Metaphors

The mess is a bit more under control, thanks to a friend who came over a couple days ago to give me some direction.

Before she left, she looked at my living room, smiling, and told me that it looked really good.  I think she may have said that I'd gotten a lot done.

And all I wanted to do was cry.  I did cry.  I didn't want a clean living room.

(Crazy.)

I re-covered a chair last fall (or maybe in the winter?  Can't remember.)  I finished it late one night, and I cried as I finished it.  I sobbed when I was completely finished.  And before I could go to bed, I felt compelled to tear apart *another* chair.  So I took all the fabric off of another chair, and I felt better.

I can't sit in the re-covered chair.  I don't know why.

My friend (the one who dove into the mess in my house with me) has described these types of things as a 'metaphor' for something - something that's going on underneath all of the frantic bedroom painting, furniture rearranging, 'crap' purging, chair re-covering, and yard destruction.  I think she's right, but I don't really know what the metaphor is exactly.

I have recently started talking with a grief counselor.  He offered some perspective on the glass-shattering fixation I have, talking about its symbolism.  Although it was helpful to start thinking about why I want to throw things and break things and shatter things, and then clean them up, it was really painful.  It hurt a lot.  We didn't talk about it long.

But it does sorta help to think about what it all 'means'.  Because there is more to it than just throwing and destroying things.