3:00 snapshot #763

[urbpan]

Can you believe that we aren't totally out of our old place yet? Last night we dragged out a bunch of furniture to the sidewalk for today's yard sale (the whole street has a big yard sale once a year). I can't fully express how painful the experience of moving is for me. Here we are months later, and I still go into this place every couple of weeks and shuffle boxes around, find papers and objects that are heavy with sentiment and meaning, maybe throw out a bag of stuff, and leave feeling sad and depressed. It's a mental illness I'm sure, to be so attached to material things, but without them how would we know that we lived a life? How can I remember that people love me without notes written on paper? How can I prove what I was doing ten, fifteen, twenty years ago--that I was expressive and engaged, that my personality is what I pretend it is? Part of me wants to dispose of it all without even looking at it, to be purely who I am now and prove to myself that I'm worthwhile without piles of dusty papers and once beloved trinkets. But part of me wants to preserve it all as a museum of who I was, and the time and place where I lived, in case that ever becomes important.

Comments

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

That sucks. An organized person I met had taken binders and sheet protectors and put all his letters and ephemera from the past in them. I was impressed. Dumpster? Stimulants? A couple of friends and I are helping each other go through our stuff and our dead relatives' stuff. Having another person there can help break the spell. Actually it sounded like you had a great system, one that has worked for me many times; Put stuff in the basement, basement floods, stuff gets wrecked, throw stuff away. Good luck. Keep focused and go forward, eventually it'll be over. Sorry it's rough.

Dumpster? Stimulants?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

My method is time consuming. It would be better to use a garden hose and just soak all those things in the old apartment, then use a pitchfork to huck it all out the window.

Re: Dumpster? Stimulants?

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

I laughed.