SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

It occurred to me that it might be helpful to create a separate post about this. I'm a compulsive organizer. It's my therapy, and to be honest, a bit of a real compulsion.
I absolutely hate when I'm looking for something and can't find it. That's happening more and more. Even something that I had in my hand 2 minutes before. Organizing helps keep me sane.
So..a few weeks ago, they found my dear niece dead in a wooded area nearby. She was virtually homeless, squatting in an old trailer that had two sheds out back. She was an alcoholic, had stopped drinking months ago when diagnosed with liver failure. She was drinking the day she died, went to sleep and (we hope) never woke up.
Her mother, my beloved sister, died in 2015, lymphoma. She had survived breast cancer 25 years earlier. She would have survived this but was so dental phobic, they refused to treat her further due to her extreme dental problems. One year later, my nephew's wife died a horrible death, massive bleeding from an OD, followed a year later by my nephew. Then my brother in law was struck by a car, and lost the house he built, practically by hand, because he refused to pay property taxes, instead, gambling and buying lottery tickets. He wound up in a nursing home.
COVID. He died there. My niece scrambled to get as many of the family possessions out before they were trashed. She lived in several places, while guarding these things zealously, terribly upset when any went missing. She had offers to go live with friends and relatives out of state but couldn't leave her stuff.
So in the space of 8 years she lost her mother, her sister in law, brother, childhood home, father. These "treasures" were the family she tried desperately to hold on to as her health and mental stability crumbled.
There are even more sordid details. But frankly, it all sounds like I'm making things up.
So, I strongly encourage all of you to judiciously choose your "treasures." If it brings you joy to see those eyeglasses, snuff boxes, ratty old stuffed bear, great. If not, get rid of the physical baggage that might be holding you back.

I strongly encourage all of you to judiciously choose your "treasures."

My h says that if you're sentimental about *everything*, you're sentimental about nothing.

Wow!!! It does sound made up, but I know you're not doing that. What a horrific time for your family and your niece.

I, too, treasure my organization, and feel dis-ease when things are not where I can find them. One of my favorite tech gadgets is a label maker! My daughter used to laugh at me... until she decided she wanted one, too. But I probably still have things to go through and get rid of. A dear friend of mine who downsized after losing her husband to lymphoma told me, if she looked at something she was packing and was ambivalent about letting it go, she would take a picture of the item with her phone, and that was a compromise between keeping something and letting it go.

I hope you'll indulge me to ask a question of the thread readers here since it's somewhat pertinent to the topic of getting rid of things. Back in the early to mid 90s I was a prolific journal keeper. It was a difficult time for me as I began to see how I thought my FOO was perfect, to realizing how they'd all pretty much smushed me into a box of what they wanted me to be. And I was angry and confused and so diligently unpacking my upbringing so I could sort things out, helping to learn where I needed to change. And these journals were sort of like my therapist, although I was in therapy, too. But I unpacked things too quickly and became overwhelmed and needed an outlet other than my weekly sessions with him.

I've kept those journals all these years, and there's stuff in there I don't want anyone to ever read, but stuff I did unpack with my therapist. Over time, my journaling slowed and I only did it when I was going through a particularly difficult time - like that event which shall rename nameless on this sub-forum. Because I didn't want anyone to find these journals, my therapist volunteered to keep them with his other confidential records. That way I didn't have to worry about something unexpectedly happening to me, and someone finding them. When we moved seven years ago, I didn't take the journals with me, but the plan was to return to see my therapist and we would go through them together and discuss where I was at and whether I thought it was appropriate to destroy them. But COVID came along and for years I never made it back to see him in person, and I sure didn't want those things traveling through the U.S. mail system. But this past spring, I saw him and retrieved my journals, so they are now back in my possession. I've only started to discuss my journals with my new therapist, and I keep thinking the right thing to do is to destroy them. I'm afraid if I go back and start reading them, it will send me in a spiral, seeing who I was at the time I wrote them. I'm an entirely different person now. The other side of the argument is, it could be a reminder of how far I've come in my own therapeutic work.

So this is more of a... what would you do question. Have any of you had any old journals around that you didn't want anyone to ever find?