Dump
My sister-cousin passed along an excellent piece of advice:
Look at what is not serving you in your life, and then let it go.
The third definition of “to serve” according to Merriam-Webster: to be of use.
*******
For ten years, I have driven 40 minutes to get my eyebrows waxed. There are perfectly reasonable locations closer to home, but I picked this woman a long time ago and I am, if nothing else, loyal. We are also talking about my face when we are talking about my eyebrows, and there is little room for error. I like to stick with what I know.
But 40 minutes there and 40 minutes back, and a half hour of having someone slather hot wax on my face means that getting my eyebrows done becomes my whole afternoon. Couple that with the fact that she only works two days a week, one of those days rarely works for me at all, and she sometimes needs to cancel due to logistics and when I ask myself the question about whether something serves me, it really doesn’t. Waxing ones eyebrows should not take the entire afternoon, precluding any other activity.
But I’m loyal and anxious about change. So I sat on this fact for weeks, allowing my eyebrows to extend into a bushy mess. And then one day, as I sat in the parking lot of the post office after picking up the mail, I decided that I had two choices. I could go pick a random salon close to home and get it done immediately, or if I waited beyond lunch time, I might as well be a pussy and drive out to my normal person and use up the whole afternoon. I sucked it up and drove to a nearby salon that looked pretty and clean.
The woman didn’t speak any English, but I was able to pantomime my way through what I wanted and how nervous I was about doing this. I kept asking myself what the fuck I was thinking as I followed her into the back room. This had all the possibility of being an experience ripe with regret. I lay on the table and she dripped the hot wax on my face, and walked me through with baby steps, holding out a mirror with each rip so I could be reassured that my eyebrows would not come to resemble Robert Van Winkle’s.
I got up from the table, eight minutes later, with pretty eyebrows and a great deal more confidence in taking leaps. Yes, this could have been a different post; it could have been disastrous. But it wasn’t and I created a sustainable relationship with a woman who works five days a week a short drive from my home. It serves me; it’s useful.
I thought about my old salon person the rest of the day. It wasn’t regret because how could I trade an 18 minute excursion (including driving time) for a 110 minute excursion? Maybe sadness for breaking my loyalty to a woman who served me well in the past. It is not her fault that she has remained in the same place and I haven’t moved out to her yet despite the fact that years ago, we thought we’d be living close to her store by this point.
This week has been a lesson in learning to live where I am rather than living my life as if I could meld into a fantasy one at a moment’s notice.
*******
We have a very small home and I am constantly letting go of things to make room for what we need. I spent the day decluttering both tangible and intangible items from my life. I cleaned under my bathroom sink, filling two trash bags. I went through random bags and piles in the kitchen. I extracted myself from some volunteer work that was no longer serving me. I deleted files and emails and trashed all sorts of useless items from my life.
Midway through the day, someone asked if they could borrow some baby clothes and I went down in the basement to search the boxes in the storage room before I sent Josh into the attic. I was alone in the house and it was silent in the basement. I opened the boxes and first was smiling remembering when the twins were small enough to fit into 0-3 month onesies. I took out this gorgeous coat the Wolvog had barely worn and their first pair of Robeez. I saved everything from their babyhood.
And that made sense four years ago when we started trying to add to our family. There was no point in selling items or giving them away because we were going to need them again. Into our tiny storage room went the double snap-n-go (because treatments carry a risk of twins, giving away twin stuff with the assumption that we’d have a singleton felt risky) and gates and carriers and toys. We have six car seats, two booster high-chairs, three potty seats, and three baby carriers.
But as I stood in the storage room surveying the mess of items–too many to enable a person to actually get to the boxes in the back of the storage room–I realized that like my loyalty to the eyebrow woman, which started with a belief that we would one day be living in the town where she works (and therefore be convenient), I have been living this fantasy future where we’re using this equipment again. But the reality is that it’s not serving me anymore.
I cried on the way to my meeting that night and emailed Josh as we discussed upcoming social events that I planned to get rid of all the baby items, starting with the things that we wouldn’t miss at all and ending with the stuff that we’d rather never have to repurchase. I would cull out my favourite clothes and toys and sell the rest. He didn’t write back to say whether he agreed or disagreed, but I still cried the whole ride home and when I walked in the house, he said, “talk to me.”
