prom dresses and donor's remorse

i have donor's remorse. wow, that sounds awful. not like i gave a kidney or anything. it's just hard for me to get rid of stuff. i waver, i waffle, and even after all that, sometimes after i've given something away, i panic.

i donated some dresses today. (ok, yesterday, but that's when i wrote this.) i like to find the perfect place to donate something. which of course slows down the process immensely. over the past few years, i've gotten a few emails from time to time about places looking for prom dresses (or fancy dresses of sorts.) it is often around this time of year and i always mean to jump on it and donate dresses. (it somehow seems more meaningful than just throwing a fancy dress in a bag with other clothes.) but something always gets in the way. (once, i realized some of my dresses were at my parents' house in NJ, and several times i just missed the dates.) but this time, i got an email through work for a "say yes to the dress" event for a local youth agency. they were looking for dresses for proms and graduations. sadly, i still actually had a dress i wore to a friend's prom. it was cute at the time, going for a sort of 50's look that i don't think i quite pulled off. (it was a bit too long originally, sort of an awkward length, and then i had it shortened -- too much -- in college.) it was a perfect give. plus a few others, one of which had "juniors" sizing. even my anxious self could get behind this. i emailed the agency to see if they were looking for anything else, and they said they needed accessories too. i carefully (re-)sorted through a bag of jewelry i'd been meaning to get rid of for years, revisited some bags and shoes, and loaded it all into my car. i felt good. after a work meeting, i drove down with a friend and dropped off the stuff. as i was doing it, i could feel myself panic a bit. oh no, i thought, those are the shoes i wore in a close friend's wedding. (12 years ago, and i couldn't even walk around the house in them last night.) another pair of shoes, virtually new - but i love those! (admittedly gorgeous, in my opinion, but worn once to a conference, and so uncomfortable they never even got outside. just made it through one poster session.) but what about that necklace my old roommate gave me? (i admired it years ago, and she was getting rid of it recently, i took it off her hands with great anticipation...and never wore it. furthermore, i just talked to her tonight and she absolved me of any guilt.) and yet, i feel anxious.

now, seriously. am i *going* to go back to the youth agency to ask for my necklace? hell, no. i don't want to be *that* girl. how much more productive would it be to sit with this anxiety, figure out where it's coming from, get through it and realize i have a million more necklaces...some of which i actually wear? sounds healthy. wouldn't that be nice.

so, part of what's so hard for me about this process is that this anxiety feels familiar. i don't feel it often, but it (or rather, the knowledge that it's out there) prevents me from the getting rid of the things. particularly jarring is the realization that i don't know where this niggling feeling will come from. i can't predict which item will bug me. i couldn't have told you that of the 4 dresses, 4 or 5 pairs of shoes, and jumble of costume jewelry i unloaded today, this would be the necklace that would stress me out tonight. (if you need proof, i didn't even photograph this necklace before it went in the bag, which you know, obviously, i do with stuff that feels significant.) this feeling, this "but what if i give something totally innocent away and it comes back to haunt me" feeling is why i hold onto SO. MUCH. STUFF. pretty wrapping paper. old notebooks. receipts. i actually panicked about losing a wedding placecard once. ok, recently. in my defense, it was just after my son was born. but still.

it was so pretty.

**since i wrote most of this yesterday, i can say with some confidence that the feeling of anxiety does tend to go away. sometimes. i'd be lying if i said i didn't imagine ways i could have worn that necklace a few times today. but it didn't make me anxious in the same way. and, as a friend said during a playdate today, it's time to make new memories.

it also doesn't hurt that mommy brain has affected my memory enough that i'll probably forget about the stuff that's gone bye-bye much sooner than i used to.

my husband's flarp

we decided to finally throw out my husband's flarp. this probably sounds way dirtier than it is. my husband got some flarp for his 40th birthday last year. it was part of a collection of childhood gag gifts from a good friend. as is evidenced by this blog, it's hard for me to throw anything sentimental away. 

wait! you're likely saying. this isn't yours. it's a gift your husband got! what does it even have to do with you? well, astute reader, while these are excellent points, the fact is, first, this was a gift from a good friend of ours and i thus felt some attachment to it. second, and perhaps more to the point, i do end up keeping his stuff sometimes (or making him keep it) because my over-sentimentality combines with deep anxiety over losing stuff and control issues, and gets triggered by what i perceive as his under-sentimentality (he has been known to throw out cards i've given him. sorry, honey, but you have.) he doesn't do it often, and he's not totally devoid of sentiment, but, well, anyway. back to the flarp. so i've been trying to clean, and this morning, he noticed the flarp, and said it had gotten gross. (yes, the point of flarp is to be gross, it's like silly putty that makes fart noises when you squish it, but i guess this had gotten gross in a different, aged, starting-to-separate sort of way.) so he decided to throw it out, and i concurred, excited to continue the very slow but hopefully steady purge. (does his stuff count toward my purge? hmmm.) anyway, here it is. to my credit (?) i had noticed it and thought we should throw it away even before he said something. but, not to my credit (against my credit? to my debit?) i didn't throw it away until he said something. it's gone now. i never thought i'd have a photo of flarp in my pictures folder.

ps - i confess i wrote this a few weeks ago and just edited and posted now. when i started this blog i thought i'd be writing, if not daily, then more often than this. but after the first post, i got both pulled in other directions, and distracted/overwhelmed by the decision of which item to post next. there are so many that need to go. don't ask me why the flarp finally made the cut. i'm sure that would require a deeper analysis of my psyche than either of us wants to undertake at this moment. bonus: this procrastination is actually a good example of why there are cans of flarp and other random goodies still festooning our home. (just saw a janeane garofalo comedy special in which she used the word "festoon" at least twice. it stuck with me.) hopefully the state of our home will change as this blog gets longer. anyway, toodles for now.

pps - expect a lot of PS's.