A Smaller Infinity

8:09 PM 7/7/10

This has to do with the drug residues.

I went back to the storage unit today and got rid of some more old stuff that I didn't need anymore. A lot of my belongings were contaminated with ephedra and other residues, and if I tried to clean them all, I would have to sort through thousands of objects, and clean, wipe, and test them several times each, and re-clean, and re-test them, many times. Some of the objects are contaminated, and some are not. I don't know which ones. So when I get rid of the things I don't really need, the things that aren't sentimental, that's a few less objects that I would have to sort through and clean.

Having done this, having thrown out a few more items, so that there's less work to do in the future, makes me feel better about the residues even here at my apartment, on the floor and on the objects I have here, like the computer gadgets. Why?

Because if I clean these objects here at home, they might get recontaminated in the future, because I still have many objects contaminated in storage. It's pointless to clean them if they will get contaminated again. It seems like I will have to clean them an infinite number of times. I've already done this. I did it at the other apartment, cleaning things multiple times only to find that I still had a reaction to them, or only to find that they got contaminated again when something else touched them.

'A smaller infinity': Now that I've thrown away a few more unneeded things, the burden has been reduced. The number of times that I have to clean all of my belongings is a smaller infinity. It seemed like I had to clean them infinity times, it seemed hopeless, it seemed impossible. But now that is a smaller number of things I have to clean.

Eventually, it will get smaller and smaller, less and less, until it becomes a finite number of times. Maybe I'll wash this blanket fifteen times, and yeah, that's a lot, but it might be enough to get rid of the drug residues once and for all, because they won't be coming back. There will be an end to it. It won't be infinity anymore.

If I can make a difference in this disaster, then, when I go back to work this weekend, I won't feel like it was all for nothing. I won't feel like it's just another wasted week. I will feel like I actually got out of the disaster a little tiny bit.