Central Park Reservoir & My Pigment Library & Irrational Processing

I have had a very difficult week but I forced myself to go out and paint this morning.

It's been a while since I went up to the reservoir in Central Park to paint, so I did that.

8x10 oil

Then I took the bus down 5th Ave and got James Gurney's new book at Barnes and Noble.

(It's wonderful)

Then I went home for a little while, and went out again to the League to drop off paintings for our show which opens on Monday.

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I have had a terrible week.

Actually, all of 2025 has been kind of awful.

I really have had a particularly intense 6 weeks or so (including almost dying TWICE), even though everything is ok.

Last Sunday I must have been trying to feel a little better, and I went on a bit of a spontaneous decluttering frenzy.

And I threw out something that (probably should have been thrown out to be honest) I regretted....too late and after putting the trash out.

I had no idea it would hit me so hard.

I didn't know..... I'm just as surprised as anyone would be!

I think it was just a small thing that can tip an already-wobbly person over the edge.

AND ALSO as I realized... it all happened in those few days leading up to starting my cycle, which definitely makes everything worse.

I threw out a 25-year old garment that I literally haven't seen or thought about for YEARS- it was hiding in the bottom of a drawer. And I clearly remember what went through my mind..."wow I remember this!" you know that flash of old familiarity? and then "I do NOT need this 25-year old thing that I will never wear and haven't even thought about for more than 5 years..." and out it went.

AND I didn't take the trash out until the next day and I still didn't have a reaction.

And then it hit. 

And it hit HARD.

Of course it's impossible to not turn to the internets for processing advice, and it actually did help.

The most important thing I read from decluttering regrets is that usually when something like this happens, it's something about ourselves we need to grieve.

And that absolutely hits home and makes sense.

And while it is true that the garment probably needed to go, it's also true if I could go back in time and keep it I would.  For the sole reason that the timing of it was wrong.  I just didn't need yet something else to have to process. It's highly likely that if I discarded it at a time when I was doing a little better mentally, I wouldn't have cared.

And I didn't care about anything else I threw out.  Just this one small stupid thing.

And if I kept it I would have just forgotten about it again, guaranteed!

The mind is very irrational and it's so important to be gentle internally, and remember that what might seem small and stupid is actually something much larger and deeper.

It's actually a form of dissociation, which I am excellent at. (I'm a fawn-freeze trauma reaction person)

I do have a lot of trauma, and I dissociate.  This is something I have known about myself for a long time.

I just wish the timing of this was better.

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This week I cleaned out my bookcases, which I have been meaning to do for YEARS.

I knew I would find some interesting stuff in them, and I did, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I really only found one thing (from forever ago) that was very intense.... it was something I wrote (probably also about 25 years ago) about my mother and the time she put her hands around my throat and tried to choke me.

So yeah, I have some stuff coming up.

In addition to the current stuff with my mother, which I do not have an update for since I last wrote about it.

And maybe throwing that garment out was necessary in order for me to bring this stuff up and grieve for a certain part of my life and just get this stuff out. So I'm looking at it from many angles.

It's really hard to go through, but I do think I have good internal-processing skills & self care, and I know this, too, shall pass. It just hurts.

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I made a pigment library in my library with the extra space!

Here is the mess I made.... books for the trash, and books for The Strand!

I am not upset about any of this stuff-clearing, which is odd as I have always loved my books but I don't love any of these or it is time for them to move on.

I will be going to The Strand a lot; I think they'll likely take about 60-70 % of these books.