I could barely get out what I believed in that moment: we are never going to have another baby.
Saying it felt like walking into that new salon, scary and upsetting with a hint of “what the fuck am I doing” tied to the action. It could end well or it could end poorly. As we talked it out, trying to run with the changes we’ve been making as of late to get things that aren’t working for us out of our lives, we came to an understanding that getting rid of the items wasn’t an ending, but instead, it was an understanding.
We need to live with the facts as we know them today. We have a small house and we have given up a lot of home real estate to a person who doesn’t exist, crowding the existing occupants into smaller spaces. We cannot create a child without expensive assistance and we do not have the money to either do treatments or pay back a loan. These things are just…things. They’re not people, they’re not irreplaceable. If life changes, we can return to Graco and Fisher Price and bring home newer versions of these items. If life continues as is, we have room for the people who live in this house now.
This decision has gutted me and I’ve canceled things to clean out this house as quickly as possible. I am a band-aid ripping sort of person and once the decision is made, I need to charge ahead and get it done or I will second guess myself and drown in doubt. I have cried a lot these past few days. I cried as I walked through the food store, cried as I walked in the house and caught site of the pumpkin seat and base we’re giving away, cried as I passed the bags of clothes Josh set up for me in the hallway so I can go through them.
We will take the money we make from selling these items and use the money for the trip to Disney World we’ve been trying to take for the last few years. I told the twins our plan, smiling broadly to convey that this! is! a! good! thing! despite! our! tear-stained! faces! and they jumped on-board, bashing babies like a good sour grapes soldier (“it’s so good that we don’t have a baby! Then our house would smell like poop and all we’d hear is the baby crying. I don’t like babies at all!”). And I agreed because it was easier: “you’re right. Babies suck. We are so damn lucky that we don’t have one in our house.”
I waited until I dropped them off at school to cry.
*******
I started in the closet in the guest room, dumping some items into a garbage bag and entering the ones we’d sell into a spreadsheet.
Dumping is a strange term because it sounds so unemotional. We dump our garbage, we dump our dead-end jobs, we dump our boyfriends. But there’s a lot of emotion behind the word. Loading up the car with trash and snaking our way up the winding pathway to the dump can be a very freeing experience coupled with a sense of regret to be parted from long-held items. As much as I was thrilled to walk away from a terrible job, I also felt a great deal of sadness as I drove away with my box of important papers beside me. And please don’t get me started on how long I have mourned the end of a relationship, regardless of whether I was the dumper or the dumpee.
I hope these items find good homes. I hope they make another family happy; they will most likely go to a fellow stirrup queen who has built her family via treatments therefore there is sweetness amid the bitter. I am going to go live in the here and now and figure out how to stop thinking about the future when it makes me miss so much of the present. I am going to take on new volunteer work; something that serves me.
And I’m leaving the door open to change, to waiting to see what happens next rather than trying to confidently guess what is behind curtain number two.
78 comments
You’re not dumping. You’re reassessing. If Baby #3 comes along, he or she can have brand new things just for him/herself, and they won’t be tainted with the years of maybebaby.
First off, Vanilla Ice is and always will be the Sexiest Man Alive. I used to kiss his poster every night before I went to bed. Ice Ice Baby is the ring tone for when I call BigP’s phone…I’m just sayin.
My friend and former Pastor (she is at another church now) just found out she is pregnant. I’m super excited for them and I know they don’t have much money. She is buying a lot of stuff on Craigslist and I feel selfish having an attic full of stuff I know she could use…but what if?
Funny, that’s the same thing I did this weekend. Craigslist, here I come.
My dad put it a slightly different way – if you don’t like the way your life is, change it.
