What do you fear? What's your worse nightmare? Perhaps, just like me, you are afraid of the skeletons you stash in your closet. Well, in my case, my skeletons were in the form of vouchers from my purchases, and the closet took the shape of a nice, brick shaped carton box I once got for a birthday as the wrapping of some Victoria Secret creams from my brother and his wife. (I have the unholy tendency to keep all boxes, because I love boxes and always find a use for them.) Since I have cards, I've always filed my vouchers in an acordeon paper filing system, so that if anything happened, I could always look for the vouches and contrast it with the bank statement. In the begining I actually added them up regularly to keep the control of my purchases, but after a while it was just so depressing to do so strassful that I stopped adding them up. However, even reviewing them, checking them, sorting them out was stressful, which made me stash the vouchers in the box thinking that I would go over them eventually. Yeah, eventually.
This is how the amount of vouchers and papers grew inside the box until it was nearly impossible to close it. Papers bursted all over the place from every corner, every crack, every small slot. I knew I had to go through them, specially because that was the place where my payment slips went too, and I had to make some order in there, but I just didn't had the nerv to do so.
This is how yesterday came. I had gone to one of the banks to pay into one of my credit cards the amount for the hotel in Playa Hermosa, which Kari promised to cover for, and for which he kindly transferred me the money. Then I went to the University, where I met with Mile, and we worked over four hours on our thesis (though the plan was to work only two and a half hours), went to lunch, both of us tired but so happy and full with hope, and then home. Needless to say that I was a rag by the time I've got home. However, perhaps it was because I had paid the hotel part in the card, or because of the working on the thesis that had given me such a bright, hopeful sense, but I stared at the box and decided that I had nothing to be afraid of anymore: I'm paying off my cards, I'm reducing my debt, not increasing it, so there's nothing to be afraid of in that box. This is how I cleared some space in my low desk, spread out my cards to keep the track of the card numbers and thus sort the vouches, and tackled the box.
Yeah, that's definitivelly something, but I still believe that there are people out there with more cardss than me.
This experience also made me think about fears and how, if we face them we find out that the Boogieman in the closet, that the skeletons we are so afraid of are nothing but just a pile of harmless stuffed toys and crayons. Sure they can be fearsome, but we can face them and we can control them. Remember that even when you feel you are over your head you can always get out of it. Discard the stupid chain mails that promise to make your skeletons vanish by magic, or the info-mercial solutions that urge you to call now and be part of the hoax. First things first: close the fawcet that keeps the water pouring in and drawning you, and then work on getting the water out.
There's always a reasonable solution to fight your fears, and it works.
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