Swiffer, please!

As I sit here, getting ready for bed, I look around my room. I've had my nose buried in a good book for the last hour and I'm tired, but I've had an epiphany.

This view, from my bed is a familiar one, one that I've seen for years. From this angle,though, I notice something I've not noticed before. I can view the backside of my computer, with it's mess of cords. I see the dust on my desk behind it, and the dust in between the keys of my computer's keyboard from behind, dust that, apparently my diligent cleaning has missed. Somehow, this insidious dust has lodged itself in between every key, probably slowing things down and making the air considerably less breathable. This is a keyboard I use every day for extended periods of time. I type a lot, so how could so much dust settle there? I just cleaned this area extensively the other day!
So it makes me think.
How much dust has settled in my life and how can I breathe with it here just suffocating me?
How has my cleaning/excercise/therapy/prayers/art/work missed it? How did so much of this crap accumalate? Why is there still all this dust from my past in my life? Is it hindering me from making a clean start? If so, why am I so afraid to simply clean it up?

They say that there is a turnover of atoms in the human body every seven years, that every cell in your being is regenerated in that cycle. If that's the case, then I'm sure as hell due for an OVERHAUL!!!!

My room is a creative familiar and loved mess of overcrowded objects. Things that make me happy or comforted are gathered here. Things left untouched and unmoved for years, like a grandparent's box of cherished mementos. I could probably get rid of over half the items in here and still feel O.K., still function and maybe be even more comfortable, but I haven't. I don't dare move a thing. I realize that I've been in a state of non-movement for what seems like forever.
For years.
I've been sad.
Unbelievably sad. --- Beyond sad.
My life has gone to pieces and I am so unrecognizable to myself that I probably couldn't pick myself out of a police line-up! Sometimes when I dress into clothes from my pajamas and look at myself in the mirror before going out and facing the world I do a double-take and then wince, WHO the fuck IS that? It's not me! I don't even know that pathetic person...

Anyhow, I realize why I don't just leave here. I realize that IF I left... I would be leaving behind the last place that my mom saw me living in while she was alive. We had so many Thanksgivings and Christmases here. I'd be leaving behind the last place that Jeff loved me in. I'd be leaving behind the last physical evidence of my old life... the nostalgia of it overwhelms and paralyzes me. The life I once had, the one with so many dreams and hopes... lost, gone forever. This house, that those people I loved saw me in. This place, where I put down so many cherished roots. Any new house I live in will never be seen by those people, in my former life who loved that person I once was.

I realized that I actually sometimes unconsciously or subconsciously entertain the idea that my mom will come back one day! (I know that it's preposterous, but I think I do it!) Don't all people who have lost a loved one do that at some point? Isn't that the hardest part, wrapping your mind around the cold realization that you will NEVER AGAIN see that person in your lifetime? And I know that if...(when) I leave here, that notion of connectedness to her in the physical tense will be blown to bits. So I don't dare leave. I'd rather hang onto a dream or a shred of nostalgia than to try to take a chance for change. I hang onto things so fiercly, so all encompassing and entirely, even if they are gone. I cannot bear to let go, even if letting go might free me. I am in desperate dire need of drastic transformational change in my life, yet I cling, and don't budge. Is it even normal for a person to miss her mom that much? Maybe. Losing a cherished family member has got to be one of the more CRUEL and FUCKED UP elements in this life. Or is this all some strange measure of control that I think I can keep over my destiny by staying here in this "safe" place that I know? I know that I used to like that person I was, and I don't like this new strange timid person I am now. I knew who that person was, this new one? Well, I don't know her at all and I'm skeptical. Afraid.
So it is.
I am stuck.

I am dying here in a world of dust and I need to break free.