Throw it Away
Yesterday was a trying day.
I’ve never cared for Sundays all that much to begin with. I think it dates back to the time when I was in school and you’d just had the entire glorious weekend to do whatever it is you pleased (read, daydream, listen to showtunes) and then Sunday evening comes and with it the awful realization that another entire week of doing things you don’t want to do is about to commence again. Of course, when you’re a kid, time stretches itself out so the weekends seemed to go on forever before the thud of Sunday night came crashing down and then an eternity would go by before the next glorious weekend. I never entirely lost that sinking feeling that came with Sunday nights, it just was tempered a bit as the years grew on. As my life become more filled with pleasures and I carried the responsibilities with a sense of understanding.
This Sunday was a trial. Dear and I were set to meet to go through our storage locker. To throw out stuff and get me a storage unit that I could start moving the things I wanted to keep into (I’m something of a pack rat). This seemed a rather innocent way to start the dismantling of our life together. After all, these were things that hadn’t been part of our daily lives. Some things we’d packed up long before we’d been together. Other things we’d put aside as we melded our lives and found these items didn’t quite fit. And then there was a bunch of weird odd and ends and a whole lot of Burning Man paraphernalia.
No matter how innocent and far removed from our daily life these objects seemed to be, they turned out to carry a great deal more weight than expected. Or more accurately the act of sorting through these items brought the reality of what we were doing and what we were about to face into sharper focus. I felt I’d prepared myself, knowing it might be a painful experience. To Dear it was far, far more difficult (more about that tomorrow).
Why do I hang on to the things I do? I found things in there that I hadn’t looked at in five or six years. I’ve saved almost every piece of writing I’ve ever done (which makes sense) but all those print outs of websites long gone, magazines (dirty and clean), awards and various objects from my old job that seemed too personal to toss and yet what will I ever do with them again? We found at least five comforters in various states of yellowed dilapidation. End tables with half their parts missing. A leather thong that didn’t belong to either of us. Three shoe racks, two air mattresses and one bicycle covered with rhinestones.
We made a big pile of things to throw away and I dragged things I knew I’d want down the hall to my new unit but after a half hour a gloom began to set in. Dear became more glum and I became more agitated. We gave up, locked the unites and knew we’d have to return in the future to try to face it again.
Why is it easier to hang onto things you don’t need anymore than to toss them? I know I feel a sense of liberation when I get rid of objects I truly don’t need anymore (clothes that no longer fit me because of size or style, old magazines) but there are things I find much harder to part with or even think about parting with. These I pack back up again and always think I’ll go through them another day.
Do we hang onto people too long in the same manner? Should we toss out the people in our lives the same way we would an old pair of jeans we’ve outgrown? Dear can’t seem to decide if he’s throwing me away or just putting me aside somewhere safe that he can retrieve me again from on a rainy day. And I don’t know if I want to truly donate him to someone else’s goodwill or keep him to myself. I know what my head says but my heart is another thing.
Sorting through the old junk, should you listen to your head when you toss things away or listen to your heart and save those things you treasured once that you might find use for again?
