...it can stay, I don't have to...

        I am a compulsive mover.
        Self-diagnosed, but nonetheless true.
        I tire of my surroundings quickly.  I'm never wholly pleased with the way things are.  I constantly find myself picking things up and putting them down elsewhere...
        arranging...worrying on...then rearranging...
        Dishes, knick-knacks, furniture...nothing is safe or secure in my sightline.  If I could move the walls themselves, I likely would...and often!

       I've never understood how people can tolerate the static.  How they bring into their homes a piece of furniture or a decorative item and determinedly, decisively choose the very spot where it will live out the rest of its life.    And they dust it, or polish it, or vacuum around it and never once wonder if it might be happier...might be more comfortable...might be more pleasing....might be more useful...elsewhere.

         Maybe in that corner instead of this one?  Or up on that shelf, if this moved over and that was taken down?  Or....or...or???

        I wonder, as I sit down to write this, if it's my imagination that is the root of my compulsion.  My imagination that fills up the walls with possibilities.  My imagination that says "if ever this, then...." and tries to predict the arrangement based on all the foreseeable variables.

         Perhaps instead, it's my inner discontent.  Perhaps its an attempt to right the view when it's the viewer that is distorted. Perhaps the shuffle of stuff is nothing more than the sloughing off of what isn't working out.

         Or maybe, simply, it's just that I crave change.  That I want to grow and adapt without stagnating.  That I  want my very surroundings to reflect every new piece of information...every new interaction...every new sight, as it gets added to my story.

        Stop.  Redirect.  This wasn't what I sat down to write.  The "reasons why" wasn't the topic I had in mind.  I didn't mean to expound on the causes.

        It was the wall.
        It was the wall, this morning, that I looked at and furrowed my brow at...and, quite possibly, harrumphed at.
        It was the wall.

        The wall of rock that splits in half one side of the livingroom in our current home-base.  It's...decorative, I suppose.  I don't know that for sure.  Perhaps it's structural or load bearing or any number of other things I can't possibly understand.  But I think it's simply decorative.  Dark stones, stacked atop and amidst, sticky with some old attempt at shellacking.  Dusty, if you get close enough.  No matter how many times or ways I try to clean it, the dust just gathers there and I've never found the right tool to cleanse all the nooks and crannies.

        The wall just...is.  Glaringly so.  It's there...so solid and substantial that it can't be avoided.

        The Wall.

        See?  Bold and imposing and completely, wholly immoveable.  Even on the page.

        So here I am, this self-diagnosed compulsive mover, who rearranges the furniture every time that stressors bubble up.  Here I am, pushing and pulling and shoving and grunting...exercising and exorcising the irritation out.  This, no longer here.  That, no longer there.  Wait...no...maybe...no...  Scrap it all and start again.  Sweat the situation right on out of existence and flop onto the floor, ears ringing with the racing pulse and gasping breaths.
        Here I am, the mover and shaker of all the things...and there is the wall.

        The wall won't move.  The wall won't be shifted, ever so slightly, into the corner.  The wall won't be picked up and put where I want it.   The wall just is.

        And I have met my match.  Or so it seems.

        In all the years we've lived here I've never been able to sort it.  It's there.  And I'm here.  And everything gets rearranged around it.

       And for some reason, inexplicable to even me, I've never once been able to just...cover it.

       Even on the rare occasions when I've temporarily put a piece of furniture in front of it, it's still held sway.  It's still been the focal point and the furniture a mere interruption.

         So there I stood this morning, brow furrowed...coffee mug in hand...growl vibrating in my throat.  I stared at that wall.  I willed it out of existence.  I blinked and wished it to melt right down to the carpet.  Opened my eyes and there it still was.  The Wall.   I took a breath and felt my shoulders straighten.

         I decided.  Right then.  Right there.  Just like that...a shoulder shrug and I decided.

        Ignore it.

        Pretend it's invisible.  Pretend it's insubstantial.  Pretend it's irrelevant.

        Ikea, here I come.

        I've a boy who's growing faster than I can keep track of.  His physical body expanding upward and outward as his intellect grows exponentially.  I've a boy whose interests need substance, whose dreams need space to be realized.  I've a boy whose stuff needs room.  And that wall is in my way.

        So I'm bulldozing it out of my existence.  It can sit there all...substantial.  All...solid.   All...unmoving.  That's fine. I'll just move around it.  I'll just ignore it and put what needs to be in front of what is and just like that, stop it from being.  Stop it from stopping me.

        That wall has got to go.  I need that space for him.  And I aim to have it!

        *Sometime it really is just about the wall.
        **Sometimes, the wall is the one I accidently built with other peoples' expectations.

~Leanna