Lessons in Letting Go

by Corinne Grant

  I vowed to myself that once I had Le Marchepied back in Melbourne I would use it every day. Or maybe twice a week. Or at least once a week. Or whenever I had the time. Whatever the case, this coming Christmas I would arrive home, toned and buff and my father would comment on how good I looked and I would hug him and say, ‘It’s all thanks to you, Dad, all thanks to you.’ The End. Credits Roll. However, now, lying on a sandwich on my bed, I knew that wouldn’t happen. For a start, there wasn’t even enough room on the lounge room floor to use it.

  I nearly told Adam all of that. Nearly. But I was scared he’d laugh at me. There was a slim chance he was right and that I’d wake up tomorrow feeling better so there was no point making myself look ludicrous now. I told him I loved him and hung up the phone. Then I stayed where I was on the bed until I fell asleep.

  The next morning I wandered around the lounge room and tried to figure out where I could fit the new stuff. There was some room behind the fridge and I hadn’t used all the space under the coffee table yet. I remembered how Jamie used to joke that he used his oven as a filing cabinet—maybe I could do that as well. I’d just have to limit myself to stove-top cooking. I carried in everything else from the car and set it down in the part of the lounge room that usually served as the pathway to the kitchen. It was a big pile and I stared at it hopelessly. Now it was inside, I realised there was absolutely no way I had room for any of it. I sighed and rubbed my eyes. I was going to have to clean out the wardrobe.

  I dragged myself into the bedroom like I was about to face my own execution. I opened the wardrobe and like the truly gutless person I was, I started with the sock drawer. Perhaps if I could part with some old worn-out socks, I would have room for the new old worn-out socks I had brought back from Corryong. Over the next two hours I managed to ditch two pairs. I didn’t even unroll them first and play sock puppets. It was hard and it was miserable and I hated letting them go.

  I went back out to the lounge room, sat on the floor and stared at the pile in front of me. Every little skerrick of my childhood was there. I knew that I was the sum of all my experiences but really, did I need to keep everything so that I could relive those experiences whole? It appeared that I did. Why then could other people happily throw their stuff away and not disintegrate? How did they make decisions about what to let go of and what to keep? And why the hell wasn’t anyone telling me how they did it?

  Something snapped. Now I just wanted to chuck something out, anything. Not the stuff in front of me though—that was my precious childhood—something else would have to go. I grabbed a chair, dragged it back into the bedroom, reached to the top of the wardrobe and dragged down two massive storage bags. They were too heavy to lift out properly so I simply dropped them from full height. One of them glanced off the dressing table and slumped like a body, half sitting against the mirror and half sprawled across the floor. I climbed down from the chair and kicked its carcass to the ground, ripped it open and started pulling out its guts. I made a furious, random decision that neither of those bags was going back up.

  Things moved swiftly; I’d started with the right bag. It was full of old T-shirts and stuff that I didn’t really care for anymore. It didn’t hurt to let go of it, it was more a case of wondering why it was still there. It was unbelievably and deliriously easy: keep, give away, keep, give away, give away, give away, give away. I couldn’t believe it: I didn’t want most of this stuff. I could live without it. Then it really hit me. Oh my god! I could live without it! What I’d been fearing all this time was completely unsubstantiated, there was nothing in here that I wanted, it all should have gone years ago and hadn’t, not for any real reason but simply because I was disorganised and slack. I finished sorting through the bag in less than an hour, keeping only two things. Then I opened the other one. This was exhilarating! I’d discovered the secret! I was succeeding! I was—Uh-oh.

