Spring Cleaning for the Soul

A dear friend had a clear out this week and told me how good it made him feel. Clearing out the junk we accumulate, the trinkets from failed relationships, failed projects and the stuff that we “promise to find a home for tomorrow” is something we should all do once in a while.

I smiled when I saw that it was having a positive effect and then when I looked around my room I vowed I’d do the same.

I’ve had a coke bottle on my bookcase for almost a year now. The coke well past it’s use by date. It’s place in my life even more so. You see this was a bottle I had made for someone special… Share a Coke with… you all know the campaign.

When those bottles of coke hit our shops last year, everyone had to get their name on one. Luckily for me I managed to find one no problem… Hell I didn’t even realise one bottle had my name on until I’d started drinking it! Even my grandma got in on the action posing with two of her granddaughter’s bottles

So what has coke got to do with my soul?

Let’s rewind a year shall we? The sun was shining as it is now, much was the same. I was working through the summer but those long, lonely days in the office were punctuated by lovely messages from him….ahhh. How my heart soared when I heard those little beeps and knew that even. Though he was over 5000 miles away, he was taking time out to say hey.

Let’s rewind two years… Location: my back garden. Setting: an impromptu barbecue with friends. Theme: Get Gem a fella. Yes, my mates wanted to sign me up to a dating site. I argued, I protested but in the end I found myself answering the never ending questions in order to complete my profile and be “matched” with my potential Mr Right.

Well it took over a year, 3 different dating sites and oodles of £’s (seriously where was this get 6 months free if you don’t find your match in the first 6 months?) before I met him…

When I say met…I mean in the virtual sense of course. He was very good looking, intelligent, intellectual, cultured. I was hooked.

So…after a few weeks of late night Skype chats, Ramadan and holidays we met, we dined, we laughed, we lived, we loved, if only for a short while, then he was gone.

Amidst all that, if you’re keeping up you are probably wondering what the hell this has to do with my Spring Clean? Well, he told me, I would never find a bottle of Coke with his name on (isn’t that a marvellous campaign?), to which I was like

NOBODY tells me what I cannot do…got it? Ok

So I drove 80 miles to get him his own coke bottle…and what did he do? He went 5000 miles in the opposite direction and took up residence in a whole new country, new apartment, new life… I don’t blame him, it was just a case of bad timing. It was good while it lasted but it had to end.

This bottle of coke has been on my bookshelf for one year….a whole year…keeping the little teddy my dad had as a child company. Every time I dusted my room (which is not as often as my mum would like I know) I moved it, dusted it and put it back. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps it was my way of clinging to the hope he would one day come back to claim it? It’s only value was sentimental.

So, this weekend, with my friends words “It feels good Gem” making my heart swell, I got the courage to do it, get rid, once and for all. I don’t know that courage is the right word…the balls perhaps, the nerve….but whatever it was I got it. I got hold of that bottle….

And I poured that guy

Right out of my life and where he belongs…

And yes Rory you are right. It did feel good!! Now I need to know what to spring clean next…detox the diet and trash some of the stash I guess… I could with a creative cull of unfinished projects….

So your turn now, what are you holding on to that’s past it’s due? Comment away…..