My Mind’s Junk-Drawer
We have a “junk-drawer” in our kitchen. It’s the drawer where coupons, batteries, a hammer, screwdriver, pliers, tape measures, a flashlight, matches, lighters, cat-nip, and the assorted 1/2 used birthday candle packages lay scattered about. It’s a small drawer, but it seems, it has the room of Mary Poppins magic bag. It holds everything and when we (meaning my husband) tries to clean and organize it once in a while, it is amazing the gifts we find in there. We probably will never have to buy another tube of super-glue or a magnet again. I wouldn’t describe myself as fastidious, but I do have a place for everything, everything has a place in my home; the junk-drawer is the exception.
I have the wonderful ability to compartmentalize. In fact, one of the visuals that I used when my repressed memories started to emerge, was that the file cabinets burst their seams and the drawers came busting out. I could no longer close them, I had to begin to process my past. In fact, the last file-drawer, the one that was never to be opened, I purposefully unlocked, went through it and was able to deal with the last of those compartmentalized locked up memories. I needed to go 100% in and not leave anything locked away. I wanted and needed to process my past.
It seems I have a junk drawer in my mind. It’s different than the “monkey-mind” I get when I sit down to meditate. This is the place where random mind-spinning thoughts live when I try to sleep. Where self-doubt resides waiting to be pulled out, or the shoulds, or the why’s, or the did you remember to thoughts begin to spin.
One of the terrible symptoms of PTSD is nightmares. One of the tools to help increase your chances for better sleep is to practice good sleep hygiene. I usually listen to a podcast every night to help stave off the night jitters and stop my mind from churning. The other night I was laying there enjoying the breeze coming through the window, and BAM, an image from an old horror movie popped in my head.
Somehow that picture popped up in my minds-eye and wouldn’t leave. I even said aloud, “that’s dumb, go away now,” and turned up the podcast that I was listening to, and interested in hearing. But, in the junk drawer of my mind, that one clown turned into a whole posse and would not get out of my head.
That’s when I decided that I must have a junk drawer in my mind. It conveniently holds the random bits of life that unconsciously stray in, as well as the little things I toss in there with the verbiage, “I’ll just think about that later, I don’t have time right now.”
Just like the hammer, lighters, batteries, and other essentials in our house that have a small drawer in our kitchen, my minds junk drawer holds the messy side of my human nature. Sometimes I need to clean it out and organize the bits and pieces that are strewn about haphazardly. I’ll take the time to acknowledge and learn from whatever I stored in there, and sometimes toss out the “stuff” that I no longer need.
Does your mind have a junk drawer?
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image source: Pixabay
Thank you for reading my books: If I Could Tell You How It Feels, and Untangled, A Story of Resilience, Courage, and Triumph