  These were all the clothes that I had worn when I first left home. Instantly I was transported back in time and I was eighteen years old again, in a share-house in Albury–Wodonga, the year before I moved to Melbourne. I was standing in the first bedroom I had ever had to myself, wearing these faded purple leggings and this hand-knitted jumper. I kept going through the bag and everything I touched became a time machine; I was getting dressed up, putting on these blue jeans and this black knitted top to go dancing at The Basement, where Waltons department store used to be. I pulled out a little pair of cherry-shaped earrings and now I was with my best-going-out-girlfriend Lara and we were dancing to our self-proclaimed theme song, Mel and Kim’s ‘Respectable’; she was wearing her tight Lee jeans and bodysuit, I was wearing my trusty leggings and jumper. I delved further into the bag and now I was at my sister’s debutante ball—thinking myself a sophisticated city chick—wearing this bottle-green knee-length skirt and matching vest, topped off with a frilly white shirt and golden heart-shaped locket the size of the clock worn by Flavor Flav. I stuck my hand into the bag again and now I was standing in the dark, just off Dean Street, after traipsing from one nightclub to another, hoping against hope that I would meet up with the boy I was madly in love with and now, in an alleyway and wearing this cream pirate shirt with these brown string laces, I was holding his hand and he was just about to kiss me for the first time. How could I let go of all these memories? Of pimple remedies and straightening my hair with a clothes iron (and accidentally burning the tips of my ears), of learning to cook lasagne from the recipe we found on the back of a cheese packet, of living away from home for the first time and the frisson that ran through me for a whole year: ‘I’ve got my own room!’ ‘I’m in charge of my life!’ ‘This is the start of what it’s like to be an adult!’ Nothing would ever beat the excitement of that time, when everything was ahead of me and I didn’t care what that everything was. I held those clothes in my hands and I wasn’t a miserable, lonely woman living in a flat full of crap anymore, I was someone with hope.

  There was no way I was throwing any of this out.

  I put the bag I was going to get rid of at the foot of my bed and the other one back where I had found it. There was no sense in rushing these things, I told myself. There was no point in working myself up into a state and doing something I would regret.

  I could smell the failure.

  I looked in the wardrobe again. I was hoping I would find some big thing I could throw out, something that I had missed every other time I’d opened these doors. I looked properly this time, not half-heartedly—and then I saw it. There was a garbage bag right down the bottom, underneath an old single-bed doona. I had vague recollections of filling that bag years ago—back before I was living with Thomas—and then never giving it away, presumably for the same reasons I wasn’t letting go of the newly filled one now. I stared at it and thought hard. Whatever was inside I had already decided to let go of once, and obviously I wasn’t missing it. I quickly grabbed it and threw it into the hallway. Once it was out of the closet, there was room for Le Marchepied to slot in and because it was such a flat, sturdy box I could pile other things on top of it. By the time I was done rearranging and repacking the wardrobe, almost everything I had brought back with me from Corryong was crammed in. I couldn’t believe it. I stared at the bag lying in the hall. Before I could change my mind, I picked it up and headed out to the car. I was going to dump it on the passenger seat, start the ignition and drive straight to a charity shop. I was grinning like an idiot. I was finally letting go of something, not because I had come to terms with saying goodbye to the bag’s contents, but because I’d forgotten what was in it. This had to be the secret to letting go that everybody else already knew about.

  I rang Adam before I drove off. My call went through to voicemail, so I left a message telling him that he was right, I had woken up feeling better today and in fact, I felt so much better that I was starting a project to clear out my life. I went on and on about how amazing I felt, how exhilarating it was to be taking control of my life, how great it felt to unburden myself. I was burblin
g—I knew that—but without him on the other end of the line to pull me back from the edge, I was off on a flight of fancy.

  I was sitting in my hatchback, one hand resting on the garbage bag of clothes, the other holding the phone in front of my face as I almost yelled down the line, ‘I’m going to throw out everything except for one garbage bag and three boxes! That’s all that I’m going to keep! Hold me to it!’ And then I hung up, turned the ignition and drove to the Brotherhood of St Laurence, singing along with the radio all the way.

  I walked into the op shop, head held high, imagining people were looking at me with my big garbage bag and thinking, ‘Look at her! She must be very organised to be throwing out that much stuff!’ I tried to make eye contact with people, to no avail. ‘Probably just jealous of how organised I am,’ I thought. ‘I’m sure it’s not every day someone donates a whole bag of clothes.’

