The cathartic power of life admin
Notes on completing a project separately-yet-together
This summer, I only went on one first date. It started well, with a ramble around my new neighbourhood, smart mocktails in a wood-panelled bar, and lots of animated conversation. It only went wrong towards the end, thanks to a spitty kiss, followed by him texting the next day to suggest that I make him dinner for our second date (um… no thanks).
The anarchy of dating apps felt needless, so I deleted them. I’d been away, and returning to the UK depressed me. I had to get my life in order and there was an overwhelming amount of admin to do. Part of it involved preparing to sell the place I’d bought back in 2020 with my now-ex partner.
I had been somewhat in denial about what selling the house would involve, which was frequent drives to Margate and physically grappling with the past. I’d dealt with most of my actual ‘stuff’ more than a year ago, I blithely reasoned, having shifted my essentials to London, and stored the nice-to-haves. But when I came back to the house for the first time in what felt like forever I couldn’t ignore everything that remained, and was now in a state of gentle neglect.
The dustbins were loaded with thick black slime. Inside the house, a family of woodlice had expired on the floorboards. In the garden, the grass was knee-high; matts of dried weeds had smothered the pond I had dug, and the flowers I had planted. The things that were either absent or left behind inspired complicated feelings — a forgotten houseplant had grown crazily wild, and there were framed pictures, and painted flowerpots, and a set of delicate glasses I hadn’t been able to cram into the van when I’d first moved out. At night I walked along the hallway in the dark, automatically careful not to step on our cats, forgetting that our cats no longer lived there, and that there was no ‘our’. I was confronted with what I’d abandoned, and there was more of it than I’d expected.
I dated a physio a while back, and on our first date I urged him to tell me what it was like, to tend to people’s bodies for the NHS. He obliged: one thing that happens, he said, when a patient arrives in a state of neglect, is that their bandages often cover up large flakes of dead skin that come away with the material, and then there’s a terrible smell. I was suitably agog at this detail. The story came back to my mind during the sale process, acting as a metaphorical warning. I don’t want to keep all these layers of neglected dead skin strapped against me! I want to expose the healthy new skin below!
Stripping away the dead skin was solitary work. My ex-partner and I co-ordinated so that we didn’t overlap. For him, house-sorting included moving his wardrobes, shelves, kitchenware, clothes, instruments and the contents of the attic into storage. For me, it included cutting back the wilderness that had grown in garden I’d once tended daily, and sifting through the last tranche of bits and bobs, the residue of ten years’ worth of partnership.
I hadn’t the space to keep everything I’d left, so I had to make a lot of decisions. Can this item be sold? Can it be donated? Can it be recycled? Can it be binned? Can I hold it without wanting to hurl it at the wall as a punishment for being so alive with memories?
Somehow, everything was precious and everything was shit.
If I was a minimalist with a serene, Marie Kondo-eqsue relationship to my belongings then the whole project would have taken much less time and involved much less emotion, but once I’d accepted that this seemingly endless task was unavoidable, it became a kind of game, with its own interesting rewards.
Not being a minimalist, I like to store up the ephemera of my life. To me it has always been treasure — a trove of riches that I return to from time to time, to learn from, and love again in new light. The treasure takes many forms. A handmade birthday card from 2017, crafted by a friend. Colourful bindi gems given to me to wear, in anticipation of a wedding. Letters written by my grandma, in her 1930s schoolroom cursive. Clothes that no longer fit me, that might be worn again one day. A slightly broken bentwood rocking chair that we’d found left on a pavement in Stoke Newington.
The game part of the process was this: how much perverse satisfaction can I get from this particular loss? So, putting a stack of bank statements from 2010 in the recycling was not a victory. But a smooth flat pebble that reminded me of skimming stones with him; a loving Christmas card from 2012 in his handwriting; a broken laptop where he’d stuck a sticker saying Suki is the bestest — all triumphs.
Sometimes it felt like he was winning the game, even though he had no idea we were playing it. There had been a summer where we’d gone to at least five weddings together, and at one of them we’d posed for a polaroid photo. In it we looked cheerful and coupled-up, nothing more, nothing less. He’d been houseclearing before I got there and had put the photo in a binbag, brimming with all the other rubbish. I found it when I went to add my own unwanted memories. I considered rescuing the polaroid, then realised it would only ever remind me of the binbag and this moment. It had become dead skin, like our collection of fridge magnets and housewarming cards, but worse, just because it’d been him that discarded it, not me.
Loss has a strange power. It can make a once-innocent pleasantry into something that flicks on the raw. A box of greetings cards and wrapping paper contained one of the letters that my grandma (now dead) had written to me and my partner (now ex), congratulating us on buying our new home (now for sale). I kept that, because it hurt more not to, and because maybe time will give it new life.
