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When I am furious with myself for some something I want to gather every material possession that I own, open the window and then toss them all out. This way, I imagine that I can start all over and be a completely new person, tricking myself into believing that as the "things" fly out the window, so will all my current distress. Although I have yet to actually carry through with this extreme solution to self hate, it's comforting to a have a contingency plan, should I ever feel I am bad enough to warrant such identity suicide.

I imagine that once I do this house cleaning, I can finally relax. Finally there will be nothing to fill my hours with distraction and sate my urge to keep busy. It's as if things had some magical power over me, leaving me a human doing as opposed to a human being. They do.

This urge to bathe myself in stuff has manifested itself over the years in countless artifacts and books, collected and forgotten, tossed into the corners of unused spaces in my home and head and left there, obsolete, no longer of any interest for me. I'm not sure that I'm unique in this. The things that I collect are symbolic to me as "me", each a tiny component of myself made real and tangible. My guess is that we all need this reassuring confirmation of our reality until we reach such enlightenment wherein we fully accept that reality itself, in particular our own, is an illusion While I can grasp the notion that everything outside of me is, in fact, an illusion, I have yet to understand how it is possible for one illusion, me, to observe another illusion, you.

Therefore, I can't get myself to toss or give my stuff away. I can't even come to putting my stuff where the rest of the world does theirs- in the front yard, in spring, next to a tag sale sign..

Here's what stops me from opening the window when I unhappy with some part of me. I am certain that if I toss my "stuff" out the window, then the "I " I wish to go with it WON"T go with it. I'll be treating the symptoms and will accomplish nothing other than creating a empty spaces in my house and mind where new echoes beg for new things to absorb them.

Occasionally demanding that I somehow apply myself to a higher standard than the rest of the "herd" is very telling, isn't it? The real question is this: why can I not allow myself to be human?

Do I flatter myself and secretly think I'm superhuman and capable of such power that I can arbitrarily begin myself anew?

Am I confused and claim that I am once both substantive and an illusion and so can change myself as easily as slipping a new photo in an old frame?

Or is my need to please others so demanding that it leaves no measure of time for myself and by myself unless I pay for it in hard cold guilt?