Letting go

After my mom died, I was the one in charge of sorting through everything, holding an estate sell, and selling the house. This process took place during the five months after her funeral. I had just moved to Chicago and was in the midst of my student teaching semester (while taking two of my own classes); I had also just ended a long-term relationship (my choice) and was dealing with the horrible fallout (the ex had plenty of venom). I spent holidays and various weekends commuting back to Michigan in order to deal with the house situation, all while trying to hold together my life in Chicago. I spent those months listening to everyone tell me how strong I was and how they didn't think they would be able to do it if they were in my shoes. I never thought of myself that way though - I just did what needed to be done. I had to do everything because if I didn't, who was going to? I had to keep myself together and not break down because if I did, who was going to take care of me? Although I was surrounded by friends, I truly felt like I was on my own.

The estate sale was one of the worst days of my life. People combed through my parents' belongings and haggled with me over the already cheap prices. I listened to a woman excitedly tell me how she had heard about my mother's death a few months before and had been obsessively watching the newspapers for the estate sale announcement. I watched various objects that had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember leave the house in the arms of strangers.

The next day I packed up what was left of my life in Michigan - twenty(ish) extra large storage tubs went into a storage unit and about ten more came back to Chicago with me. Realistically, I could have halved the amount of stuff I kept, but I just couldn't force myself to get rid of anything else. After the estate sale and the seemingly endless number of donation trips I made to the Salvation Army, I was emotionally spent. I just could not stand to part with anything more. I felt like the tubs of stuff were all I had left of my family.

I retrieved everything from that storage unit in Michigan six months later and spent that next ten years moving it all over Illinois. The tubs spent some time in a friend's basement, some more time in another friend's attic, a few years in a spare room in my apartment, and finally, they made their way back into a storage unit when M & I moved last year. Each time I moved (or was forced to find a new place for everything), I sorted the tubs and weeded out the things I felt like I could part with at that time. But even after all of the time I spent sorting and donating, as of the last move, I was still left with nine giant tubs of stuff.

Although I didn't consciously set out to make it so, 2010 has been been about simplifying my life. After I hit the fifty pound mark, I had the urge to sort and organize all of my clothes. This was a massive undertaking, as I had clothes ranging four sizes - some things were in my closet (which was way overfull) and the rest was packed away in under-bed storage containers. I spent two weeks sorting through the piles of clothing and trying on everything. I told myself that I would only keep the clothes and actually fit and that I liked. I was appalled to discover the amount of clothes I had in storage that I had never worn (almost everything still had tags!) - and had already lost too much weight to ever wear. I had an entire wardrobe that I could have worn earlier in the year, but because I'd had it all packed away for so long I had completely forgotten about it.

The clothing project made me want to sort and organize everything in my life - books, photos, beauty products, the overflowing file cabinet, all of the other closets in our apartment, my iTunes folder... during this process, I realized that I don't want to be the person who is saddled with stuff. I don't want to be the person who moves tubs full of stuff that I never use from place to place. I don't want to be the person who has an unhealthy attachment to objects from the past. I don't want to be the person who is so steeped in nostalgia that she can't move on. I can't say that there was a defining moment for me, but near the end of the summer I realized that it was time to tackle the hidden clutter from my past. I was tired of thinking about what to do with it. I was tired of feeling guilty about keeping it in storage. Most of all, I was tired of the emotional burden - I felt like those tubs were weighing me down. It was time to let go and simplify my life.

It took me almost a month to move everything out of the unit, sort through it, and decide what I wanted/needed to keep. I was ruthless. Something in me had changed - I was able to part with so many things that only a year ago I had decided was stuff I just had to keep. Hell, there were times in the past in which I cried over the mere idea of getting rid of some of the stuff! At the end I was left with two small storage boxes (both of which easily fit into my newly organized closet!). I only kept the things that I felt were truly important or that I would seriously regret getting rid of - things like yearbooks & scrapbooks, my parents' wedding memorabilia, a few small pieces of artwork (that I actually like), my father's first driver's license, a love letter my father wrote for my mother a few weeks after they got married. The rest of the stuff I donated or sold on eBay.

I did have a brief moment of panic right before the donation truck came to haul everything away, but I reminded myself that it was for the best. Two months later, I can't say that I miss a single thing that I got rid of - in fact, I can't even remember half of what I sent away.

We all have baggage from our past - in my case, the emotional baggage carried nine gigantic tubs by its side. I don't think I'll ever completely recover from everything that happened, but by letting go of the physical objects, so much of what has weighed me down over years has finally left my head.