My Friday was normal- my weekly support group meeting at 7:30am, errands. But once I got home, I knew I was done. It has been a glorious weekend, sunny, cold, clear skies, joyful birds, blooming flowers. Those days when everything is super bright azure and deep green. I just didn't want to go back out into the world. And quite frankly, I don't want to be out in my yard either with my horrible foul neighbors always outside prowling around. So I spent the weekend alone in the house. Not happy but not sad, just eh. That's me lately, eh. If you can still be alive and have a flat line on the machine, that would describe how I feel anymore.
For some reason I decided to start sorting through all the old photos. I think I mentioned it in my last post. And I really do have other things I need to be doing, but once I get an idea stuck in my head, I sort of do it and damn the consequences. So right now I have a dining table covered in photo albums and boxes. I spent hours going through it all yesterday and barely made a dent. Most of the photos are old, because once I got a digital camera, I stopped printing out photos. These boxes are filled with prints from my old 35mm camera, and what's worse is back then- if you are old enough to remember- you always got a free second set of photos! Not only am I sorting photos, but all the duplicates as well.
Because they are old, it's been really hard for me to go through them. But it's because they are old, I am not carrying them with me into the new house. Since we moved into this house, these photos have been down in our basement. When we move into the new house, with our limited space, well, I've got to cut the number down drastically.
It's easy to say that the photos of the ex have to get dumped. At first I thought I might struggle with tossing them, not because I still have feelings for him, but just because of my hoarding issues. The way I attach sentimental value to things. I've talked about how for me, tossing old cards and letters fills me with tremendous guilt, because I feel like I'm trashing my past. I was really worried I would feel that way when I started throwing away the old photos too. I had this insane idea of boxing up the photos of him, and the next time I went out of town (so the postage wouldn't reflect my current location) I would mail them to him. I don't know where he lives, but he has a business and that address is online. I don't know why I even considered that he would want the photos, or even care, and more than that I was afraid it would open up a can of worms. Some things are just better off left dead and buried.
The first time I went to Vegas was with W, but J and I have been out there many times, and I have those photos and memories. I have beautiful photos of New Orleans from when W and I visited it, but you know, J and I have been there too and those photos are MUCH more important to me. And I don't exactly want to sit around and reminisce about my days with W. When I think about the trips with W, I think about the fighting and screaming and long silences and hurtful words that always always always punctuated everything we did, even vacations. Photos from those years remind me of all the pain. Why would any sane person want to cling to those reminders? It's amazing how much a tiny slip of color paper can wring emotions from the deepest part of your brain.
Once I started the process, I found all the old anger and hatred and fear and hopelessness welling up inside of me, all feelings he stirred in me during our 13 years together. I did not feel any "good" feelings when I looked at him. I kept thinking, what a waste of a human being. He was handsome, he was smart, he was once ambitious and could have done great things. The man interviewed at freakin' NASA! But he let drugs and partying pave the way for laziness and apathy, and he disintegrated in front of my very eyes into a worthless piece of shit who hated women, tormented me, and wasted his potential. I thought about the years of my life that could have-should have been happy, but how I spent them instead cowering into this little pathetic shell of the person I had once been. At the end of our relationship, I had changed as much as he did, and neither of us for the better. He destroyed both of us. So it became extremely easy to toss the glossy images of his shaggy curls and blue eyes and easy grin away into the garbage. He did the same to me when we were married.
There were a lot of photos that made me sad. Photos of my old dog, of my cat who recently died- both from cancer. But happy photos too. Photos of old friends, family photos from childhood, baby photos of my now-grown nephews. Pictures from high school marching band, from Disney, from the beach, from concerts. Those are the ones that will be harder to sift through. Even though they evoke pleasant memories and warm feelings, and I laugh and smile when I look at them, realistically how often am I going to sit and look at these? Honestly this is probably the first time in ten or more years I've gone through them. It made me think back to a few years ago, when J's grandmother passed away at 94. She was still living in her home, so she had never needed to let go of any of her possessions. After she was gone, I can remember sitting with J's mother and aunt on the living room floor, sorting through hundreds of old photos. And while I'm sure they meant the world to granny, none of us recognized a single blurry face looking back from the black and white squares. They all went into the trash. When I'm gone, my remaining photos will end up in the same place I'm sure, because whoever takes on the daunting task of cleaning up my belongings will have the same blank stare on their face when they look through my albums.
My goal for right now is JUST to get rid of the ones with W in them, or from trips he and I took together, or just any of the ones from my life with him. The exception being any photo with the dog in it. I do have hundreds of photos of just the dog. But at least that many more of him with W in the frame as well. I thought about sitting and cutting W out of the picture, but then what will I do with a stack of half-cropped photos. At what point do I say, I have eight hundred pictures of the dog, I can't keep them all. And then I know I will have to go through them again, and then again, until I have a manageable number of treasured portraits of loved ones and pets.
But that's what downsizing is all about, getting rid of the excess, the burden, the cumbersome possessions. And I'm glad that we are making the choice now to downsize ourselves, so that we can do it on our own terms, at our own pace. Instead of doing it twenty years from now because we are too sick or frail to stay in our home, and we have two days to decide what to keep and what to discard before we get carted off to a studio apartment at the assisted living home. I don't think anyone can argue that being in control of your own destiny feels pretty fucking awesome. So hang onto it as long as you can, because like I said, plans change at a whim.
MISS GEE
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