The Engulfment Hazard

I’m nearing the end of a large chapter of my life; I’m saying goodbye to my childhood home. Over the past ten years, I’ve been cleaning and clearing that home. And now, it’s being sold.

My mind is rife with memories, of course. Some of my childhood memories include me rounding one of the farm’s silo edges, like I was on a balancing beam. And, while doing this, I was drawn to a safety warning on the side of the bin. I was intrigued by the tiny figure of a man, trapped within the filled silo.

I admit it; I was a weird child.

This image, featured here, is an updated version of that safety warning, with its tiny trapped man, amongst the potentially suffocating grain. And, along with the tiny man illustration, of course, there was a written warning…

 “Engulfment Hazard.”

We are all impacted by potential engulfment in our lives.

And, as cliché as it sounds, this silo image has been a learning lab for me about letting go.

We Need to Confront the History.

Nothing like easing into the overwhelming, right?

Hoarding was an issue I was hit with right away. The farmhouse, itself, is over one hundred years old and, when I started my clearing process of it, I was confronted by the reality that, yes, there was a century of things within that place.

It was a time warp, seeing the Morning Glory phonograph, the large oval portrait of my adolescent grandfather, taking in the early 1900’s. And then, there was the evolution of time, of eras coming and going, including World War II, my dad’s Army uniform, dog tags and photographs of him on the ship as a young serviceman.

Gradually, gadgets and furniture started modernizing, reflecting the 1950s and 1960s. Amongst some truly 60’s looking chairs were some artifacts representing my mother: plastic Halloween masks of President Kennedy and First Lady, Jackie, and Mom’s many oil paintings she had worked on, in various stages of completion, with portrait subjects wearing the 1960s bouffant hairstyle.

And then, there was evidence of my presence and my different eras, starting with baby clothes and my brown rocking horse on its springs, and I saw how that evidence morphed as I grew up. Dolls, toys and my blue tutu were among the mix as I changed from child to teenager, with posters of James Dean, rock and pop records, and my high school Letterman’s jacket.

As life continued to unfold, there were updates through awards and diplomas. There were newer televisions and couches.

And photographs, oh, there were so many photographs. Boxes, bags, albums, envelopes, drawers stuffed with them.

From room to room, there was evidence of moments frozen in time, even if they were obscured by the hoard.

Life, death, pain, dysfunction, aspirations, dreams, failures, losses and disappointments happened here. I’ve felt, for the past decade especially, that I was dealing with a haunted house. Remembering the personal incidents of my own, as well as the folklore, does give a person an overwhelming sense of history and a time warp that cannot be escaped. It must be walked through instead.

To do otherwise would be to suffocate, to be engulfed, like the silo warns its farmer.

We may not always have a house, filled with a century’s worth of possessions, but you and I do have our history: the eras, the hurt and the joy represented in those eras.

And here, perhaps, is where we could all benefit from a body harness for our psyches as we approach the totality of that life silo.

Early in my clearing process, I received a valuable piece of information from an elder. When doing this excavation work, we need to make sure we always have our lives, in their present state, to return to, when we’re sorting through the past.

Otherwise, yes, you and I will be engulfed.

We Need to Deal with Wish UN-fulfillment.

The silo WAS NOT attached to the barn.

My weird farm kid pet peeve was that I desperately wanted a barn that was attached to its silo. Some of my friends’ families owned farms that had a cute red barn attached to a white or a grey grain bin. I’d been in those barns; I’d had firsthand experience it could be a possibility.

Still, that was not the setup on my farm, no matter how much I wished it into being.

The silo was symbolic of other things I wished were… but weren’t, concerning the farm, my childhood, my life experiences.

Long before I understood complicated family dynamics, issues of abuse, addiction and other unresolved circumstances, I only determined life would be better, even perfect, if our red barn was simply connected to a silo.

You may have not been raised on a farm.

But, a universal reality, silo or no silo, farm or no farm, is that, despite things being realized for others, despite wishing for the same results, some things won’t happen.

It’s not pessimistic; it’s realistic. And, realism, sometimes means that, not only do our wishes not get met, sometimes, our needs don’t get met, either.

As I recently canvased the farm, even approaching those unattached silos, I was struck by my legitimate need to let those unrealized dreams go.

And it’s okay to move on, having never achieved some of those once- coveted wishes. I now wish for other things. And some of those things will manifest.

Life goes on.

Gather what you deem as meaningful.

Hoarding, in its three-dimensional reality, teaches one the concept of “too much.” You cannot escape it.

I couldn’t, anyway.

Again, the silo was symbolic of the real choices, made over years, decades, generations. The hoard captured it. Everything, within the walls of the farmhouse, had an attachment, an intention, a meaning to something deeper.

And, again, wish fulfillment, however successful or frustrated, signaled the importance of a possession’s existence.

