i'm awake now...

Scaffold
A noun
a platform from which criminals are executed (hanged or beheaded)
a temporary arrangement erected around a building for convenience of workers
provide with a scaffold for support; "scaffold the building before painting it"

i used to rip down.

i used to rip, tear, finger bleeding and sobbing down. Starting at the attic and working my way, dangerously down, terribly down to the bottom through the upper bedrooms, knocking out staircases, ripping up carpeting, and finally down down to the foundation. i used to, quite consciously, decide to rip, decide to tear, decide to spend days on my hands and knees demolishing everything i built around me, everything that was built around, everything that grew around me, the weeds and wild flowers, the baby maple trees and disregarded take out containers. i'd clear out butted out cigarettes, empty beer bottles...i'd rip and tear, and burn the pictures or trap them in a box stuck under my bed, Danielewski's House of Leaves kept getting larger and larger and longer and longer as more elements and moments trapped in time of the past were thrown in. i'd watch as it toppled, a jenga tower of my life and memories and moments and flickers of polaroids of experience and people and places and thing....

i'd stand outside the place i once had, while the destructive wrecking ball of my intentions toppled it all.

once i'd knock it all down, i'd leave. anywhere. to a new city, a new town, a new province, a different continent, different same white walled cover and crapping linoleum florred apartment, for as long as i could hold out, and begin rebuilding the same way i tore the past around me, from the attic down.

this didn't work out for me. clearly. and the older and wiser, or the more i ignore, the better i get at scaffolding. placing piece upon piece, harnessing myself to safety wires, putting up the safety net, lowering myself to begin rebuilding, standing on scaffold and adding a piece here, to take the piece that was once there away. building a scaffolded support system around the jenga tower of the people and places and things in my life. re-painting, laying the floor, architrave and backfill, butt hidge, cladding, cornice and fascia, rafters and sarking...i scaffold and rebuild...

i don't know if this is better, or wiser, or healthier.

it does seem to hurt more though.