  And then as I took a step towards the donation area, the garbage bag broke. It was one of those biodegradable ones. Designed to break down, it had chosen this exact moment to fulfil its destiny. Out spilled my lucky stand-up pants, the T-shirt I had worn my first time on television and some socks I used to wear in high school. I stared at it all in horror. How could I have thought to throw this stuff away? Five seconds ago I had forgotten any of this existed; now I couldn’t live without it.

  As I was picking everything up off the ground, putting some of it in the donation area and the rest into my handbag, a shop assistant came over. Nobody had seen me come into the shop, they’d only seen me going through stuff and taking it.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  I stared up into the face of a middle-aged gent who was frowning down at me, his arms folded across his chest. His offer was made in that tone of voice which indicates no actual help is on offer at all, in fact, nothing is on offer except trouble.

  ‘Oh.’ I looked down at my stuff, blinking stupidly, and then back up at him. ‘Um . . . it’s my stuff . . . I was just . . . it broke . . . I hadn’t looked through it you see and I . . . I’ve just changed my mind on a few things. Like these pants. You probably didn’t want them anyway. They’re brown. No one wears brown anymore. HAHAHAHA!’ I laughed too loudly. He stared at me a moment longer, unsmiling, then stalked off. I kept my head down, shoved the pants, the T-shirt and the socks into my handbag, dropped the rest in the donation bin, then bolted. They had probably decided it was easier to let the mentally unstable lady steal a few things than call the Department of Human Services.

  I sat in the car and looked at my bulging handbag. I’d only kept three things, so I’d still ostensibly got rid of a whole bag of stuff. A whole bag! It felt so good that instead of going straight home, I drove to a shopping mall and bought a new dress.

  Two days later, Adam called.

  ‘I got your insane voice message. Were you on drugs when you left that? How much more stuff have you chucked?’

  ‘Oh, tonnes!’ I was lying. I had tried to throw out a few things from the cupboard in the lounge room, but everything in there was essential: the vacuum cleaner, the brooms, the metre-and-a-half long rendering of Halley’s Comet I had made in grade six. Once you took all of that into account, there was barely enough room left for the stuffed animal collection, the torn sleeping bag and the garbage bag full of stamps. I had found fifty-six wire coat hangers though. They were sitting proudly near the door, ready to be donated to some lucky charity.

  ‘Yep, I’ve been going through the closet in the lounge. I found fifty-six things in there to let go of! And there’s another garbage bag full of clothes in the bedroom.’

  I didn’t tell him I was planning on waiting a year until I had forgotten what was in the bag before I donated it. I also didn’t tell him that I’d put that bag inside a second bag, just to make sure there was no repeat of the last incident.

  ‘Well,’ said Adam, and he paused for dramatic effect, ‘you’ve inspired me. I’m getting rid of all my shit as well. I’ve run out of room for my Doctor Who tapes and I can’t live like this any longer. I’m clearing now, can you hear me? I’m actually throwing stuff into a garbage bag. Hear that?’

  I could hear a noise at the other end of the line that definitely sounded like paper crinkling. However, a small part of me wondered whether Adam really was cleaning stuff out of his study, or whether he was just sitting on his couch talking to me while simultaneously rustling a paper bag. It’s the kind of thing he would do and then laugh hysterically when I got annoyed with him for lying.

  ‘Tell me I’m doing well. I’m doing well, aren’t I?’

  Adam is also a hoarder but in a completely different way to me: stuff piles up at Adam’s house because he’s too shambolic to throw it out; stuff piles up at my house because I become attached to it and start believing it has feelings.

  ‘Yes, Adam, you’re doing well. How much have you got rid of?’ I hated him.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, this is my second bag full of paper and yesterday I threw out a box of old video tapes.’

  ‘Really?’ I put on my best interested voice. ‘Wow. How long did it take to go through a whole box of them?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t go through them, I just thought “stuff it, how boring” and I threw them out without looking. Ooooh, hang on, I just found my remote-controlled Dalek!’