Oh Mel. I know how painful this must be. Literally 15 minutes before reading your post I was going through BG’s clothes, culling out stuff from last summer and this past winter that no longer fits. A few things I set aside for a friend with a daughter 2 years younger than mine; most of it I dumped into a shopping bag and stuck it in the corner of her room. I’m still in that place where I’m holding out the possibility for another, even though it’s been a year since we started trying for #2 and we no longer have insurance coverage for IF treatment nor the money to do them on our own. I’m OK with “lending” gear and less-beloved clothes to our friend, because I know we’ll get them back if/when we need. But I have so many boxes and bins and bags of clothes, so many baby toys BG really doesn’t use anymore, and we have a small apartment and no more room. By this summer I will probably run out of space for any extra stuff and will have to make some hard decisions. But I keep putting it off as long as I can.
That’s what you have to do sometimes. I don’t have anything for our maybe baby–and sometimes I want to buy stuff but other times I’m glad we don’t.
It’s spring, commence with cleaning.
♥
I love reading your posts because they are so well thought-out. We are not at this point yet, but I do wonder as I stockpile used baby items (and today I spent almost a hundred dollars shipping used baby items across the Atlantic ‘just in case’ we have an opportunity to use them again in the future on the other side of the pond) whether it might not make sense to gift them to friends and then rely on the kindness of others if we ever need to stock up again. For now, getting rid of items my daughter wore as a baby is just too emotional for me. So I’m craigslisting the big baby items (crib, etc.) and holding onto every little onesie and baby sock. But I do hope that in the future re-gifting baby items will be at least a little less traumatic.
It took me 2 years to break up with my hairstylist. And she wasn’t even that good. That’s how loyal I am. Now, I’m on the verge of breaking up with my dentist. I’ve seen his dad my entire life, and I’ve been going to him for 5+ years. He’s seen me through some pretty big dental ordeals, so its hard for me to walk into a new office who has no understanding of my history. But, my dentist is 3 hours round trip. Far too long now with the little one in the equation. I warned him of the breakup a year ago and asked for a referral closer to my home. He ignored me. My next appointment is 2 weeks away and I’m trying to get the balls to call and cancel. And then take an even bigger step by picking up the phone and making an appointment at a different office. Here’s the kicker. My dentist is a friend on Facebook.
I’m so sorry. My heart wrenched right along with you. Thanks for sharing this with us. I’ve been hearing a lot lately to be happy with what is, with what we have instead of what we want. Easier said than done but I’m trying so hard to hang onto this. I hope you find peace with this.
This is so true. I need to live more in my current life than in my ‘what if’ life.
I’m sorry you are on a bumpy road right now but it seems like your ‘what if’ life is just on hold for now. And getting rid of some stuff isn’t going to impede your future family possibilities. It is easy to wrap all those feelings up in material stuff sometimes though.
it just sucks even more because while you are in control of this dumping the infertilty, and all of the chaos and expense that comes with it, and what is the backdrop to this moment, is totally shitty. xo
Great post. Wishing you the best of luck in the future. Hope you get that Disney trip!
This is it. Exactly.
I’m tearing up here b/c the dumping (of future-baby items) SUCKS ASS! I did the very thing this weekend, by hosting a yard sale, and I don’t even know how to post about it w/o falling in to a pool of tears again, like I did, as strangers sifted through the Tweedles clothes and walked away w/ bouncers and such. Love that Josh was there for you, and even though your Littles said things that might’ve stabbed at your heart, they were ‘there’ for you too. But, it’s definitely not an end. I’m rooting for you that though it may make your 2 nauseous at stinky dipes, that you’ll have them. Well, not YOU, but you know what I mean. 😉 A hug and a rub / pat on the back for putting on big-girl-panties! Mine got put away after Saturday, until the next time.
OH!!!! And when your DisneyWorld trip happens, PLEASE let me know in advance, I’d love to meet you!! That’s a 3.5 hour drive that would be totally worth it! :-*
I am so sorry. The idea that your family may not grow by another person is difficult enough emotionally, forget trying to deal with it in a physical way. Giving away those clothes is so much more than just ‘giving away clothes.’
But I like how you think – live your life for the people who are in your house now. Enjoy your trip to Disney!!
First of all, some of those eyebrows are crazy! But I’ve seen some of them locally and I’m pretty sure some are tattoos…what were they thinking?!?
Secondly, I went through something similar. Unfortunately my husband only transported the items to another part of the house. For him it seems easier to disconnect for me, walking past them every time I’m down to do laundry is like a kick in the gut. He’s been doing more laundry lately. Chances are they’ll be there when the weather is nice for a yard sale, after all he did move it out of the area I asked him to. Maybe that’s what we’ll do.
