I don’t write enough

Not per se in the ‘Oh noes, I am not a regular blog-updater way’, but in the ‘My brain is trying to eat me and I need to spit out some thoughts-way’.

So, let’s see. During his latest trip, Beloved had a change of heart. Instead of keeping on our house and trying to rent it, he decided he wanted to sell. Now, before you go all egalitarian on my ass and chastise me for making it sound like such a unilateral decision: I was in favour of selling before he was. Doesn’t make it any less of a unilateral decision, but  if globe-trotting Beloved had one place he felt his heart was, I wasn’t going to  insist he get rid of it for mere convenience. However, when he did come to the conclusion that keeping the house wasn’t what he wanted, I told him frankly that I was happy he felt that way. (Funny legal sidenote: one is not allowed to sell the marital residence without permission of one’s spouse, even if their name is neither on deed or mortgage).

Picture by Cal Evans under Creative Commons License

Then, I e-mailed a bunch of realtors to come and have a chat. The two days after those conversations were spent in a flurry of discarding things, boxing things up and deciding which items go where (apparently having 8 overflowing bookshelves do not help you sell the house – sadface).
Throwing things out is cathartic. It is also generally fun (at least I think so – putting a pile of stuffed trash bags on the curb is very fulfilling). It felt really good to donate approximately 130 books to charity. And yet I had a good cry, well-described by a term invented in the community of A Practical Wedding: mourning the path not taken. Because while life is full of stuff and nonsense and trinkets, sometimes particular objects become symbols of a part of yourself that – while not currently actively under development – you have trouble parting from. Hence, it is a painful thing to give away all the paper, paint and brushes because the eighteen-year-old you who was so proud to be admitted into a specialized Fine Arts college thinks you’re squandering your talents . It hurts to throw out event-specific clothes that you wore too little, because it feels like you resign yourself to a life of boring mediocrity in which there can be no themed parties, playing dress-up or even just looking spectacular and sexy.

In the end it will probably be liberating. It will probably feel very light to not drag around a bunch of “you shoulds”. It will probably help me find new things to try. In the mean time, I’ll try to make myself feel better by knowing that I’m finding good homes for the Things that Mattered to me.