Deep Cleaning

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So, hello. I'm Julie.

This girl you once knew a long while back that used to have this silly little thing of a blog that she poured her heart in to filling up pages upon pages with stories about her people. Her world. Remember her?

 She misses you too.

Stepping back in is a lot more unfamiliar these days. My soul feels restless and my mind feels tired. Hard to move mountains whilst sleeping, no?

You see, I've been cleaning.

I am discovering that as I age I have become progressively (and intensely) more neurotic. To be expected to some degree, but in many ways, still slightly alarming. When life pushes me to the smallest version of my self, it happens momentarily, that with eyes wide shut, I find myself reaching for the vacuum to suck the gunk of life away.

I know, that's strange. Let me better explain.

If I have a patient die during my shift, I grieve. My heart, linked ever-so-delicately to this grieving mother beside me, weeps. While on the outside, my professional self is reflective of all things it should represent: supportive, intuitive, caring--- inside, I'm dredging the trenches trying to see the light and sorting through a lifetime of catechism trying to ensure that the end is in fact the place of light and beauty that I am echoing to this grieving Mom beside me.

I can't fix her pain. I want to so badly, but it isn't possible and my efforts to erase it all would be an injustice to the significance of her loss.

So, instead. I focus my efforts on concrete tasks of cleansing.

There is this little gas station outside my new neighborhood and let's suffice to say that I am having an ongoing relationship with their vacuum. When my mind is cluttered and my heart is full with emotion, it often feels too much to fix. So, I start small and simple.

I attack the teddy grahams.

Vacuum in hand, I approach with stealth and precision. Those dang bears don't see it coming. The removal of each graham bear is like a stitch of healing in my soul. Next come the goldfish. Wedged between buckles and sidled with care, into every single crevice I find them, suck them up and send them to some place out of my reach and beyond my level of care. It's therapeutic and the end result is pleasing.

You see, I can't fix loss. I can't suck it up or pretend it didn't happen. No spotify playslist, no matter how awesome, can erase the sting of sadness that comes with the loss of light. I know this all too well.

Last week, I lost my grandmother. For all the years that we had assumed to be her last, the final day snuck in like a bandit and left us feeling empty and broken inside. Her spirit of life coupled with her love of her family radiated warmth in this world and now this space seems less shiny without her in it. Through time, I'm going to have to come to peace with that. I can spend day in and out supporting someones loss... but this was my somebody and the sting still feels so new.

My Granny was a light for my heart. I can't replace it nor do I chose to forget it.

So I grow, and I work hard to pour the light of that love into the people and places that I care so greatly for, feeling her encouraging, supportive presence all along the way.

And for the hopeless moments of sorrow, that seep into the crevices of fatigue---- there's a stop on my way home just waiting for me. Vacuum in hand, I'll attack the day.