Here’s where the overwhelming, “too much” of hoarding collides with the highly subjective determination of “necessary.” As I cleared the house, I came across items that, yes, had function and were necessary, in some capacity, at one time. There were old chairs, dishes and clothes, once, in use, now dormant. That was one thing.

But the heavier, more complicated lifting of possession discernment involved the more sentimental items, like old photo albums and knick- knacks.

In the beginning of my clearing process, I tried to hang onto as much as I could. I attached powerful meaning to possessions. I believed they must be kept, no matter what. They are connected to family, to memories. Surely, I couldn’t get rid of those things, right? They’re too important.

Only, as time unfolded, I recognized a life principle, via the silo.

 I could not keep everything.

To stuff any container, be it a box, a closet, a storage unit, or even a house itself, could produce a worst-case engulfment scenario the silo’s warning cautioned us about.

Only now, instead of too much stored grain, results could include burying us or spilling out unresolved toxicity into every area of our lives. All because there is more volume than capacity.

Realizing that, I needed to confront something else.

If everything is important, then, nothing is important.

I had to be even more mercenary with treasures I never believed I would part with.

And, as difficult or as painful as that was, surprisingly, when I did it, I was okay.

I let go of a certain doll, who pre-dated me. I hung onto her, because of… history? I needed to be loyal to history?

But did she mean anything to me, other than that? No.

Releasing that doll her, I was empowered. It felt freeing… and unfamiliar. But I did it. And I was glad I did.

Doing the very thing we believed we are not capable of, letting go of some treasures, with their treasured memories in tow, can help us to clear the space of the house and of our lives.

I know that it helped me to breathe.

Letting go is a process.

Inhale. Exhale.

I did not let it all go in one fell swoop. A dramatic purge.

Life is not a onetime realization of everything, with matching enlightening happening only once. Our finite selves couldn’t handle that; we’d blow a gasket.

Just like it’d be impossible (and harmful) for us to keep drawing breath in, with no release of that breath, it can be just as dangerous and dysfunctional to exhale a grand purge, without fully processing it.

That is what is required: processing.

Before we roll our eyes at the statement (and sure, I’ve done my share of eye rolling), let’s view this processing, again, through the perspective of the silo.

The bin contains a limited capacity for storing grain. For a time, that grain is permitted to accumulate. And then, for the purposes of bettering the quality of life, say, through a profitable sale, it is decided that the grain needs to be released.

The silo has done its job. Now the releasing of grain must do its job.

Gradually, steadily, the grain is poured from the bin. It’s important to release some of the grain, but not too much, all at once. To do so could risk spillage, waste. There would be lost profit to doing that.

It’s important not to let the poured- out grain become too overwhelming.

The same could be said for my processing of many things, all represented in my childhood home, in saying goodbye, in deciding how to handle all of the “things” contained in not only that building structure, but also in my life and psyche.

There has been so much processing. I have discovered, especially over the course of this past decade, that it has come in stages.

Stage One: I wanted to keep everything. Everything felt precious to me; everything was a keepsake.

Stage Two: I realized there were an awful lot of keepsakes. And they were cluttering my apartment and my current life. I spent some time and energy trying to navigate around them (physically, emotionally and mentally) …because I reasoned I could.

Stage Three: I had reached a saturation point. I couldn’t keep everything. My past was crowding my present. I began the culling process: of possessions, of memories, of pain, and of meaning.

Stage Four: I challenged and edited those possessions, those memories, that pain and that meaning. Many times, an item was “on the bubble.” I weighed heavily if I could/should let it go. If I did so, there was no undoing it. It’d be gone forever.

At various points, that sobering thought had me going back and forth. Sometimes, I was confident I could/should let it go.

Sometimes, I changed my mind, deciding it was too meaningful and valuable to me.

Sometimes, I, again, changed my mind, ridding myself of it.

And sometimes, I didn’t.

(I’d like to, in this situation, exercise my woman’s prerogative to change her mind. Just saying.)

Stage Five: I suppose this is where I am right now. I’ve done most of the sifting through possessions and their value assessments. But this is not finished. It is the ongoing work of my existence. I grant myself permission, therefore, to be fluid in the releasing process.

 Some of the things, be they individual material possessions, or trickier personal issues, cannot be released right now. I may let them go at a later point. But I give myself permission to not rush myself.

Inhale. Exhale. I allow myself to do both, in my own time.

We need to make a lifetime of decisions, that span beyond a house clearing. We would be served swell to put into regular practice the habit of deciding what will go with us, into our futures… and what must remain behind.

And, just as important, we need to discover our own silos, what they represent and how we move forward with and/or despite them.

We need to discover our own engulfment hazards for ourselves. And then, we need to learn how to free ourselves from them.

Copyright © 2020 by Sheryle Cruse