Daily Vows

I made a realisation a few days ago that I need to let go of the idea of marriage, for now.  I realised that the reason I feel like I really "need" it is because I am so insecure.  I decided that rather than marriage, what my partner and I need to do is to make a vow to one another, every day.  For that day, and for the future.  One day at a time.  I think for people like me, it's a sensible idea.

We haven't made our vows for today yet.  He (my partner) has gone off on a necessary errand and will probably be back in an hour or so.  I'd like to make sure these vows happen every day, so I'm going to come up with one while he is out.  We have made a couple in writing, in a little 'love book' that I started a while back, but which we hadn't written in for nearly a year and one day we did them by text, because he was away overnight, working on another project.

I've just found a pagan vow that I quite like, and will try to rework until it fits 'us' a bit better.

our miracle lies in the path we have chosen together.  I enter this marriage with you knowing that the true magic of love is not to avoid changes, but to navigate them successfully.  Let us commit to the miracle of making each day work - together.  

So, let me have a fiddle:


My darling lover, at times it feels little short of a miracle that we are still together on this path of our lives.  It is important to me to acknowledge that I am here with you of my own choosing today and all days.  

I begin this day with you understanding that the magic of love is not in avoiding changes, conflict or differences of opinion, but in navigating them successfully.  

Today I commit to making this day of our life (which will not come again) a good one, together with you.  I also commit getting up with that same intention again tomorrow and for all of our tomorrows.


OK, there.  Longer, a bit more fiddly perhaps.  But I like it.

That's for today.  My aim is to find a vow to make to my partner, every day.  To set and reset that intention each and every day, whether we are together physically or not.

To me this is important, it's about speaking to those brain chemicals and to that snivelling and un-confident younger self and saying WE ARE HERE, TOGETHER.  He is here, LOOK.  We are committed to this.  Shut up and enjoy yourselves and STOP trying to sabotage the whole damn thing.

When I feel good and I am OK within myself I know that this partnership is incredibly important to me and supports me in ways that reach further than I can grasp.  My partner offers physical and mental support, spiritual and emotional support and more than anything - he offers me companionship.  He is my fellow adventurer.  Yes, he throws up all sorts of challenges and difficulties - but for those reasons also, I believe we are meant to be together.  TO LEARN AND TO GROW together.

Blessed Be.

Procrastination and Avoidance

I'm an expert at both avoidance and procrastination.  I can always find away to put off something that should be done today until some undefined time in the future when 'I have time for it' and I can generally find a way to be pretty much anywhere but home if home has gotten out of hand and become messy, dirty or smelly.  It's a bit of a hassle on the smelly thing because the carpets in the house really do smell bad, a lot of the time.  No amount of vacuuming, deodorising or steam cleaning with our domestic wet/dry vac seems to make any difference to that bad/fusty smell.  Of course some days are worse than others for the smell and when it's damp and cold so the house gets all closed up and circulation is low, it's the worst.  The more the carpet smells, the more I avoid the house.  I've tried incense, natural spays, bicarb soda, eucalyptus oil - pretty much everything I can think of that won't make me sick or give me headaches.  I can't seem to win with that carpet.

At the moment, it's imperative that I cease avoiding what needs to be done and stop procrastinating about sorting, tidying, purging and packing.  We are moving in not too very long and basically, I haven't done a damned thing about it.  I really need to.  I have a bit of leave and so therefore a window of opportunity.  Yet here I am, sitting downstairs in the car, because the light is brighter and it smells better and is not as messy.  I must stop this and just begin, wherever I begin.  I wish I didn't feel so powerless about all my partners seemingly endless amounts of stuff.  We did have a bit of a talk about this a while back.  I think he threw maybe one or two tiny items away and boxed up another batch which have been ignored on the dining room floor for a week now.  We don't miss them, of course, because they are not things we ever use and if we move them with us, if we never open the box, we'll be none the wiser.

