I thought it would be harder.
I thought when the time came to finally say goodbye I would contemplate the moment, rolling it over and over in my head until I analyzed myself out of actually doing it. I’ve done it enough times to assume that’s the way it would happen this time too.
But I was wrong; this time something was different.
They were the maternity clothes that I wore long after I had any business wearing them. The fashionable (or so I thought) capri pants that were the only thing that fit after baby but before regular clothes. The red t-shirt I wore to the hospital hours before my son was born, which I told myself looked just like a regular t-shirt so it was okay. They were my favourites; the ones I hung on to long after the others were passed along to a friend of a friend who was expecting. They were the ones I refused to let go of.
I found the bag in my closet about a year ago and dug them out to look through. I had a moment sitting on the floor of my closet and then I put the bag in the trunk of my car. I thought it was time. I had a friend at work who was having a baby and I thought she might as well get some use out of them.
That was what I told myself anyway.
But as the days turned into weeks the bag took up permanent residence in the back of my car. I couldn’t give them away, but I couldn’t justify bringing them back into the house either. The bag was in limbo, just like I was. I couldn’t face making the decision so I didn’t.
The weeks turned into months and still the bag stayed in the back of my car. I would look at it every time I opened the trunk, but I wouldn’t allow myself to think about it. However, in reality it seemed like I thought of nothing else. The bag of clothes became a physical manifestation of the choice I was so afraid to make.
In my head I knew the clothes didn’t mean anything. I could keep the clothes and never decide to have another baby; or I could give them away and get pregnant tomorrow. It wasn’t the clothes. It was me.
But for some reason as long as that bag was rolling around in my trunk I felt like anything was possible. I had not closed any doors; or opened any for that matter. As long as the bag was there, things made sense. The decision could wait for another day.
We cleaned out the garage yesterday, piling up kids boots that had long been outgrown, yoga mats that had never seen the inside of a yoga class, kitchen tools that worked much better on TV than they ever did in my kitchen.
I was headed out to run some errands so we packed my car full of all the stuff and I said I would drop it off at Goodwill while I was out. When we got there my daughter helped me unload all of our treasures into a rolling bin and she started to push it to the drop off.
I told her to wait a second.
I grabbed the bag and stood there with it in my hand and waited to feel the familiar ache, but this time it didn’t come. This time I didn’t see what was missing; I only saw what wasn’t. My daughter turned and looked back at me. She was excited. After this errand we were going to shop for new shoes, and then to a movie, just her and I.
And so before I could think about it too much I ran up and threw the bag of clothes in the bin, watching as she rolled it away.
I knew in reality it didn’t mean anything, to an outside observer nothing had actually changed.
But to me it had.
The decision I had been fighting for so long had been made, in the one place that mattered the most: in my heart.
In the same way I knew all of the other times were the wrong time, I was now just as certain that this was the right time. I knew there would still be moments of sadness, but they would no longer be tainted with doubt, with questions, with anger.
And I was thankful I had waited; that I had trusted myself enough to know there would be a time when I could let go of that bag of clothes, and all it represented. A time when I would accept that in order to write a new story, you first have to close the cover on the old one.
I don’t know what that new story will be just yet, but I know I’m ready to find out.