This process of decluttering is a continuing struggle with who I am and what I was. True that who I was has a cumulative effect on who I am. But is it necessary to keep all these remembrances of what was? Like college year books. I have four of my husband's and three of my own. I hated college, hated being away from my family, hated being in the college situation, hated dating, hated having roommates. Hated the whole thing. So why keep these remembrances. Is anyone else going to care? NOoooo. But the angst of actually letting them go is troubling me. It isn't as though it is like throwing away a part of myself. The only part of me that is in there is a class picture. I was not a "belonging" type of person -- no sports teams, no hobby groups, no intellectual organizations. Maybe it is the what might have been that bothers me? Don't see how that could be. I don't do groups very well. In any group situation I feel like an outsider, always on the fringe, not important, not necessary. How this came to be, I don't know. I have felt this way since our move to Chicago in 1949. Never fit in anyplace after that.SO away with the year books.
Yesterday I left Bill at the eyeglasses counter at Costco and went off meandering on my own. I completed the circuit, saw what I wanted to see, and returned to the eyeglasses counter. Bill was not there.Knowing that he was probably looking for me, I stationed myself in the center of two main intersecting aisles. This always works because I frequently meander off not paying attention to which way he has gone and I need to be "found." And he did find me."I thought I saw you before," he said to me, "but I was pretty sure you didn't have on a red top." And, of course, I didn't. Don't have but one red top -- rarely worn. Red is not my color."Look," he said, "there she is down there." And he pointed down the way to the woman wearing a red top. She was about ten inches shorter than me, she looked a lot thinner than me, and I am fairly thin right now. She had short hair like me. She had white hair like me. She was a little stoop shouldered, NOT like me. And she was old.......like me?I was stunned. Do I really look that old? Guess so. Don't like it very much, but there it is. Barbara is getting old. Getting? Hmmmm. Maybe is. I am sixty nine. I think of eighty as being old -- not sixty nine. My aunt Mary is ninety nine and that is old. Somehow I just don't think of myself as being old. And, guess what? I'm going to continue to not think of myself as being old.
