This is equally rant, minor victory, whine and random crap.
As many people are aware, I went through a particularly painful separation almost 2 years ago to this date. Since that time, I've had some great relationships and some not great relationships, I've moved halfway across the country, met new people, started a new job, travelled around the world, got a motorcycle, my dream car, and just left that life behind - not as a way to escape pain or to run away from problems, but simply to start anew, to rediscover who and what I am and to figure out a new path. It hasn't been easy, certainly, and many scars from my divorce remain (And some from crazy exgfs but that's for another post). Altogether, I would take it as a strongly positive move in my life.
Some days obviously are better than others; starting a new serious relationship is obviously never easy and while I can honestly say she is the best thing that has happened to me, after being married for 10 years, dating is just this whole new ballgame that I often feel malequipped to deal with even if she'd disagree. My new job is stressful and political, fraught with the perils of ego and excess as everyone guns for me as a matter of climbing the corporate ladder. And a new wrinkle in the plan means I'm leaving what is essentially my dream job behind and being given a new portfolio in a bigger organization that I would have never picked up and move to Manitoba to take. My family, bless them, still expects me to move back home any day now and as I remain away from them, the desire to do so gets lower and lower.
Last week I began my purge of all of the boxes of stuff/shit that I brought with me from BC. I haven't even bothered sorting most of it. If it remained boxed for the past year, I obviously didn't miss it and into the dumpster it goes. Practically, this is a fine system; divesting myself of history and emotion through the unceremonious dumping of relationship refuse that had built up over the years and I hadn't the courage to disavow. A row of boxes stacked as tall as I am sits in my kitchen and every day, one more box gets taken to the shared garbage to be taken away.
And yet, I recognize at my core that each one of those boxes is part of me that disappears. I can't help but look into each one before giving it its Viking sendoff and that is as much a mistake as any I'll make. Wedding photos, albums, shared books, my wedding ring, all sharing space with candles, plate sets, ornamental knick knacks that betray memories so quickly as to think it was yesterday. I pace back and forth between my open door and the garbage bins, carrying box after box of intimacy in front of strangers who wonder why this quiet man who keeps to himself is suddenly emptying his house. I wonder if they go look in the bins afterwards to see shattered picture frames, calling back to a time I don't remember much of any more. I wonder if they're pausing to reflect at perfectly decent candle holders being binned with such alarming casualness.
I've never been a packrat or a hoarder, there are few things that I'd want to keep and they're all eminently practical. My family calls me crazy for divesting so much of my 'hard earned items' without consideration of garage sales, Kijiji, or other options. "Your stuff can own you" I think to myself as I consider the $25 I didn't make on selling that receiver on ebay is instead slammed to the bottom of a green bin. I am paying for each box with a little bit of myself, and it's only after two years that I can afford it. Each box taken away fills me with such sadness and yet lightens the world that sits on my shoulders.
In two months I'll be moved again and maybe this process will repeat itself, a little quicker and easier as the voluminous tide of cruft no longer spills out of my closets. Life gets easier. Life clears away the dirt, the grime and allows us the opportunity to focus on the important. But it's only through the process of letting things go that I think I could even start to consider that - or see clearly that tomorrow I get to make the choice on what I add to my pile.