(no subject)
I am a far more sentimental and nostalgic person than I like to admit or that people would guess. I think it's my quiet and reserved nature that makes people assume that I don't hold onto things too tightly but actually I am a rather huge pack rat. It's not something you could tell if you were ever in my home either. I live in a space that is pretty splayed out because I like things to be clean and tidy. There are a few pictures placed in appropriate places around the house that remind me of family, friends, and good times but I feel like the things that ever really mattered to me are put away where they are out of sight and out of mind.
Out in Jersey, in Elizabeth, I have one of those storage units. I got it after I lost my apartment and I had to find a way to store all of my belongings. Sometimes, if I am looking for something to snap me out of the mood I am in, I will travel out there on the ferry and end up spending the entire day looking through belongings that I am not sure why I have. I suppose that I left my place so fast, I didn't have the time to really clean out drawers of desks and dressers but that is an excuse. Deep down I just didn't want anything to have to change. I think I had this romantic notion that I could freeze time and like a novel half written, at sometime I would be able to pick the pen up again and start right where I had left off.
It's been years so I don't know why I still haven't cleaned it out. I have tons of excuses, touring, writing, I'll do it this Spring but today I finally stopped making excuses and I decided, despite the weather, I would go out there and begin to let some of the things go. That is where John found me about 2 o'clock this afternoon after wondering why I wasn't home and then calling my cell phone. I usually go it alone but after having been out there an hour, I felt like his company would be good and encouraging while I picked away at the pieces of my past.
To be honest, I don't know why I had some of the things I still had. They are things that technically are not even mine but I held onto them like they were. I sat in the storage unit with the door open while the rain outside fell down like a hurricane at times. Occasionally the rain would fall so hard that it sounded like bullets passing through the metal frame of the unit and in my head there was a notion that I would be okay with that, if everything was just blown away and it was out of my control what happened to it. However, I knew it would never happen and unless I gathered up the strength to let it go, it was going to stay.
So when he arrived, I sat there, in the middle of my mess of useless objects, most of them her's. I think for awhile another excuse I made was, she might come back for them. Why she would come back for a half used tube of cherry Chapstick, I don't know but I justified having these things that way. I got him to bring in a garbage can and I slowly picked through bags and bags of black Hefty bags that were packed to the hilt quickly as I moved out. While I picked through the sundry of items, we passed the bottle of whiskey between us and the more the liquor warmed my veins, the more the stories flowed. It felt like the more I opened up about it, the easier it was to just make that 2 point shot in to the trash bin and we even found some humor in it. "So you kept the bottle of Clinque Happy with the two sprays left in it to be really creepy and come out here and smell it?," he asked me. "Yes, John I travel all the way to New Jersey to smell the same perfume I can in Macy's. It's very important it's her former bottle and not just the perfume," I replied. Pretending to contemplate it he paused a moment before nodding at me, "Well actually that makes perfect sense."
At the end of the day I had rid myself of everything that once belonged to her except for a picture of her. Not of us, I don't need any of them and a anklet that I had got her one day at a outdoor festival. It was a cobalt blue beaded anklet with alternate silver suns and moons and I realized that was more important to me than any of the other things. I could go into the story of the day that I got it but you know what, I am tired of telling stories about her and it's done now.
Out in Jersey, in Elizabeth, I have one of those storage units. I got it after I lost my apartment and I had to find a way to store all of my belongings. Sometimes, if I am looking for something to snap me out of the mood I am in, I will travel out there on the ferry and end up spending the entire day looking through belongings that I am not sure why I have. I suppose that I left my place so fast, I didn't have the time to really clean out drawers of desks and dressers but that is an excuse. Deep down I just didn't want anything to have to change. I think I had this romantic notion that I could freeze time and like a novel half written, at sometime I would be able to pick the pen up again and start right where I had left off.
It's been years so I don't know why I still haven't cleaned it out. I have tons of excuses, touring, writing, I'll do it this Spring but today I finally stopped making excuses and I decided, despite the weather, I would go out there and begin to let some of the things go. That is where John found me about 2 o'clock this afternoon after wondering why I wasn't home and then calling my cell phone. I usually go it alone but after having been out there an hour, I felt like his company would be good and encouraging while I picked away at the pieces of my past.
To be honest, I don't know why I had some of the things I still had. They are things that technically are not even mine but I held onto them like they were. I sat in the storage unit with the door open while the rain outside fell down like a hurricane at times. Occasionally the rain would fall so hard that it sounded like bullets passing through the metal frame of the unit and in my head there was a notion that I would be okay with that, if everything was just blown away and it was out of my control what happened to it. However, I knew it would never happen and unless I gathered up the strength to let it go, it was going to stay.
So when he arrived, I sat there, in the middle of my mess of useless objects, most of them her's. I think for awhile another excuse I made was, she might come back for them. Why she would come back for a half used tube of cherry Chapstick, I don't know but I justified having these things that way. I got him to bring in a garbage can and I slowly picked through bags and bags of black Hefty bags that were packed to the hilt quickly as I moved out. While I picked through the sundry of items, we passed the bottle of whiskey between us and the more the liquor warmed my veins, the more the stories flowed. It felt like the more I opened up about it, the easier it was to just make that 2 point shot in to the trash bin and we even found some humor in it. "So you kept the bottle of Clinque Happy with the two sprays left in it to be really creepy and come out here and smell it?," he asked me. "Yes, John I travel all the way to New Jersey to smell the same perfume I can in Macy's. It's very important it's her former bottle and not just the perfume," I replied. Pretending to contemplate it he paused a moment before nodding at me, "Well actually that makes perfect sense."
At the end of the day I had rid myself of everything that once belonged to her except for a picture of her. Not of us, I don't need any of them and a anklet that I had got her one day at a outdoor festival. It was a cobalt blue beaded anklet with alternate silver suns and moons and I realized that was more important to me than any of the other things. I could go into the story of the day that I got it but you know what, I am tired of telling stories about her and it's done now.