Reset Day 1- The Beginning of the Separation from My Stuff

I am my mother's daughter, for real.  Sometimes I don't really admit that, or realize the similarities until someone else points it out to me... when I was walking through the Stabroek market with my paternal uncle, all of a sudden a strangely familiar-looking Rasta peers at me. He asks, "is you Shelly daughter?" My uncle, also a Rasta, replies, "this is me niece!" as if to protect me from/refute any claims the stranger may have on me.  It was touching and scary at the same time, two "ruffians" fighting over me in the middle of a bustling South American marketplace. But the fun part is acknowledging that I, too am a "ruffian"! Then I asked if he was a D'Aguiar, because he did, in fact look like one of my mother's cousins I met in NY. Turns out he is... and he saw my mother in me! I don't know if I have ever met him before, and he doesn't know my uncle... I just usually suspect that people will see my father's face and complexion...

Anyway, all of this to say that I have inherited a lot from my mother besides her resemblance... like her propensity for collecting stuff.  I believe the term MA used was "packrat". Not exactly endearing, but strikingly accurate. I am not quite as in a bind as I perceive, because I have been making a concentrated effort to separate myself from my stuff for a while now, capitulated by my breakup, which required me to move bag by humiliating bag from Manhattan to Brooklyn since last summer.

I came to the realization that I just cannot be around all of these things anymore.  They are filling up the spaces in my life that should be for singing, teaching, writing, flying, dancing, etc., so they must go!

I actually had an argument with my mother over a cakestand with cover set, where it seemed to me that she was advocating for the salvation of the cakestand, instead of recgonizing my need to release sentimentality from the space it takes up in my life. She actually challenged me to sell it for a good enough price (not give it away) or she would buy it from me in order to "give it to someone as a gift". I'm not falling for that! I am not enabling what I myself am struggling to keep away from.

Mantra: "We are in the fields of perplexity. Take heed. Wait awhile, for perplexity is the beginning of knowledge." Khalil Gibran.

Theme Song: "A Good Day"- Oceanlab