'm also so thrilled with how my house looks. Next weekend I'll paint the porch and then it will look like a totally different house out there. (New windows, new shutters, fresh paint, ugly decorative edging on the porch gone, and the non-functional railing the prior owners threw up to satisfy the requirements of my FHA loan is also gone). No more barn red. I've never liked the colors of my house and so the new ones are really exciting. Red isn't my favorite color ever, but this shade was not pretty at all. But in just a few more days it will be a memory.
A real memory too, not just one of my partial ones symbolized by a stupid suitcase.........:)
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