By Monica Garry
Ok. I admit it. I’m a sentimental hoarder. That took me a long time to realize. You’d think I would have figured it out when I stopped being able to shove things in the box in my closet that held everything from the condom wrapper from when I lost my virginity and the hundreds of letters to exes that I never sent to the pen that I used when I signed my first lease and an ice cream spoon that I don’t even remember the sentiment behind. Although I’d be a very good candidate for Queer Eye, it wasn’t the memory box that brought to light my toxic need to hold onto the past, it was a showing for an apartment.
So, before I admit one of the crazier things I’ve done in my life, let me give a little back story. It’s nothing huge or enlightening or monumentally romantic…it was just a girl — a girl I loved who chose to stop loving me back. Now, I’m going to say the shallow horrible truth that we’ve all felt at one point or another and have always been too nervous to share with a crowd: I only loved her when she stopped loving me. Come on, admit it. We all have that person. The one we conveniently kept around for years because even though we broke their hearts time and time again, they stayed. It fed our ego, made us feel memorable.
Even if we didn’t do it consciously, we threw back that big glass of ego boosting love like a cold beer during a real bad hangover. You may not even know you’ve had a person like that – chances are, if you called things off with them, you’ll never realize they were your self-esteem boosting medication, because they never truly mattered. That sounds horrible doesn’t it? I mean, we’re talking about real people here, with real feelings. Well, guilty as charged.
I was one of those chronic people-users, until this one particular girl shed light on my horrible grotesque rat hole of insecurities that I had been so desperately trying to keep closed. It had been about 2 years of back and forth, I would reach out, see her for a couple weeks, and disappear. Then she’d drunkenly call and text me for weeks after saying I was the only one she’d ever love. Eventually, I’d get bored with my life, play into her feelings, and repeat. You’d think I wouldn’t be surprised when she began to pull away, but you’d be wrong.
I was utterly shocked. I call it PESD – post empowerment stress disorder. She adored me and that empowered me, so the second she was gone, the rat hole that I’d kept covered up for years began to uncover itself. And the only way I could make sense of all those fearful emotions was simple at the time, “I can’t lose her because I love her.” Wrong again. What I should’ve said was, “She gave me the attention that poured dirt on top of my rat hole; she put me on a pedestal. But now that she can see my flaws, that means I have to see them too. Whoa. I sure as hell don’t like that.”
So, in the midst of my desperate and unflattering attempts to gain her admiration back, she left. Just like that, she packed her bags and moved across the country without so much as a text goodbye. As I’m sure you can imagine, I went insane. I actually thought about flying to New York to ask her to marry me. MARRY ME! (I know what you’re thinking and, yes, I have since been going to therapy.) Luckily, either the small amount of logical thinking I had left, or my bank account, convinced me to not do that. Instead, I did something less, but nonetheless, crazy. I set up a showing at the apartment she’d just moved out of. I was sure I needed closure. We’d had no form of goodbye, so I thought seeing her empty apartment and bidding my dramatic farewells would heal me.
I needed some sort of ritualistic way to let go; to gain my power back. Now, I would love to tell a grand story of how a stranger said something oddly philosophical to me that made me turn around that day, that made me realize I was still desperately trying to cover that damn rat hole. But it’s a much less interesting story. I woke up the day of the showing and decided to go grocery shopping, and it wasn’t until 15 minutes after the appointment time that I remembered I had even scheduled it. I didn’t laugh or cry or have a come-to-Jesus moment, I just shrugged my shoulders and proudly wrote in my diary that I didn’t do that crazy thing I said I would do. And as I wrote, I began to realize that I didn’t feel bad about not being able to say goodbye, I just felt bad that she had seen my rat hole and decided to leave. She had seen the horribly selfish part of me that only I knew existed, that was a result of my chronic need to deny and cover up my deeply rooted insecurities.
I began to realize that I had held on to all of these memories and souvenirs and feelings because, on the contrary, I in fact didn’t want to feel. I was so scared of losing who I was in those moments because I hadn’t yet felt them or made sense of them. All of these feelings and dramatic attempts to hold onto the past were really just my own messy way of covering up some pretty ugly truths. So, I threw it all out – the condom wrapper, the letters, the pen, everything but the spoon. I kept that damn spoon. Because it has no meaning, and I think that’s kind of the point.
Monica Garry is a recent Psychology graduate from St. Catherine University, currently working at a Nonprofit organization in Minneapolis as a case manager for adults experiencing mental illness and homelessness.
