The Man Detox that didn't take. Yet

It was very quiet in my house over the weekend. The day still was stretched out ahead of me and what happened in the hours that had already past left me a little weepy.

I wrote about all the things I could do to take care of myself, but my secret mission over the weekend was to Man Detox. I didn't tell anyone except my therapist, who said she fully supported my mission of clearing out the little reminders scattered around my home that remind me of the men who have come before.

Those men are all gone now. Or at least they are in the distance. Some of them live and work and have drinks with friends miles away. A few can probably be found just around the corner. Others are just on the other side of my Facebook profile, unfriended and separated by privacy settings. While I wonder occasionally how one of them might be doing, if another is happier now, what another might be listening to these days, cutting ties is something I have never been good at and so it has been healthy for me to let those ribbons go.

Those separations weren't all my choice, but in most of them I was at the end of my rope, too. Now it feels like the right time to pack up the gifts and letters and silly mementos to put the rest of those relationships away as well. It's not that I am in mourning anymore for loves lost.

Still, seeing certain things on my dresser, in my closet, tucked into my desk drawer -- even beautiful, sweet things that are so ME -- required that I go through something like this, "Oh look, it's the pretty little something that so-and-so man  gave me. Those feelings are resolved now. I am all good." And even that takes up too much energy. Not as much energy as those so-and-so men, but too much energy nonetheless.

So it is time to let them go. Last month, I trashed a big pile of The Ex's socks that I somehow still had and was still wearing. I gave away a perfectly good coat he gave me one year for my birthday. I donated every single t-shirt that somehow reminded me of a time we spent together. I put all of the Christmas ornaments we got as a couple and stashed in the tub filled with wedding memories, love letters and other bits and pieces that will one day belong to Lil E. (I call this the Box of His Burden or the Container Full of Therapy Co-Payments, but I am holding on to the idea this will someday serve him when he needs to come to resolution of his own.) I put away jewelry, some valuable and some sentimental, given sweetly to me that I no longer feel compelled to wear.

Walking through my place, you wouldn't be able to detect the difference since I've been Man Detoxing. But I sense it. With each item I send out into the universe, I felt some relief.

There are a few items left. One of them fits in the palm of my hand and yet feels very big. And this weekend, I so wanted to release it.

It is an expensive item. A beautiful item. I pulled it from the shelf in my closet where it has been sitting patiently for months and months and ran my fingers over it. I took a deep breath, packed it up into the box that it was given to me in, got in my car and drove to the boutique where it was purchased.

I love this boutique. It smells like the perfume on my bathroom counter. The shelves and cabinets and winding hallways and tiny rooms are filled with things so lovely they make me want to cry. It seems crazy, but it took courage to walk through the boutique, to offer up this box of my own burden, to ask the nice lady to please take it back.

I was extra kind. I needed her help and I was aware I was back well beyond any return policy.

"I am really hoping I can return this to you," I said hopefully. I am sure my eyes were pleading. My heart was.

She opened the box and as soon as she pulled the pale blue tissue paper away, immediately drew her hand to her mouth.

"Oh my! Is it not your taste, sweetie?" She had an accent I couldn't pinpoint. Maybe Irish? "I think it is so fabulous."

"I do, too." I said that quietly. "It just..."

I had to pause. I wasn't expecting it but the tears welled up and over the rim of my eyes. The hand at her mouth moved to the box and then my arm in the pause.

"It's just that the person who gave it to me treated me awfully and...well, I can't have it in my home anymore. I never even put it on."

She gasped.

"Oh, honey," she said kindly and for a quick second I really believed she felt what I was saying inarticulately. And then, with a quick change of posture and clip in her voice, she continued. "Yeah, no I can't take it back."

I was silent. She said I was too far out from their 30-day return policy. I asked to exchange it. She said she couldn't do that either.

Then she packed it back up -- pale blue paper, awkward box -- and handed it back to me. I couldn't smile but I thanked her.

Something kept me in the boutique for a few moments, lightly touching the earrings and scarves and paintings propped up in one case. I felt like I was searching something out. Perhaps it was the opportunity for the lady to bestow and act of compassion in the form of a store credit. Maybe it was to let the debate play out about just leaving the damn thing with her and walking away.

Neither of those things happened. Instead, I walked back to my car, threw the box in the back seat and went to cafe to order breakfast and strong coffee and just sit in my own sadness for a few minutes.

I didn't stay at the cafe either. I took all of my things to go, driving home in the sunshine and the sound of a CD I made for myself blaring all around me.

I wanted that thing gone, but for some reason, I am not able (yet?) to give it to a grrrlfriend or pack it up into an over-stuffed garbage bag with the other donations or hurl it into Lake Michigan, as my closest friends have suggested. For so many reasons, this little thing seems like such a monumental waste.

Lulu says it's the universe winking of me, asking what I will do next. She says that the money I may have gotten back from the lady at the boutique (who clearly has never had her heart broken over many months and arguments and unkind words) is not worth the time and attention and energy I have poured into this little (no-longer-a) treasure. I agree.

I think I just wanted it to go back from whence it came, rather than send it on to live in someone else's open hands. Maybe I am hung up on how pretty it is. What if I am just not ready? Or it just isn't really the right time to let it go completely?

I don't know. I don't know what to do with it or how long I can let it linger in the back seat of my car. I'm not sure why I've given this one thing so much power. I'm not sure how I got so tangled up just trying to really sever the ties.

When I walked into my home, I didn't know what to do with myself in the quiet and sadness held in that moment of that day. I filled it up with the radio, and it was, by no coincidence I am sure, this song that came on.

The words showered down on me.

Have you ever fed a lover with just your hands?
Close your eyes and trust it, just trust it
Have you ever thrown a fist full of glitter in the air?
Have you ever looked fear in the face
And said I just don't care

It's only half past the point of no return
The tip of the iceburg
The sun before the burn
The thunder before lightning
The breathe before the phrase

Have you ever felt this way?

The words -- vulnerable and still strong, unsure and still hopeful -- said what I was feeling. Or at least what I wanted to hear. And then I watched the video of Pink's performance of this song on the Grammy's and seeing her spin through the air, arms outstretched and voice filling up each corner of that theater, I realized my hand was at my mouth in the same gasp the lady at the boutique had hours before.

Wrapped in fabric and floating above all the gowns and diamonds and awards, the only thing Pink held in her hand was the microphone. All the pretty things in the world could be in that room, I thought. And she's only concerned about her own voice.

That's my winsome interpretation, of course. But that's what I heard on that unrequited Man Detox of a day. It made me feel braver somehow. It didn't give me the answers about what to do with the thing in the box on the backseat of my car that is somehow tied to body right now.

But it made me feel like I would find the time and the way to close my own eyes and throw it into the air.

Comments

[Mary]

very nice. very sweet. very human.

[Pippi]

Jess, a great post, very well written. I echo all of Mary's comments too. -pippi