The Closet Of My “Anxiety.”

Because we live on an island, every turn of one’s head will encounter a glorious vista, each more spectacular than the one before: snow-capped mountains in the distance, heavily forested hills of fir, the ever present expanse of ocean, rainbows of rhododendrons (and other plants I’m not yet familiar with), topped by an almost daily sighting of bald eagles and a nightly accompaniment of softly barking seals.

My senses are on high alert, the sudden increase in visual and audial stimuli is almost “too much” for someone from the Midwest who has had less exposure of that kind (not that the Midwest doesn’t have its own intrinsic beauty).

In the rental house we have just moved from we were able to observe a nest of blue herons in the fir tree next to the patio; watching them glide onto their tree-top aerie to feed their young, was a breath-taking sight. In our new home we have a resident goose mama and papa raising their two well behaved off-spring. (The latter is a curiosity to our greyhound Gracie, who keeps a close watch on them as she roams from window to window.)

Like all the wondrous views on the island, the one from our new house is no exception, and I hope to never get used to it. Outside our world is expansive, inside not so much. At least in some places. You see, although I’m not really complaining, the storage capacity is somewhat lacking throughout the house: pantry shelves are barely wide enough for a box of cereal and there are not that many shelves, the rest of the kitchen could use some more cabinets too, but it’s the closet space that’s hidden away in our bathroom where it extends behind the bedroom wall (I have the latter part), that is the cause of my “anxiety.”

We’ve pared down our possessions and after some angst at letting go, it actually feels quite good, (I’m not all the way there yet), but what now inhabits my closet are clothes I just have to keep. 

N nabbed the widest and most accessible part of said closet and even though I’ve whimpered and begged him to be a gentleman and switch with me, he will not budge, so I’m left with the dead-end section. I have to enter through his part of the closet and slither past my clothes which brush my face and when I’m standing in front of the rack, back flat against the back wall, I’m so close to my clothing that it’s virtually impossible to distinguish one piece from the other even if I allow my eyes to cross. I have no idea as to what the builder and architect were thinking when this house was built more than a decade ago,  but some of  their decisions don’t make much sense. 

I don’t like going in there, so have been wearing pretty much the same clothes every day (sans odor), but think there has to be an attitude change on my part. So from now on I’ll take a deep breath and try marching in there with images of the great outdoors filling my head.  We’ll see how that works.

Or else I’ll go kayaking.