Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Temple >

The joss of bricks

17:23 / 09.10.03

My parents have just put the house of all the childhood I remember up for market. I've come to visit them to help them sort up the place before they show it off, like a display through a shop window. They keep talking about "framing" and "depersonalizing" the place. Sterilizing it, and stripping it down to barely livable and openly suggestive.
It's odd. This building (which I sit in as we speak) I spilled so much blood and sweat and spittle and rage and love to... it's become something of a personal godform of mine. It's where I found myself and then where I lost what I'd found (and hadn't much cared for). It's where I one day upped and started looking through my dad's old books from the 60s and 70s about palmistry and tarot and where I uncovered the entire bloody bookshelf on Astrology... it's where I taught myself wicca and then decided I didn't want any more gods...
But I never stopped giving to this house.
I've pumped it full of every bit of me, and soon it won't be in the family any more and I've been going and going and going trying to take everything back and put it to good use and it's impossible and too much and...

I never expected after this past five years and all the seperating from this house I've done that I would discover that I haven't let go of it at all.

I know I've put up with much more traumatic than this, but it's a bit hard to see past right now.
I think I might need a bit of help.
I don't know what I need.
advice, perhaps? support? ach.

17:46 / 09.10.03

Do some recapitulation, or a ritual of cleaning up. Try working with Mnemosine, perhaps... Accept what´s behind, and look more into what´s coming.

18:09 / 09.10.03

That's the problem. It's hard to clean up when you adore the mess so. And the fact that now it must be done just... just makes it all the more challenging.

19:08 / 09.10.03

You're confusing the idea of "mess of memories and emotion" with "cleaning up the mess". If it's the memories of "mess" you find so strong, perhaps there is a way to honor those memories in a way that will help you move on. Because INEVITABLY you WILL MOVE ON. It is the humane and mature thing to control that change and do it gracefully, embracing the person you will become, thereby ensuring the you that you are presently exists for a benevolent purpose.

19:44 / 09.10.03

I guess this house reminds me of a much less graceful me.

Hmm...

I think that might have been very helpful. I think I have moved on quite a while ago... I'd just forgotten.

Memory can be a strange and powerful thing. It can trap us in cages we built and abandoned a long time ago, merely by their reflections on a place, and their reflections on us. On me.

I feel like something of an idiot. I feel like I'd forgotten not to be seventeen.

thank you though.

07:43 / 10.10.03

Maybe you could reclaim the energy you put into it? A kind of reverse banishing, banishing yourself from the house to sever the connection (thanks to Elseware for the idea). Claim your soul back from the house.

08:02 / 10.10.03

Or you could take some totemic items from the house with you. They could be your link with that house, that time in your life. Something physical to "honour the memories" as Chesed says.

08:18 / 10.10.03

This reminds me of something actually. I grew up in the same house for the first 21 years of my life. Then I went to college and stayed away for another couple of years, and my parents moved in the interval. I've always viewed the old house as the "real" family home, and my parents change of house, as well as the whole being away thing, mark two very seperate periods of my life. The old house crops up, almost always, in visualisations and astral trips esp. the garden. Completely understandable when I think of how much time I spent there. So there's a thought - you could use the visualised image as a gateway back into memory or just a gateway into a centred, balanced or evocative mental space. An astral "safe haven" if you like.

A friend of mine recently had a strong emotional reaction, completely out the blue, when she was discussing visiting her parents. I think because she wanted to go back and stay. There's defintely something powerful about seeing yourself away from this space, outside of parental protection. I think parents will sell up and downsize when their kids are finally away from home - mine certainly did, so maybe there's something of this behind your folks decision.

Another thought - if it is the place you feel attached to, why don't you just wander round the rooms, thak the house, and say goodbye to the place. Burn some incense or whatever, leave an offering in the garden or for the new residents. Recognise the transition.

08:47 / 10.10.03

I hate leaving a place. After 5 years I left my scummy but loved bedsit for my nice new house, but it was still hard. I had to make the effort to let it go.

As Quantum said, I kind of performed a reverse banishing, removing every trace of myself from the place. Leaving it with no "residue" of me for the next person to deal with (physical or otherwise). Then I sat quietly in the now depersonalised place and

. appreciated it
. thanked it
. let it go
. wished it well for its futute

After that I felt I could move on. Meeting the landlord there 2 days later it was just a "space" to me. The place it was exists only in my memory, as it should be.

In my new house I did kind of the opposite. "You are my space now". The new house I consecrated (in my haphazard persnonal way) to "stable passions" and told it so. Hmmm. Considering the time since I moved in maybe I should have said "a few stable passions", I seem to have too many these days!

good luck.

ps. I do something similar but quicker when entering and leaving hotel rooms. anybody have their "this is my space" / "this is no longer my space" rituals?

23:18 / 10.10.03

Sublimate. Build a model of the house, doll-sized, and do something good with it, like give it to your grandchildren if/when you have some.