Dating

Today I unpacked my last box. I am officially unpacked.

It was much harder than I thought. If you were to ask me, I'd have said in July and August that I was not unpacking that last box because I didn't have space for what might come out of it. Then, when I had made space, I didn't unpack it because I just didn't have time to sort through what might be in there. I unquestioningly believed the - "anxiety" is a strong word - the trepidation I felt about that box was because it was just a hassle. I didn't even suspect it was because I knew it would make me sad.

Golly sometimes we're really good and hiding things from ourselves. I chose to hide mine in a large cardboard box I've been moving around my tiny apartment, as if stepping, leaning, and climbing over it nearly every day was less of a physical nuisance than unpacking it.

So what was in the box?

I opened it to three teddy bears (mine) on top. That was ok. Those have some melancholy sentimental effect, but they are from a much earlier time in my life. I've cried over them already. I quickly found a spot for them. Then came...my boots! My big black boots that I had been looking for just the other day!

I eagerly dumped the rest of the box out on my bed. Now I was at winter gloves, hats, and scarves. As I sorted through the pile, I thought that some might belong to my ex boyfriend, T. I considered them carefully. Nope, none of T's scarves. I remembered finding his winter stuff mixed in with mine while packing this June. I remembered thinking "I'd better put these in his box because, well, he'll want them when it's cold. And god only knows if we'll be talking by then".

Seeing what a thorough job I had done of separating out all his gloves and scarves made me remember how painfully practical I had forced myself to be while I was packing.

Almost done with the box. There wasn't too much stuff in there, not really.

At this point it was starting to dawn on me that my reasons for avoiding this box might not have been entirely about the physical hassle of dealing with the contents.

All that was left were two tote bags, one soft briefcase, and an old army surplus backpack. I started to go through them, wanting to throw out any trash in them before I tucked them away for future use.

Some time ago, I realized that I could date my last use of a bag or purse by the forgotten scraps of contents that were left in it. Since living with T (who was diabetic), I had another date marker to use - the type of candy or candy wrappers I found.

The last time I carried the breifcase was when my friend A and I went to Boston for my brother's surgery this winter. I found maps of the hospital area and throat lozenges (but no candy).

One of the totes was from when I was acutely sick with Lyme. There were large individually wrapped mint Lifesavers candies. It also had a plastic biohazard bag which contained two unused vacutainers and a paper lab requisition.

The other tote and the army backpack were from earlier, before the Lyme. In the second tote, were wrappers from ginger candies and sand from the last time I went to the beach with T and his family. In July 2004, T had gone down to Rhode Island with the fam for the better part of a week. We had planned for me to come on his last night since I refused to put myself and T through a whole week's worth of my rapidly decreasing tolerance for his family's shit. On T's last day there it was cold with rain and fog which the forecasts predicted for the rest of the week. T's father, who stated his disappointment at missing a beach day, started acting petulant while breakfast plans were being made. Everyone seemed in a foul mood.

I felt a panicky moment where I deeply believed my lack of enthusiasm for E___ family fun was covertly to blame for everyone's rotten mood, but then I chastized myself for being paranoid and self centered. Whatever was going on with them wasn't about me. It was about them. Remnants of guilt caused me to cancel plans T and I had for going out for breakfast ourselves and agree to eat with his family.

Rather than stick around while the remaining family members argued about breakfast, T and I went for a walk promising to be back in time for whatever was decided. We walked over a mile before returning to his family's nearly done breakfast. There was clear evidence of some kind of catastrophe that I was immensely glad to have avoided: grandma had made a literal tower of toast; on the stove T's mother stared into a large pan swamped with barely cooking eggs while T's father yelled from the other room that she was burning them; T's sister in law and brother (the favorite son) were locked in a silent but obvious fight as they made their way out the door; and someone had turned on the TV so the living room was filled with the sounds of George Bush giving a speech on the economy.

T and my prebreakfast walk was the longest one I had taken since I had been sick with the Lyme. My knees started to feel screamingly sore about half way in, but it was good to just walk and walk and walk as if we never had to come back to the house.

I shook the sand and wrappers from my bag into the trash and wondered what T does when he finds debris like this.

The backpack was from years ago. I found a pen that I immediately recognized as one T had used when we were first dating. It had settled deep into one of the backpack pockets. There was a half used tube of mellon flavored lip balm I bought for T the Easter we lived in W___. We dyed eggs that year. T made strange and random colors that looked like blood or sunsets. The lip balm was mixed in with the pastel foil wrappers from chocolate eggs. I almost opened the balm but decided it would be too much for me to smell how his lips had tasted when we still loved one another.

I threw it all out and I am going to wash the bags later this weekend.
I remind myself that I am mourning the loss of myself happy with him as much if not more than I am mourning the loss of him.

My lab-mate called to invite me out for pizza tonight. I'm going, which is good because I think otherwise I'd sit here wallowing. It's too pretty today to wallow. I'll have plenty of time to wallow in December.


Now, for an amusing diversion: Go check this out. It is truly amazingly funny as hell.
Don't read it on a full bladder or while you are eating.