Cleaning Out The House

Photo by Jonathan Fasulo

I’m a week away from moving and I feel like I could cry and crack up over it all at the same time. After 3 years, Jonathan and I are going to be moving to our own home. It’s a great apartment, not far from where we live now. A perfect kitchen that I can already picture myself baking in, a large downstairs for J to turn into a studio and finally, a deep soaking bathtub that I can relax in. J has been living in the apartment we’re  in now for about 8 years so when we got married, I moved into his space with him. I found a place for my things and we made it our home. It suited us and our roommates well, but we finally decided it was time for us to have our own home. Most couples will take this step long before marriage is in the picture, but we’ve never been like most couples.

Somehow, I’ve accumulated what feels like an endless amount of things. When I moved into my current apartment all of my baggage, physical and emotional, that I hadn’t dealt with were crammed in with the things I loved. Through three years of making this place my new home, I kept them hidden away.  In October of this year, nearly 5 years after the chaos of that relationship, I finally faced them head on. I cleared out the physical baggage and began to chip away at the emotional baggage. It felt incredible, powerful and most of all, like a weight on my shoulders was lifted. When all the tears had dried and the last of the bags were taken out to the garbage, I began to feel like a new me.

This blissful feeling eventually dulled down and a lighter life continued. I went to work, I played with Honey, I found a new hobby in covering random objects in my house with rhinestones. When we began to look for new apartments I was so excited about the prospect of a new home for us. I imagined us cooking dinners together and shooting anything and everything we wanted at any given time. The apartment we found now was perfect and I was ecstatic but for some reason, once it was ours I felt like I was choking.

After some great therapy sessions I had a bit of an idea: I was afraid to move in with my partner, alone. This sounded absolutely absurd when my therapist first suggested it. I was married to someone I love! In the three, almost 4 four years, I’ve been married to J he has never once made me fear for my life during an argument. We’ll argue, sometimes say things we don’t mean and even yell but never to the point of fear. How could I be afraid to move in with him? How could I be afraid of this next step? How THE FUCK could this still be affecting me? The confusion very quickly became anger and I began to tear myself down. This was my fault. I should be stronger and have gotten over this by now. I should have overcome something that happened years ago to me. Everyone has urged me to move on, I’ve urged myself to move on but here I was, still grappling with this piece of my past that was useless to me. While my mental health decided to take a sharp decline, my physical health decided to fail me as well. All of last week I was couch ridden due to a fun bout of strep throat and pink eye. I knew I should be packing, but my illness and anxiety kept me from doing it. Not an ideal situation, for a person needs to move at the end of the month.

Jonathan then left for a couple of days for a job down in Florida. He begged me to pack. “I really don’t want to come back and see that you haven’t packed a single thing of yours” he said as he kissed my forehead a on his way out. “Please do your part.” I spent the rest of the afternoon avoiding doing just that. I dove deep into the zen of covering items in tiny little crystals. I didn’t have to think about my past or my future. Just about the crystals. It sounds strange, but the it helped me, for a short while.

The following day after coming home from work I knew I had to begin. It started with a shelf that had all of my old journals. All of my words from 6 years ago, from the bliss I had to the words 4 years ago of pain, confusion and doubt. With them in my hands, I was tempted to read them all and reflect. To look back and see the growth and progress that was made, while packing the negative thoughts that would inevitably come rushing back to me into a box where I knew it would sit forever. Like the journals on this shelf they would still be there in my mind to collect dust. Still there to revisit and still there to eventually be unpacked. I sat with the journals in my lap for a few moments until my body, on autopilot, got up with the books in my hand. I walked through the doors and into my kitchen and without thinking, I opened up the garbage can lid and threw them away. I moved to the couch and sat for a moment in silence. I tried to remember what it was that I wrote in the Journals, but couldn’t fully. I knew it was something about how terrified I was, how isolated I felt, how awful everything felt but I couldn’t remember it. All I had were memories that had turned into lessons, but nothing physical to torture myself with.  

When I started writing this, the lovely app Timehop had caught a few of the things from my internet presence that I accidentally left behind. Like pieces of my old anniversary and the lies I told myself to keep myself sane. A trip to the museum that I begged for, a fancy dinner that I dressed up for and then told I looked “lumpy” in my dress after eating. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t remember this date with dread and anxiety. The app had surprised me with an ambush. Except this time, with confidence in my choice, I deleted them quickly and continued with my day. No doubt, no self shame, no breakdown. It felt good to do and the high that came with the clarity in doing it felt even better.  I’m prepared to find more things of this nature lurking in the corners of the internet and our apartment now and I’m ready to throw them all away and not look back.