Lessons in Letting Go (9 page)

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 burbling—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.