emptying the cache

i am an emotional hoarder.

i do not hoard objects or possessions; i hoard emotions. i am a pack rat of feelings.

like those who hoard material things until they’re swallowed whole by old newspapers and crumpled beer cans and hideous tchotchkes from a thousand garage sales, i have vast, hidden chambers and hallways in my head and heart stacked floor to ceiling with emotional junk. alphabetized, dated, cross-referenced. i can wander through them for hours, revisiting my own history and watching filmstrips of days gone by like clark griswold in the attic.

but it’s not my life’s treasures and triumphs and joys that occupy the bulk of those chambers and hallways – it’s a jumbled, crowded collection of regrets and mistakes, all my worries and fears, every sadness and heartbreak and hurt that’s been saved. framed pictures of my shortcomings, boxes of previous missteps, broken recordings of words i wish i could take back, empty jars i’d hoped to fill with better choices and trash bags bulging from the anxieties they contain. there are extensive card catalogues overflowing with the full spectrum of my own negative emotions or experiences, and i can shuffle through them to call one up at will, often triggered by who knows what. a song. a thought. a name. a word. a moment. i can tell you the where, when, who and how of each feeling as if it happened yesterday. but, like the epic amounts of waste amassed by a typical hoarder, these are things that, for the most part, i never let anyone see.

sometimes, i’m struck by one fleeting twinge of remorse or embarrassment and then compelled to dig through the contents of those chambers and hallways to find more. it’s like a compulsion – misery does love company, after all. pull at the one thread until the whole sweater comes unraveled. remember a single flaw and immediately remind yourself of all the others like it. before long, that dripping faucet becomes a flood. and, no matter how unwise or unhealthy or unproductive it might be, stopping that familiar, futile journey down that well-worn path is often challenging. just the other night, one lone glint of a memory popped into my head as i was trying to fall asleep, and a seemingly insignificant seed of contrition grew into a towering oak of self-criticism within an hour.

for whatever reason, i seem to be unable or unconsciously unwilling to clean these things all out and throw them away. “let it go” is a skill i have not yet been able to grasp, let alone master. so everything stays. fermenting. and, as time marches on, the more room devoted to darkness, the harder it is to find space for the light.

i’m not sure why i maintain these stores of negativity, or why i can’t rid myself of them, or why i stroll through the cramped corridors of the less-than-sunny times in my past as often or as easily as i do. part of it is, perhaps, an effort to understand and learn, as though i might somehow figure out the perfect answer to what to do next if i just think long enough and hard enough about what i’ve done before. regardless, in doing so, this horde of hoarded emotions has begun to define me. it’s started to become who i am instead of who i once was. realizing this has been a slow but revelatory process.

i fully recognize this problematic trait within myself, and can completely understand its inherent destructiveness. it’s one of the issues i’m addressing via therapy and i’m hoping i can eventually run a giant dyson through the whole mess and clear at least some of it out. in the meantime, i’m trying to create pockets of clarity amid the chaos, and learning how to better sort what’s valuable and meaningful and worth keeping from what’s irrelevant and useless and, ultimately, toxic.