One Small Win for Me, One Giant Leap for My Life

Yesterday, I began the daunting task of letting go of many of my husband’s clothes and starting to turn “our” room into “my room.  This was no small feat, as my husband never – and I mean, NEVER – threw anything away.  No matter how raggedy his t-shirts got, no matter how stained his pants and shorts got, no matter how worn his slippers were, he kept them. 

I never knew how he got them dirty, and I used to tease him about rolling around in the mud, but he never got rid of any of them.  If Grubby had one t-shirt, he had a hundred t-shirts… endless stacks of graphic tees from anywhere he had ever even dreamt about going.  I mean, who really needs four Bass Pro Shop t-shirts? 

Not only did he keep them, he had some weird “Grubby Alert System” of knowing when one disappeared.  Several years ago, I decided that I was going to try to weed out some of the more worn shirts and shorts, and I would quietly slip them under the bed until I could get them out of the house without him noticing.  It seemed like he noticed every time one went missing.  I would say I hadn’t seen it, and life would go back to normal.  Until one day…

One day, I asked him to help me turn our mattress.  Huge mistake!  Since we have a European frame, there’s no box spring.  As we were turning the mattress, Grubby caught sight of a small stack of t-shirts neatly tucked under that bed.  Whoopsie!  What have we here?  Needless to say that after that, I never snuck another one of his shirts off to the dump. 

Yesterday, with the help of a very dear friend, someone who said, “Let me know what I can do for you,”, I managed to pack up most of Grubby’s t-shirts for donation to a local rehab facility and shelter.  I held back three for Abby, and two for me, but the rest of them are gone.  Instead of feeling sad, I felt like he would want me to start making our space into my space, he would want me to begin the process in earnest of letting go. 

I am not letting go of Grubby, nor of the thousands of memories we shared together.  I am only letting go of his stuff, and that’s all it really is, stuff.  That stuff doesn’t comfort me when I lie awake at night, unable to sleep once again because the sadness sits so heavy in my chest.  That stuff doesn’t tell me I am doing a good job with Abby.  It doesn’t tell me that it loves me.  It’s just stuff, stuff that has been weighing me down. 

Yesterday, I faced the anxiety head-on, and with Laura’s help, I even smiled and laughed some.  Yesterday, I won…  even if it was just one small battle, I won.