Dusting Out the Closet and Soul Altering Cleaning

Here I sit, nestled on a soft healing blanket on a 65 degree fall Arkansas afternoon with all of the windows open and breathing in my peace. I’m thinking about the fact that just the other day as I was doing my cleaning sprints (they’re not really sprints—quite the opposite actually—just very small strategically-planned “cleaning hits” I do throughout the day so as not to get too winded but keep my upper hand), I joyfully dusted out my hall game closet.

By Shane Willbanks

Six months ago, I planned, strategized, recruited my strength for, and executed the world’s greatest cleaning job—well, in my world anyway.

I pulled a 16-foot, dual-axle flatbed trailer in front of my garage door, stood battle-tested and determined in my kitchen, and strapped on black rubber gloves as I yawped at Alexa, “Alexa! Shuffle ‘Dad’s Shit’ playlist on Spotify!”

I sounded like Bors yelling “Rus” to King Arthur. Let’s get to it. Out of 238 eclectic songs, Alexa in all of her peeping-Tom-like wisdom, chose to hit me with Bodies by Drowning Pool. “Let the bodies hit the FLOOOOOOOOOOOR!” Dave Williams (RIP) screamed as the contents of my closets quaked.

One, nothing wrong with me

Two, nothing wrong with me

Three, nothing wrong with me

Four, nothing wrong with me

My blood began to pump with Dave’s words.

One, something’s got to give

Two, something’s got to give

Three, something’s got to give

Nooooowww!

Let the bodies hit the floor

Let the lies hit the floor

Let the shame hit the floor

Let the guilt hit the floor

Let the anger hit the floor

Let the blame hit the floor

Let it all hit the floor

I was about to do some good, soul-altering cleaning.

I had been doing that for the past 15 months or so—both in therapy and real life—but only enough cleaning to get to the door of the place I had to go inside and clean. Now, it was time to open some doors and fill some garbage bags. (The naïveté and hubris in those last few sentences aren’t lost on the fingertips that type them or the mind attached. I had a much larger challenge awaiting me, I was just blissfully unaware of its presence at the time).

Still, in that moment, I was king. I thought that when I said, enough and quit drinking that it would be the last time.

What a rook. Newbie.

Who knew it would be the first of many thousands of times to come?

I’ll spare you the details of the harrowing mind-shift and head-down sort of mentality it requires to relentlessly and without hesitation (not without remorse, there’s plenty of that), throw away decades of shit that you held on to because “whatever” seemed to be your reason for everything back then.

After two days…two long days…I cleaned out nine closets, three sink base cabinets, and the Nether Realm that is under three beds. It took two trips to the county dump with the trailer. I remember, as I threw my old self off of a trailer and into a bin 20 feet below, how happy I was. Not Happy by Pharrell kind of happy. Like Le Départ by Alexandra Streliski happy.

Calm. Serene. Victorious. Happy.

The hall game closet—a staple in most homes across the land, they are usually full of games of all genres and purchase dates.

I have the OG Trivial Pursuit, Clue and Pictionary games from the 80s that my family and I would play together. We still do from time to time, and it is never a disappointing evening. They are full of ghosts from the past. The little mustache and beard my sister drew on Ms. Peacock’s face, or the “Killa” tattoo I drew on Professor Plum’s temple when I was 12. The scores tallied up on official score sheets in the handwriting of a beloved aunt or grandma who’s passed, strewn about the bottom of a Yahtzee box is quite a sight to behold.

My game closet used to be a challenge to the arts of stealth, cunning, athleticism, and the ol’ “one arm hold the closet door open but not too open…kinda hold it up like that against the falling games while I sort through this stupid Jenga, oh crap there goes the Monopoly pieces but wait I almost have Sorry! in my grip” move. Now, it’s like a bookshelf in a library.

Small games are stacked on top of…get this…bigger games. You can see the names on the side instead of picking out a game because you recognize it from the bottom or the color of its top. Monopoly, white. Sorry!, white. Battleship, red. Balderdash, purple. Trivial Pursuit, I mean come on, it’s shaped like Trivial Pursuit.

The winter gloves and paint cans that were strewn haphazardly about on the floor are actually, you know, in pairs or neat stacks. Mind-bending stuff when you think about the chaos and horror that was going on inside the same head responsible for the organization of trivial things like game closets.

Back then I was happy when I could successfully jam my shoulder into the game closet’s door and close it. Much in the same way I approached every other aspect of my life.

But now—not now. Not any more.

I can open my game closet and proudly dust off its contents because nothing threatens to crash down on my head when I open it. I found and took the control that was mine all along. The shroud of alcohol just blinded me to it, that’s all.

The lies and their filthy consequences are the things that I don’t miss the most. “Don’t-missing” something is a real thing.

I “don’t-miss” some things harder than I used to pray for them to be gone—think cigarettes. If you’ve killed that gator (and a hearty congratulations to you for that huge feat) like I have, you know what I mean. Hell, you can feel it when I say, “I dont-miss the hell outta cigarettes.”

I can dust out my closets now and use them for what they were intended—to store things I don’t currently need now but will some other time and not to hide my secret life and all of the shit it accumulated. The trash can be for trash. Let those closets be what they used to be, or at least should be: storage of treasured memories, tools, coats, hats and gloves. Things that keep us warm or help us fix the things that need the fixing.

After those two days I was more like King Arthur sitting by his fire after a battle. Now I’m like King Shane sitting on his couch after a nap while his white blood cells whoop up on some intruders.

I don’t have the strength to clean now, not like that anyway. What a gift “six months ago” Shane gave me. Thanks, dude.

Shane is a dad of two, doggo dad of one, recovering numbness addict, and current cancer warrior. In his many lives Shane has been an author, a teacher, a researcher, a restaurateur, an entrepreneur, a Taekwondo champion, a motivational speaker to inmates and parolees across Arkansas, and a world-class fuck up. With just over two years of sobriety, now he mainly just writes and journals, mainlines chemo every three weeks, and finds joy wherever he can.