This photo of three empty wine bottles is probably representative of my sentimental hoarding tendencies.
Each of these bottles is significant in Pete and my life and we have kept them because the occasion / time we drank them.
One Pete gave me for my 21st - less than 6 months after we started dating - announcing we would be drinking it on our wedding; one was found on a trip to Western Australia for my 30th; one was discovered on a boozy, pre-marriage week long holiday visiting every South Australian wine region.
They have just been living in our wine rack since we consumed them and moved with us each time.
Now I feel it is time to just take the photograph, smile at the memories, and not move them again.
Today has been another day of finding things long forgotten about in the bottom of a bag in the far back corner of our wardrobe.
I have zero reason to keep these things... And I cannot part with them. I stood beside my bed in tears trying to rationalise my deep distress at trying to make a decision about holey shirts and far beyond repair shorts.
The rugby shorts have been repaired so many times by Pete driving a sewing machine like a vehicle (too fast and with too much reckless abandon for comfort) he didn’t want to part with them so much.
The shirt he wore so much it became threadbare. The back is entirely open from the last time he wore it. But he loved this shirt and it evokes so many memories of weekends when we were first together.
The jumper represents his two favourite things combined ... beloved small communities and social events.
This move is making me plough through and sort things some people take years to sort after the death of a loved person ... and some never can.
It’s hard. So freaking hard.
But I’m holding on to the hope that by doing it, it’s like ripping off a bandaid:
It hurts like a bastard, but the scar from the wound can heal with the fresh air.
I genuinely have no idea.
It is also allowing me to find things I have kept sentimentally for me, too.
A house captaincy badge my school demanded I return when they took my captaincy off me when they suspended me (for drinking... surprise, surprise!) but I refused because I had been the captain for almost 3 terms, therefore the majority of the year, and therefore I believed I deserved to keep the badge because I was captain for longer than I wasn’t in Year 12 (I feel the statute of limitations has passed so I can admit this to any of my former teachers reading this...)
I’ve also paired up all my earrings; tossed
out clothes I no longer wear or fit into or I’d kept out of obligation (Pete always vowed expensive things could be justified on a price per wear basis...) I got rid of some things that remained expensive, and others that owed me nothing; and found gifts I had purchased during the years that I could simply wrap and put under the tree to save me the brain-exploding task of shopping for Christmas gifts.
And so in many respects I think this is a good thing. And it has allowed me to get ever so slightly more organised for Christmas which is like a looming spectre in the back of my head that I know I’m going to have to deal with, and it’s going to be hard, but I just have to get a free other hard things sorted first... like moving house, finishing the school year etc...
As an aside: writing present tags without ‘from Mum and Dad’ remains utterly shitful and awful.
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