  I nearly dropped my phone. The idea of throwing something like video tapes out without first sitting down and going through every one of them and then pondering, reminiscing or writing a journal entry about them was anathema to me. He sounded so satisfied. It was awful.

  ‘Adam?’

  ‘Yes, sweet pea? Ooooh! A photo of me! Fabulous!’

  ‘Adam, I haven’t thrown anything out.’

  ‘What do you mean you haven’t thrown anything out?’

  I could hear him in the background, moving stuff around, the garbage bag getting fuller and I knew he’d fill that bag and throw it out without giving it a second glance. This was terrible.

  ‘I’ve moved stuff around but nothing else has left the house.’

  ‘Nothing? Oh, honey, you’re rooted!’ And then he laughed and laughed and laughed. You’d think someone had just told him Britney Spears had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was gasping for breath.

  ‘You’re completely rooted!’

  ‘It’s not funny!’

  ‘Oh please. For god’s sake, if I can do it anyone can. Lord knows I’ve got some shit but at least my shit is interesting—Ooh! Another photo of me!—yours is just . . . shit. Get over yourself and throw it out.’

  He was right of course. My stuff was shit. When I’d moved in here I’d plied him with alcohol and then forced his champagne-soaked frame up a ladder, heaving those enormous bags full of old clothes all the way to the top of the built-in robes. He’d nearly popped from the exertion. I had stood down the bottom, drinking more champagne and egging him on. He was the only person I knew who not only tolerated my eccentricities but risked a hernia for them.

  ‘Get off the phone and throw something out. Call me later when you’ve made some progress.’

  I hung up, went to the kitchen and made myself a gin and tonic. Then I sat on the couch and watched a rerun of Touched By an Angel. When the phone rang a couple of hours later, I almost didn’t answer it. If it was Adam, I was going to ignore it; I did not need to hear any more about his brilliant de-hoarding success. However, curiosity got the better of me and in the end I tore my eyes away from the TV, grabbed the phone and looked at the incoming number. It was Thomas. There was going to be a bright spark in this day after all.

  ‘Guess what?’ I could hear the smile in his voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just bought a house. I am totally a home owner. We’re going to the pub to celebrate. You coming?’

  I didn’t tell him I was way ahead of him, drinking on my own and watching Roma Downey’s character harass a pregnant teenager.

  ‘Sure. Just give me a moment to finish up here and I’ll join you soon.’

  ‘Wait!�
� I just caught his voice before I hit the ‘end’ button. ‘If I’m moving into my own house, that means this flat is empty again. You want it back?’

  The room started spinning. He was talking about our old apartment— my dream apartment—with its floor-to-ceiling storage running the entire length of the hallway and its built-in robes in the bedroom. I almost wet myself.

  I got off the phone and squealed. All that space! Cupboards! No more meth lab! After two years of living in a hovel that not only looked depressed, but smelt it as well, I couldn’t wait to move back into a place where even the floorboards looked happy.

  Over the next few weeks I daydreamt about how much happier and organised I would be when I moved back there. My life would start up again. Gone would be this uneasy feeling that something was wrong, that something else was broken and that everything was lost. Gone would be the panic that Adam was beating me in the clearing-out stakes. It all made sense now—the loss of that apartment had been causing my misery. Now I was getting it back. Everything would be okay. I ticked the days off on my calendar.

  And I avoided making direct eye contact with my stuff as it sat where it always had, unboxed, unpacked and completely unready to be moved.

  Chapter Eight

  Four days before moving back into the flat I used to share with Thomas I was panicking. I hadn’t packed a thing. There was absolutely no way I could pack all of this in time for the removalists. I walked into the kitchen and panicked. I looked at my bookshelves and panicked. I stared at the fifty-six coat hangers still lying next to the front door and panicked. I didn’t know what to do. It was ten o’clock in the evening and, like every other night for the past week, I’d come home from work, been overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the job before me, given up on trying and gone to bed. Tonight was going to be no different.