Yup, I'm in the midst of my annual spring-cleaning bedroom project. Clearing my room, is catastrophic, and mentally exhausting. First, I would need half a day's worth of time to do it. Next, coffee to perk me up. Thirdly, emotional stability. In the middle of clearing my books and papers, my bed, floor and anywhere else that has space will be shrewn with papers and nonsense. What are these nonsense? Basically, I am a bit of a garung guni. I keep useless things like: 1) things from my older cousin who has used but kept since her junior college to university days ( she is 29 this year..) which are given to me by my aunt...rusted hair clips, out-dated earrings, old necklaces that requires polishing.. at times even sweets that are close its expiry date.. haha. 2) Samples from everywhere. Little sachets of shampoo, face cream, skin whitening lotion, conditioner, pore minimising essence, anything you can find in a sachet or tiny little bottles. 3) Pamphlets and flyers and promotional letters that I just pile up and forget to throw. Enough said. And most of them land on my desk. So, when packing starts, my floor was divided into a wanted and unwanted zone. Scraps of papers everywhere, pens dried of ink start appearing on the floors, huge stacks of past-year worksheets emerge from boxes usually hidden away in my bedroom, placed in the unwanted zone. My bed is not spared. It temporarily becomes part of the space segregated for unwanted and wanted stuff. Its a mess.. a bloody mess. I look at it and my head spins. Wonder why I had to take everything out. But at the end of clearing, I feel like I emerged out of a battle, exhausted, but satisfied.
Yeah, satisfaction. Everytime when I decide I want to clean my room, it is always a time when I feel like my lifestyle needs a change. Its a time to refresh myself, re-organise my things and get ready to face a new start ahead. This time round, school is reopening in a month. I had a hard time in my last two semesters in university. When my holidays started two months ago, I ran away from the reality of my university life. I simply chucked everything aside and just did not bother to look or think back my last semester. I ran away from my grades; until about 2 days after my results were released, only then I gathered much courage to check my results. I am supposed to decide my major in the next semester, but right now, I'm still clueless. At this point, I don't really know where I intend to head for. Am I going to school with a cannot-be-bothered attitude for my grades, using the excuse that "life is more than just grades"? Sometimes I think I am just deceiving myself. As a christian, I reassured myself that no matter what happens, God will always ensure my life is well. Or perhaps, it is God's arrangement that I do not do well. Well, I was shaken out of this deception by my pastor on Sunday. I'm sick and tired of feeling so lousy about myself. I felt that I needed to pull myself up again, and therefore repacking my room is the first step to get myself ready for my new semester. A new start goes a long way I hope...
And as I was clearing and repacking my stuff, I had a walk down memory lane looking through photos, secondary school autograph books, art folios, school diary etc. Some were painful, mostly were happy moments of me and my friends having fun. Over the years, I have lost and put on weight like a yoyo... Now I'm at my fat stage again. The heaviest in fact. Sigh...
I'm not totally done with my room yet. Getting new boxes and trays from Ikea! I will clear all the cosmetic junkies at the side of my table, and pack them in the new compartments!!! So exciting!
So, clearing my room is not just like clearing any other place, be it my former classrooms, toilets(we were trained to clean toilets in secondary school!!). Its a combination of physical and emotional clearing. My state of well-being differs before and after the job. I often go through deep reflection while reminising the past. Every object that i own has a memory of its own. I even keep scraps of wrappers. There is especially one that evokes strong feelings. It is just a lacy wrapper used to wrap candies. Given to me as an exam encouragement by a church friend, whom just a few months ago, was in a serious coma for a mysterious brain infection. Her chances of survival were pretty slim, and I remembered everyone praying for her like mad. God heard our prayers and blessed her with a miraculous recovery. When I received the wrapping of candies, I felt so grateful to God for giving back her life, that she may come back and inspire the rest of us. Call me over-emotional or reading too much into things, I don't care, but I was really overwhelmed by this thought. So many memories in my room, good ones and bad, tonight, I'm cleaning out my closet, my negative side I shed.