To clarify, I’m not referring to your eyebrows. ; )
Along a major highway in the Netherlands is a big store with the ominous name ‘Babydump’. I never dared to go, Xbox did however:
http://xbox4nappyrash.blogspot.com/search?q=stroller
http://xbox4nappyrash.blogspot.com/2009/09/no-walk-in-park.html
I couldn’t read and not comment. I have nothing to add except that I have bins and bins of little girl clothes that I will never use again, which makes me impossibly sad. And I could see it sitting in my basement for decades. In fact, I defended buying all kinds of things for my oldest simply by dint of expecting a second daughter. Now, I feel like I have set myself up for a heartbreaking load of work. I am hoping to send it off to a dbm expecting a daughter…I think giving them to someone who has gone through this too will help make easier. Hopefully. Sending you much love. xo
I hope you get through it okay. I hope you manage to focus on the good that you will do, letting others have the things they need.
I feel this same way about my doctor. I actually do not like her at all. Except when I am actually in her office then she is nice and helpful but outside the office like if I call for info or ANYTHING at all she is a B@#$%! The doctor is FAR away. It takes like 40 minutes to get there and I have to go once a month to pick up refills since she won’t call them in. I NEED to change but it seems like such a pain…and the thought of going through EVERYTHING with a new doctor just seems daunting.
Cleaning out stuff from your life that means something is hard especially when it comes to baby stuff. I have many friends who have never had a fertility problem even one iota but they still have a hard time letting go of their baby stuff. While I do not have this problem due to not having any children I do have a few things that sometimes I wonder if I am just torturing myself by keeping them. Will there ever be a baby there to use them?
I say keep just a few things that mean the most and dump the rest. I know much easier said then done. Good Luck!
Lots of {{{hugs}}} my friend. Check your email.
Oh Mel, I hear you… I have had similar moments and I fully support the band-aid ripping… get it done and then move on. And when the time comes that you need those things again, think of the hours of enjoyable researching and shopping. Sending hugs.
Now I’m crying for you too. I know this must be difficult. Enjoy your trip, you deserve it!
Letting go is hard and by letting go of the baby clothes and all that, you are grieving a possible future. Holding on can be just as hard.
I’m cheering for you while you do all that ! Continue Mel, t’es bonne, t’es belle, t’es fine, t’es capable ! Which basically means, go on, you can do it, you’re beautiful, you’re good, you’re able. It’s a Québec thing but it’s supposed to be encouraging. 🙂
an achingly beautiful post, mel. such a hard thing to accept, that part about living the life we have rather than the one we fantasize in our future. I hope this dumping brings you the cleansing you need. spring cleaning of the heart and home, so to speak.
I’m waiting for the same moment. I am tired of passing a room with a crib in it, and not looking in two huge closets because they are filled to the brim with baby items I will probably never need again.
I wish you could rub some of your strength off to me. I so want to let go… I just don’t know how to start.
Mel, I understand this all totally — too well, in fact. I’m a horrible packrat, & I so well recognize that fantasy future life reasoning. Example: dh & I have a HUGE book collection… & I can pinpoint almost the exact time when my “unread” piles (plural) started to grow so exponentially: (a) it coincided with the purchase of our first computerin 1996 (lol) & (b) in the back of my mind, after Katie’s stillbirth in 1998, I started thinking that I would be on bedrest for my next pregnancy & would need lots of reading material — so what were a few extra books in the “to read” pile?? And almost 12 years later…. :p (Now I’m saving them to read in retirement, lol.)
Dear Mel, that is a great post. So brave, even through tears.
We live Luke this a bit but without the kids yet – we have a whole storage locker full of our belongings from when we emptied our house to ‘stage’ it to sell and then we didn’t sell. And filled up our house with furniture again. It’s all for our fantasy house which might happen in a couple years – maybe. My DP has a huge attachment to things that I do understand but which sometimes drives me nuts. And she drives an hour each way to the dentist. Maybe I should show her this post:) you did good. Enjoy Disney!
