Storage Wars

Second day completely opiate free after nearly twenty years on serious heroin junky levels of Morphine and Fentanyl (China White on the street I'm told...don't know which street but there you go). It's taken a sliver over 6 months to wean myself off and it's been hell. Although I am extremely pleased to have beaten it (touchwood) if I'm honest I'm feeling rather diminished. I have however achieved, (in terms of getting things done, solving problems,) more in the last 4 days than in the last several months. The fact that I can now see solutions, or at least appropriate actions, where before things were simply impossible says a lot about the consequences of having such a monkey on your back. Life is entirely chaotic, there is simply no sense of control, at best one is feebly reactive, more often miserably passive. Not that all is now picture perfect sunlit uplands, very far from it, but at least now I seem to be more present.

One of the things I've managed to do this week is finally get someone to disc-cutter off the padlock on my rented shipping container and crack open the doors for the first time in several years. It was like the opening of Tutankhamen's tomb. Inside it is packed to the doors with the entire worldly goods of my parents plus a wall of stuff from the past of the Oxfordshire branch of the Wood family. Renting this has been a financial haemorrhage but in among the now unfashionable furniture and valueless videos and toys are more important things that I want to preserve. Sorting it out has seemed such a daunting impossible task that it has all lain in limbo. I'm committed now though, the clock is ticking and it's got to get done, this cavernous metal tomb has to be empty within a few weeks. First load today, Kit and I filled the car with boxes of my books to sort out at home and a few odds and ends I want to keep. One can now stand inside it, as long as there's only one of you and you don't want to move. The other day I was talking about looking back into your past and your memories...this is that process made physical. Archaeology of a family.