I gave up most of my possessions

When I was growing up

My family would tell me I had to collect things. It seemed that collections were important. My Aunt Pauline collected chicken statues and books. My Grandmother was a collector of dolls. I have to say I didn’t entirely understand it but on my first birthday I was given a stuffed elephant which I adored. So I became the collector of elephants. At some point I became interested in other countries and my family would gift me stamps and coins. When I was in high school I remember my mom asking me “what Pfalzgraff pattern do you like?” I was a bit confused by this because quite frankly I didn’t like any of them and was thinking of possibilities like college and boys not dishes. My mom explained that it was so important to have a pattern.

I did end up taking on my adventures and my love of other places and as soon as I could I hit the road. Throughout my college years and for some time after I used to pride myself that I could fit all my possessions in the back of my car. I was a gypsy and a bit of a nomad floating from place to place. Fuck if I cared about dish patterns they were not for me.

Somewhere along the way I met a charismatic man who always managed to make me smile. Through the beginning of our courtship it was adventures and parties. He never minded if I jetted off the Europe or wherever. After a time, we moved in together of course and the first few days of empty space was full of possibilities.

Then it came. The boxes and boxes of his stuff that his mother and father and everyone else had been patiently saving for the day he moved out. I literally remember a wall of boxes coming into our home thinking what the actual fuck do I do with all of this.

Then I found out his family loved to acquire stuff and all of the stuff was someone’s uncle’s precious lamp and we should definitely want that and I was like no we totally don’t want or need such things but my charismatic partner was like “don’t be rude” and someone’s uncle’s precious lamp would go into the basement with the wall of other very important things and after a few years of this the basement was filling up. With stuff. And there it was hidden. The stuff. That person became my husband and with that honor more stuff piled into our home - I reluctantly picked out a dish pattern from Pfalzgraff because hey I was going to find happiness in that right?

Cleaning became an issue because my husband would often say “don’t touch my stuff” and I would try to clean around it or move the growing piles which would elicit growls or anger about what was I dare doing. Stuff was super, duper important.

I often found that our adventures had morphed into “where is that critical thing that I acquired” which turned into us having to re buy the thing because we could never find the thing though we were sure in the piles we had such a thing.

I had never heard of minimalism but I started preaching and purging but found that just extended to my things. My husband was more on the mindset more IS more. Mine was a sadness about the squelching of possibilities.

Time passed and we had a child and then we had to now have the tons of children stuff which poured in.

Meanwhile I could see as we growled through another argument of stuff and cleanliness (I wasnt clean enough and I touched all the damn stuff all the time because I couldn’t avoid it), I couldn’t live like that anymore. I started fantasizing about taking off and packing up my car and heading for wild places. My smile was long gone.

In one of our last fights I remember begging him to please chose our family over the things. He thought I was nuts. I proposed crazy things like perhaps we stay together but live separately.

When the trucks came to get take his things in the divorce it took three tractor trailers full. Walking around the emptiness after he was gone was a bittersweet sense of peace and possibilities as freeing as packing up your car and heading to the open road.

Since I have been divorced i feel like I have traded in things constantly. I have become a sharer, an over organizer and a life designer. My elephant collection has turned into an elephant tattoo. I keep creating and growing and grasping the possibilities. The adventure I once had with him has turned into an adventure with my daughter. Things change and morph. The possibilities have emerged.

Now his charisma has turned to bitter criticism. My daughter often says he is just jealous of me now. “It’s because you have what he wants, Mommy.”

But today, I packed up the last of the Pfalzgraff and gave it away on my buy nothing group. I wanted to tell this person the whole story, that I am not really a collector of things. I am a collector of possibilities.