I think items can weigh us down. I nodded at your description of your storage room and the collections of baby/kid things. I, too, dutifully kept all of my son’s things in preparation for our ‘next child’. Some of those things we will be using when Abby arrives, but it pained my heart to realize that all of the boy things have no use to us anymore (since Will died). At first, the thought of ridding myself of these items was torturous, but lately I feel so very ready to pass them on. I plan to look through each bin and love the memories over Sam wearing these things, but also look forward to freeing the pull they’ve had on me for so long. I told my hubby recently that we will no longer need to ‘save’ clothes, as the kids grow out of each season’s worth. After living in infertility of some sort since 2002, I’m so completely ready to let go of the ‘what if’. I hope you find it freeing as well.
I was just the opposite of you. About 6 months after my twins were born, my brother’s best friend had identical twin boys, and he had 4 other kids and very little money. Just about everything but a small box of emotional items went. The high chairs we were still using, along with the cribs, but good bye to everything else. Then we found that insurance company was going to change from having no limits on its infertility coverage, to only allowing 3 cycles. If we were ever going to have another baby, it was going to have to be now, so we jumped. I didn’t expect it to work, but I was thinking at least we would have some embryos frozen, and we could maybe squeak out a FET with our finances. Well…it did work, and we had to start all over, and with growing twin boys and me not working, we had considerably less coin to spend on baby stuff. But. people gave us stuff, and in the almost 3 year gap, the quality of things like pack n plays and cribs, strollers and car seats, had gone up incredibly, and gone down in price. It was nice to start fresh, and in my case, buy pink things.
So, maybe, there will be a silver lining for you. I hate, hate, hate the fact that on top of being at the mercy of our infertility when it comes to family building we are at the mercy of health care system as well. Maybe in a year or two we will have a new health care system, and you will be able to afford another chance? Meanwhile, I have already started giving away my baby girl’s things away. With my luck, after I’ve given away the last baby item my husband and I will have one of those “woops, maybe we weren’t that infertile after all” pregnancies. Ha.
(((HUGS))) These crossroads are so bittersweet. I echo luna’s words. I am proud of you Mel. Purging these kinds of things can be so painful and liberating at the same time. We also live in a smaller home (2 bedrooms) and we often say that when we finally get rid of all the stuff we have been storing all these years (maternity clothes, transitional clothes, baby/childrens’ clothes, books, toys, etc.) we will have so much more space.
We actually had started to finally get rid of some of it right before we conceived Abby, which in the end was very ironic. I know it sounds cliche, especially for infertiles, but when we were finally in place where we were letting go of one of our dreams is when it somehow was able to come true. But I know it doesn’t play out that way for everyone.
I love that you are using the money you make from selling things to go to Disney with your family! What a wonderful way to live your life in the present, instead of in anticipation of the future. Hang in there.
Change is so tough – I hear ya! Yay for stepping out of your comfort zone and finding a new place that works much better for you! (and hahaha at the crazy eyebrow link… wow. just wow.)
I have saved up baby clothes and other things from over 10 years ago when I first started trying. I probably need to let that stuff go. That crosses my mind every once in a while. I’ve even thought about putting it up on my blog and offering it to pregnant IFers. I can’t yet though. I’m not as strong as you. You are definitely an example to me… I will do it someday.
I can somewhat imagine how horrible it all feels. Before our first pregnancy, I picked up things here and there, so sure we would have a baby to use them. Once we were pregnant, I picked up a few more things and then we miscarried. And walking into that room afterwards, thinking about the practicality of keeping any of it…it was a horrible place to be emotionally.
Whether you never get pregnant with the baby you are dreaming of or get pregnant and miscarry, either way it’s a loss. Of the future you’ve dreamed for yourself. A dream that you could so clearly picture in your mind that it almost seemed real. Letting go of the stuff isn’t so much letting go of the dream (though it feels like it), but it is accepting that maybe you won’t have the future you’ve dreamed of, and accepting that maybe is again another loss. A loss of near certainty. In a world that is already so full of uncertainty.
More than that though, is those things belonged to your little ones and they hold some memories, are representative of the battle you won and the beautiful babyhood of your twins. Letting go of those things is very difficult. But giving it all away is a beginning, not an ending. And who doesn’t love new beginnings?