Argh!!!  I don't WANT to be surrounded by dead weights.  I don't want to have anchors hanging everywhere.  I want my life (and my home) to be filled only with useful, beautiful, meaningful items that deeply reflect the core of who I am.

That sentence is so important, I think, that I'm going to say it again:

I want my life, and my home, to be filled with only with items that are useful, beautiful and/or meaningful items that deeply reflect the core of who I am.

I don't want extraneous clutter tripping me over, weighing me down and obscuring my view of how things really could be.  I'd rather have too little of perfection than too much of meaningless jumble.

I know that some of these things are meaningful and important to my partner.  I know he likes to hoard and hold.  I don't think those things serve any true purpose, unless we actually utilise them and incorporate them into our lives.  The fact that you keep a cut glass vase doesn't bring back a loved relative that has passed over and the fact (in my opinion) that you keep the bloody thing shoved on a high shelf gathering dust behind dozens of other hoarded items doesn't actually serve their memory in any positive way.  What does it say about how you felt about that person?  I'm happy to shove you on a shelf and allow you to gather dust.  I'll get you out once every few years when I move house and shove you in a box until we get to the new location, where I will shelve you and promptly forget about you again.  How does that work as the keeper of a properly treasured memory?

I struggle with these things, I really do.

I looked up a 'ten best shortcuts to get a house ready for a move' and NUMBER ONE was

Purge, eliminate…whatever you want to call it, just get rid of stuff you don’t need.

Yep, I'd love to.  I've spent years, literally years, throwing away and reducing my own possessions in order to make room for the possessions of various partners.  Quite frankly, I'm just a little bit tired of it, still yet - I think I am going to have to do it all over again.  

After my last relationship breakup, I really was down to the barest of bones (I thought) of who I am, but now I am going to need to let go of the last of my scrapbooking tools and equipment, the last of the last of the last of my books, and really, I don't know what else.  I don't have much.  I cannot and will not let go of my photo albums.  Pretty much all of the music I own these days is on my phone, there's a handful of CD's bought from live events in the past few years, that's all.  All other physical music I parted company with long since.  Yes, I need to trim down my clothing again.  That's an ongoing thing and I'm happy to do that.  Always.

For the life of me, I just down know what else in the house is mine to deal with.  Almost nothing.  It makes me feel very tied, very powerless, very frustrated.

I know I've gone on about this in another post, previously - but I still haven't found a solution for it.  I tried working with my partner, to look at things and to get some sorting done.  It was so horribly tense and he became so terribly defensive about all of his things, item by item, that I felt I couldn't tackle it again, I felt like it was going to blow up into some awful argument.  What I need him to understand (but can't quite seem to convey) is that I am not trying to take away who he is, or his past, I am simply trying to make room for us, as a couple, to have a fantastic present and future.

I'm stuck.  I'm stuck weighed down by stuff that is not mine to either purge or eliminate.  I don't know how to get rid of it or to explain to my partner that not only do we not NEED that stuff, it actually has negative effects, at least on me.  In fact, the NEED is to lighten the load, it's suffocating me.

The step two suggestion is:

Have a garage sale.

Again - the stuff is not really mine to sell and I think I've pretty much let go of everything of any value that may have been sale-able.  I truly feel that I have almost nothing.  It's probably not entirely true and I guess once we have moved everything we need to the new house, we still have this one in our possession and we'll have an opportunity to go through what has been left behind (which will include a couple of washing machines and a very large table, I suspect) perhaps having a garage sale here might be a good idea.  Not for the money, just so that the stuff gets recycled and goes off to be useful to someone.

I've got to get through step one, and the move, before I can get to that though.

Step three?

Organize the stuff you keep.

OK - yep.  That's fair, and makes sense .... and again, the less there is, the easier to get organised.

Right, there's not much that I feel in control of, but I'd better go start purging the stuff that I feel I have a right to (my clothes, my son's cloths, my scrapbooking gear, bathroom odds and ends).  

The rest will have to wait, I guess and I will have to get brave and tackle those hard conversations again.