A Whole Nother Life

I've been pondering why I have this dress in my house. Why? While it's a perfectly OK dress, in a dress qua dress kind of a way, it is just so totally not me.

In trying to articulate why it's so Not Me, I've been thinking about why I bought it and dyed it and shortened it and added cool buttons to it. And then I got to thinking about some of the other clothes I've had over the years, clothes I didn't wear and didn't love but that, for some reason, I felt it necessary to have in my closet.  And then--then!--I thought about how that extends to some of the furniture I've had--couches nobody ever sat on, dining room tables where nobody ever ate. And then: sets of dishes, nice, lovely, matching dishes, that were never used. Matching glasses. Jewelry. Sheets and towels.

My god. I'm almost 55 years old (I mention this often because turning 55 has always seemed like an important milestone for me, more about which later), and it's taken me this long to figure this out, so think how lucky you are that I'm sharing this brilliant insight (snort) with you and saving you DECADES of not-knowing. Whoa.

Apparently, I have acquired stuff--lots of stuff, tons of stuff--over the course of my life that wasn't actually intended for the life I actually have. You know, coz I'm guessing there's a good chance you know *exactly* what I'm talking about. You've got the good dishes you never eat off of and don't really like all that much, just in case you have to host a dinner for Important People, never mind that the only people you'd invite to eat at your house are friends who, just like you, prefer to eat off the mismatched pottery you've had since the summer of '97 when you and your girlfriends went to the market in Juarez and picked it out. And so every time you eat off it you remember how much fun you had. The margaritas at the hotel! The tacos al carbon! The Imodium!

Or the couch you bought and put in the living room in case you had to entertain people, only the only time anyone goes in the living room is when the kids forget the rule about not allowing strangers in the house and invite the insurance salesman in, and he perches on the edge and tries not to slide off, or your brother-in-law accidentally sits down on it while he's waiting for your husband to find his wading boots, and he goes, "I didn't know y'all got a new couch," and you go, "Yeah. In 1989. Don't spill your coffee." But you know you don't have to worry because it's covered with that fabric that makes even solvents bead up and sit for months, waiting to be wiped off. It's indestructible and lovely and about as comfortable as a slab of concrete.

So you know what I'm talking about, right? All the stuff that you've brought into your house and your life that really, when you stop and think about it, has nothing to do with your actual life. This is the Just In Case Stuff. The clothes you hate but keep just in case you lose your job and become destitute and can't buy clothes and have to have something nice to wear when you go for an interview for another job, or when you go down to try to get the evil bank manager to give you a loan. You know: when you slip into the narrative of It's a Wonderful Life and need a hat and gloves and Some Decent Shoes.

It's all the stuff you keep in your kitchen/dining room/buffet hutch that you never use and don't like but keep just in case. Like if The Royals come to tea. (Yeah, we just Netflixed The King's Speech. Isn't it fabulous? Yeah, we know everyone else on the planet saw it in the theatre.)

In the last several years, I've been getting rid of everything I don't love. Clothes, dishes, shoes, random things. Now I see that what I was doing was shedding the things that don't fit My Real Life, the one I have and love. But, obviously--see that dress, above--every once in a while I slip. I see something and think, "Oh, yeah, that would be perfect!"

Perfect for what? Well, in the case of that dress, I guess, in the back of my head, I was thinking it would be perfect for something like a late afternoon barbecue with friends, sitting in the backyard, where--in this heat--I'd need something cool. Something Appropriate, as my mother would say.

We don't have friends. We don't eat barbecue. We don't eat in the late afternoon--we eat about 10 pm--and there's no way we're going to be sitting out in someone's backyard, waiting for food, with me wearing a dress like this.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the dress, but it's not me. It doesn't have a place in my life. Like the dishes with the roses. The matching martini glasses. The matching living room furniture--which is now scattered throughout the house in rooms where it actually gets used. For, you know, sitting and stuff.

The trick is, of course, to know your life. Not the life you think you'll have, or the life you expected to have, but the life you actually have. No, I'm not talking about settling, about giving up your dreams of luxury and settling for the scratchy couch from Rent-to-Own. No. I'm talking about figuring out what your life is really like, what you love and how you live and how you spend your time, and having in your house and closet and life only those things that support that. Clothes that make you feel good and that are comfortable and allow you to move freely and do the work you adore. Furniture that embraces you and doesn't require you to put Velcro on your clothes to keep from sliding around on its surface. Plates and cups that make you happy instead of terrified that one will get broken, even though you kind of secretly hope one will so you'll have an excuse not to ever use those hideous wedding-present-plates ever again.

It takes a while for most of us, learning who we are and what our lives are and what we actually love. For years I had clothes I was hanging on to Just In Case, clothes I didn't like and never wore but thought I Might Need Someday. Shoes, ditto. Dishes, oh, yeah.

When you really think about it, it's all about The Myth of Scarcity. Most of us are terrified we're going to need something someday, something we don't have and can't get and that will be vital to our continued happiness. This is hardly ever the case. Almost always, we'll never need it. And if we do, we can almost always get it, or get something close enough to it that we won't feel its lack. If I needed a set of matching dishes for some unimaginable reason--if The Royals decided, "Oh, to hell with nice weather; let's go to Midland, Texas, and find some random person to invite us for tea," and somehow I had embraced the concept of "tea" and of "eating a meal in the middle of the afternoon " and "having guests when I'm working," well, then. I could go to Goodwill and buy a set of serviceable dishes for less than it would cost me, timewise, to store and periodically clean a set here in my own house.  And sure, they would be dishes from the Goodwill, and surely The Royals would know that, but so what? What purpose would be served in having a set of fancy dishes on hand just to impress someone I don't even know and have no intention of, oh, marrying or anything? Why do we keep stuff we don't really like just in case we need to impress someone *we don't really like*? Hmmmmmm?

If I ever need a formal gown, I can find one somewhere. If I really, really need one, there will be one out there. Chances are, though, that since I've lived this long, having a perfectly happy life and plenty of fine adventures, without needing one? Chances are pretty good that that will continue. Because if I went somewhere where I needed a formal gown, The EGE would be required to wear A Tie, and he'd just as soon show up in a straitjacket as A Tie, which he thinks is a torture device invented to make sure no man ever enjoys a formal occasion. So I would have to either go by myself, in my formal gown, or go with someone who was grumbling constantly and tugging at his neck.

Really, it's less about throwing things away and giving things up than it is about figuring out what your life is really all about. What is it you love, and what is it you do? Who are you, anyway? How do you want to spend your days, and what makes you happy? How do you use your time and your rooms, your clothes and your space? In short, it's this: what is your life like, really?

For me, I can look at something and know immediately if it's right. It just *feels* right. And yet--and yet!--I still fall into the habit of thinking, "But I might need something like that someday. You know, Just In Case."

So today, when I get through with the stuff on the to-do list, I'll be making another pass at the closets. I do this periodically, once every couple of months. I try on stuff I haven't worn in a while and think about how I feel in it. Does it make me happy? Never mind what it looks like--it may look perfectly fine. But if it doesn't feel right, if it doesn't make me feel happy and comfortable and like I'm ready to tackle whatever shows up, then it's got to go find a new home. I highly recommend this practice of gradually, gradually weeding out the stuff that isn't working for you. in the process, you'll learn things about yourself that you might not have thought about before. About what makes you happy. About what things you love, and why. About how you feel about the stuff with which you share your space. You might be surprised, and in a good way.

Now if I could just learn to tell the difference, before I bring it home, between something that is Absolutely, Positively Perfect for Me and something that's Good to Have, Just in Case.