Tiny Tea Tales: Reckoning

Open heart. Open shelves.

This weekend, I threw away everything I have been holding onto for the last two years, including my favorite teas. Every rare white, summer Darjeeling, autumnal clonal —- all of it. At once.

Frankly, I don’t even remember what I was holding on for. Why did I? Why did I allow all this space to fill up and get messy? Why did I keep myself from tearing into these packets, making myself some tea, enjoying them, sharing them, and then making room for more? Each was a living record of so much not done, so much withheld, so much self-perpetuated.

I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t bothered me before. But now I am tired of trussing up my life. I am done being caught in a sensory tar pit. I want to keep my sensory apparatus open. I need my eyes, ears, mind —and shelves— to be able to take in the new and the good.

To do this in the face of my own anxiety is difficult enough. But to continue living holding a dusty record of barely opened, hardly touched, un-tried things is much sadder.

Open shelves. Open heart. Stubbornly so.