Stuff

I started.
The move.

Well at least I emptied four cupboards in the hallway and divided the stuff into different piles in the house.

In 2 weeks time I have an inspection of the apartment where I have lived for the past 3 years. So before then I need to sort of tidy up and move stuff away from the walls n floors. So they can check for damages like if I’ve scribbled on the wall or carved my initials in the wooden floor in the living room.

At first I was so eager, happy and excited about moving out.

Ok, I admit sending off the resignation of the flat was very heart breaking and getting the confirmation of it by post the next day felt like a nail in my coffin.

But I was still happy.

At night I would picture myself decorating our future bathroom or how I would renovate old furniture in weird unorthodox ways or just see myself reading by an open window with a different life and culture happening outside. My new life would become so much more colourful and better than the life I am leaving in Sweden. Much warmer, much brighter and happier that’s what my picture is like. I had butterflies flying around in my chest when I fell asleep and they would still be fluttering there when I woke in the morning.

Then I started to look around the flat.
Seeing all the stuff!
STUFF!
Collecting dust making everything stuffy!
What a hateful word - stuff.

Let me give you a description of where I’m sitting now:

It’s a big ugly but amazingly comfortable settee of light blue velvety fabric. To hide the ugliness of it, I have draped it, with an equally ugly and dust collecting dark blue Indian bedspread. Behind the settee are a large number of pillows and blankets, hidden by my sweet sister who hates stuff. To my left - a small sewing table which belongs to a friend – on top of it a huge stereo and hundreds of CD cases - mostly empty. Inside the sewing table a few packs of cards, dice, and more empty CD cases. Underneath the table a big wooden box with no real purpose in its life; a colourful kitschy tray full of candles that have burnt down into one large mass of candle wax and maybe a hundred or so vinyl records. Etc etc this goes on for ever, I have just describe one square meter of my living room.

So there I sit in my ugly comfortable settee and stare at stuff and think “what?”.

It is so sad and so scary to just get rid of it all and how does one get rid of it all? I can’t throw half the stuff I have cause they belong to friends who have loaned them to me (ugly Indian bed spread, sewing table) or they are too big to carry by myself the 500 m to the garbage room (the ugly settee) or I just simply can’t throw them away, games, cards and CD’s that are practically new or have some sentimental value like - this is the CD I bought when I was travelling with the Irish or this is the CD I listened to when that guy and I had passionate sex or this is the CD I listened to ALL the time when I broke up with that boyfriend.

Instead of dealing with the move I have played solitaire on the computer for hours every night.

It became harder and harder to move out of the settee and DO something. The butterflies disappeared and instead I had nightmares about moving and playing solitaire till my fingers bleed.

But then yesterday I started.
I did the hallway - two big cupboards and 2 smaller ones. What was once inside them is now sorted into different piles of my life:

“Daddy pile”
“Mummy pile”
“Garbage pile”
“Israel pile”
“Flea market pile”
”I don’t know- pile”

Every pile full of stuff and a piece of heart.

And last night I didn't have nightmares.