Always Ready To Leave: My Unconscious Exit Plan

Always Ready To Leave: My Unconscious Exit Plan

(check my blog every Friday)

Posted to House Bloggers by Elaina Goodman on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 3:41pm

I finally got around to moving the last three boxes from my bedroom to the basement this week. Woohoo. Done unpacking in just 4.5 months. Could be my new record.

They were all full of books from Sam's old living room, things he took for his apartment when we split.

I shuffled through them before hauling them downstairs to grab a few more for the hallway shelves.

I don't remember dividing up our stuff when I left. I didn't want stuff, not mine, not his, not any of it. Packing to leave is all one numb blur of a memory.

But those books, a dozen of those books were mine. MINE. And I was furious. Talk about delayed reaction.

Suddenly, pulling them one by one from the boxes here in this house where everything is blended back to "ours" and what once belonged to whom no longer matters, I was so pissed I could barely breath.

Why now? It's a moot point. Still I was pacing crazy, talking out loud to no one about "you can't have this" and "I can't believe you took that." Man, our little brains just don't know when to let go.

Every book I chose for the shelves was either one I considered mine or one I remembered buying for him.

Then it hit me: living in this house with no intention of leaving again, I have segregated and organized stuff for easier distribution just in case.  If we have to go through the agony of dividing it again, everything I want is compartmentalized.

The living room is all Sam's. The art, the furniture — it's all either from his apartment, or stuff I'd be okay parting with. My office is everything that matters to me, the books and art and furniture I've laid claim to. Old news clippings, the birthing necklaces I wore at each of my daughters' births, family pictures, and shelves of books from my apartment.

In fact, the whole second floor furnished with "my" stuff. The first floor with his.

I don't know if I did this consciously. Probably, but not because I wanted to make another move easier, because somewhere in my slow-thinking, backward little brain I decided by keeping my stuff apart and together, I could keep hold of me.

All this segregated stuff, it's not about keeping it apart for a quick getaway. It's about keeping me together and separate from him so I don't have to leave again. But if if do, everything I want is already together.