{HUGS}
I know how difficult it is to let go of stuff that mean a lot. You should be very proud of yourself, Mel. And you know, you will cross that bridge (a new baby) when/if you get there. Until then, enjoy the present, it is more tangible than the future.
You are very strong, as I am sure you have been told over and over. And this too shall pass.
This is a beautiful post, Mel. Both heartbreaking AND hopeful at once.
Thank you for sharing with us.
xxx
Dear Band-Aid ripper: thank you for your post. Creating a clearing for the present moment is SO hard to do. But I, too, tell myself it’s necessary to create that space for the future as well. Me? Yes, I still have the boxes of pregnancy clothes. After 2 miscarriages, and considering the prohibitive costs of adoption and surrogacy, I don’t know that we’ll have the opportunity (gulp) to raise any children. This is the first time I’ve utterered these words. Before, it was always hopeful — the next round, the next treatment. But here’s the ultimate decluttering task: CONSIDER LETTING GO OF THE EMBRYOS THAT ARE LEFT. I don’t know that I can do it.
It can be so painful to pull your gaze away from the fantasy of the what if to the reality of the right now. I have been through this and am going through it. Brave, brave you.
Mel, this post made me cry as I was reading it. I could totally feel your sorrow through your words and it made my heart ache. During your explanation I can understand the need to move forward and clean the slate, so to speak.
This was just another brilliant illustration of the pain associated with infertility.
I, too, am crying as I read. I’m so sorry it all has to be so complicated.
Mel, *gulp*. Your writing is so beautiful and conveys so well all the strange mix of emotions of where you are right now.
Brought tears to my eyes. Hope the sell goes well enough to pay for disney and a great bottle of wine.
This post this post this post. Oh my goodness Mel you beautiful beautiful woman. I want to envelope you in the biggest hug right now ….. along with blowjobs, I give GREAT hugs. I just love you mate.
You had me laughing and smiling with the eyebrow fiasco, and then crying at your beautiful, eloquent, exquisite words at being haunted. I imagine your loss and pain at not having the child you wish for so badly …. must be like being haunted, by a ghost that isn’t even real yet.
How I feel SO CRANKY for my American sisters who face such hefty IVF bills. There’s something *so* not right about it. I wish I could give you all the money you need. I wish you did not have to undergo fertility treatments to add to your family. It’s not fair, mate.
The day you are ever to need baby stuff ……. mate, you’ll have to hire a truck. The whole internets would be pouring out everything they got. Especially from where I live.
Kisses and peace to you.
XOXOXOXOXOXOX
BIG ((hugs)) Mel! I’m sorry. That has to be so painful to do. As always it was a beautiful beautiful post.
Someone, well more than just one person, asked me if we were going to have more children. Back in the gay old days, I thought I’d have 3 kids, why 2 at the very least! And now with one adopted child, I know that we are out of that sort of money to repeat that arduous endeavour. One day I will have to go through all the stuff my child no longer needs and I will have to let go of old dreams with it.
I suspect that The Dump is emotionally very sad.
I also suspect that The Dump is energetically very liberating. Giving space for what serves you now.
Hugs, Mel.
It’s so hard. I am in a very similar place. Next weekend I am going through all of LJ’s baby things and doing the same thing, except my SIL will be getting the hand me downs for her soon-t0-be first child. I have been fighting this for nearly 7 years now. I know there will be tears.
Thank you for a beautiful, real post. I’m so glad someone else “gets it.”
Mel,
This is the kind of post that has me wanting to hand out hugs and hot tea. We’ve all been in that place mentally and some of us stay.
I’m paddling up denial in my small house. Still.
g
Reading this had me in tears. On one hand, I’m proud of you for making the very difficult decision and living in the now. And on the other, it just royally sucks that things like money stop wonderful people from becoming parents. It is just wrong.
(and I guess both those thoughts could have been on the same hand…not sure why I wrote it out that way)
Thinking of you
wow, you’re brave and adventurous. It’s heartbreaking, and I’m also proud of you for opening your space up for the people who currently live there. I love this post.