Let That Shit Go
Valentine’s balloons still going strong in March are very fitting.
I’m moving to a new apartment soon, and I have started the process of purging most of my belongings. I’m trying to use the Marie Kondo method, but I keep running into one tiny, little problem.
EVERYTHING BRINGS ME JOY.
The retro Muppet lunch boxes, obviously I need those. The BlackBerry that I once lost in a guy’s car the first time we slept together… THAT IS VERY IMPORTANT. The aggressively sexual door knocker that my Creepy Santa got me for Christmas? Opening that box on Christmas day was a great memory!!!
I am an incredibly sentimental person, always have been. At least once or twice a year, I go to my parents’ house and sort through their giant box of photos to see memories of fun days and faces of people that are long gone. I once named a real cat after a stuffed cat I had as a kid. My home is full of personal pictures, or art that reminds me of significant places or moments (like Palm Springs dinosaurs and two framed Barbies.)
It’s not a bad thing, I suppose, but I’m beginning to worry that it’s weighing me down. Does my love for the past hold me back from moving forward? Do I need things as actual evidence that those moments happened? Pictures are one thing, but I don’t know that the tchotchkes and random junk that I’ve collected throughout the years are worth carrying with me from home to home forevermore.
Naturally, this has also got me thinking about my sentimentality in the grander scheme of life. How often do I make decisions based on sentimental feelings? How many people do I keep in my life because of our memories, or because they remind me of a certain time in my life, or because they’ve always been there? How many opportunities have I let slip by because I was holding on to what I had?
The truth is… probably a lot. It was this realization that pushed me into moving. When my building raised my rent, I was frustrated but thought, “Eh, I don’t feel like moving all of my stuff… and the dog park is right behind me… and my mom walks my dog… and my sister can walk to/from my apartment to hang out…” but then I found out someone at the dog park moved away and hadn’t told me.
I was FURIOUS! I literally did not know this person’s first name, and yet I was offended they had abandoned us without thinking we deserved a proper farewell. Plus, his dog was a Bernese puppy, so he just expects us all to be fine with the fact we’ll never see him grow to his full size?!?!
I’m joking about being furious, but I am not joking when I tell you that I cried a little bit after finding out. I connect strongly with dogs!!! It had me worried though. I wasn’t going to move within the same zip code because I am loyal to PEOPLE/PLACES/THINGS that aren’t loyal to me.
A week later, a friend of mine told me he was moving out of state as he was moving and it upset me. (At least I knew his first name, so it felt like a more appropriate reaction this time.) To me, it felt like a HUGE, IMPORTANT change. When I make huge life changes, I sit the whole world down for a serious conversation about the State of Pat Nation. I provide them with the whole plan, resources, contacts, and a two-month notice. I got #triggered because it felt like this person was telling me, “You are not important enough for me to share big news with.”
I have felt this way before when people haven’t told me they were engaged or married, or pregnant, or living somewhere else in the world, or I don’t know - switched jobs in the same company. Ultimately I know that I’m being let down by my own expectations and triggered by my own experience with change. It is a big deal to me, but it’s not always that way for others.
My struggle is that sometimes it feels like I’m clinging to something that’s no longer there. I’m terrified that if I throw trinkets out, then the memories associated with them are gone. I am loyal to MY PAST and it is not loyal to me. I am loyal to the current state, and the current state is NOT loyal to me. I am loyal to a future that doesn’t even exist… and that future cannot be loyal to me.
I know that my heart is in the right place, but my brain has to do better. I have purged some things (the BlackBerry is likely never going to make a comeback) but other things are staying with me a little while longer. I put whatever I could fit into the Muppet lunch boxes and I’m keeping them to go through whenever I need a stroll down memory lane.
I obviously decided that it was worth saving $650 in rent even though I have to take MY OWN DOG out in the mornings, and my sister will have to Uber home after I’ve forced her to binge drink with me. I know that sometimes things change, and it’s not a personal attack on me. Letting things, and people, go won’t erase the memories or the relationships we once had.
Like the scriptures, and The Byrds, said; To everything, there is a season. And sometimes we have to put our seasonal decor in storage, or give some of it away, and not KEEP IT ALL UP YEAR-ROUND like those crazy cat ladies with their crazy Christmas houses.
(It’s me! I’m the crazy Christmas cat lady! And for the record, NO CHRISTMAS DECOR WILL BE SACRIFICED IN THIS MOVE.)