I’d fallen in love again since the break-up, but I found it too difficult to share these and other more private griefs with my boyfriend. I was afraid I’d be too much for him. In Margate I found myself being too-much on my own, surrounded by the too-much stuff I’d accrued. His absence was too-much for me as well. My time away had changed our relationship from play to a kind of mutual incomprehension, and it felt like I could either hang on or let go, and so I let go.
Though I only went on the one date this summer, I did make six trips to the dump. Taking the first carload to the Margate recycling centre (a shame that they’re never actually named The Dump, even though that’s what we call them) I discovered that there was no casual bric-a-brac section. No shipping container or patch of carpark where people could browse for goodies. I’d planned to leave the slightly broken bentwood rocking chair there, as a treasure for a kindred spirit to find, perhaps someone who had enough wood glue to fix it up.
Instead, I was directed to carry it to household waste gangway, which led to an enormous and indifferent trash-compacter. I hoisted the chair over the ledge and gave it a push, then watched its pretty curves get slowly crushed by the metal. I wanted to stay longer but people were lining up behind me, arms full of old duvets. I couldn’t believe that I was the only person crying at the dump. Had these people no souls?!
By my third trip, however, I was glad of what the facility offered — good clean recycling. All your troubles gone by way of a giant skip, or the powerful trash-compacter’s maw. When I realised I’d reached a stage where I could throw things away in a normal, non-weeping manner, I felt pretty great. I sold a few things on Facebook Marketplace, too, and the process seemed to defuse the items somehow. A desk that Meant Something To Me returned to being a desk, for sale, collection only. It was sad, but it was a means to an end, and the cash in hand inspired me to treat myself to fish and chips for dinner.
Selling my clothes felt surprisingly good. I’d accumulated many beautiful items over the years of that relationship. We’d often shopped together, egging each other on to get outlandish things, and he’d bring me back gifts from advert shoots or sample sales. A brand once sent him shirts, and me dresses. I no longer wore most of it, and so I washed, ironed, photographed and posted the items for sale online. Each step was a practical form of leave-taking.
Things sold fast, and it was satisfying to send a once-loved dress to someone excited to receive it. As far as the game went, it was my favourite reward — much better than handing a bag bursting with clothes to a charity shop volunteer eye-begging you to take it elsewhere.
Avoiding dating in all forms for a few months was a good course of action, largely because it allowed me to be sad without worrying about other people’s reactions. It was a relief to not be on standby for anyone. I recommend it, without prescribing it. There’s more to say here, but that can be something for another time.
Choosing to be romantically unattached did help me focus. On work, on the house sale, and on building my five-star Vinted empire. Plus, of course, driving to the dump at regular intervals. By the time of my last trip to clear the house, the few things that remained seemed scrubbed of meaning, and everything was good to go. I was able to say hello and goodbye to my former neighbours, and meet their new babies without feeling so acutely what might have been.
My main insight from this time has been that it is a blessing to forget the keenest edge of things. Sure, sure, the depth of grief you feel mirrors the love that once existed; which is very sweet, until you’re despairing over some mouldy old Christmas card that matters to nobody on Earth except you. Sometimes, throwing that thing away is the kindest thing you can do for yourself. Future-you will only be hurt by it again one day; why booby-trap your life like that? This may be obvious to some, but to me it was a revelation. It is not always necessary to love again in new light.
A KonMari method that helped me through the whole ugly shedding process was the ritual of thanking each item for its service, before sending it on the next stage of its journey. I’m proud of how much care I took, and how much work I did. And I’m proud of what my ex-partner did too: a typically superhuman amount. It worked well, doing it seperately-yet-together, cheering each other on from afar by texting gifs and encouragement and updates on milestones achieved. We both acknowledged how emotionally hard it was, and tried to make it easier for each other.
We’re free to be friends now, or, as I joke with him, slightly weird siblings — two people who know each other so well, for better or worse, that most communication can be done by shorthand. Two people who, though supportive in principle, are naturally inclined to skim over the topic of our sex lives. Two people who know each other’s family trees, and witnessed our share of family dramas and celebrations. And know how to annoy each other, if so inclined, but choose not to.
It was good to reach a point of house-selling where I didn’t want to Eternal Sunshine every bittersweet memory from my mind; it just began to happen. Partly because brains work like that, and partly because we found ways to be kind to each other. It feels like the hard-earned part of the hallucinogenic trip, the mellow afterglow. I don’t know if things will reach that stage with my newer ex. Any kind of friendship after love is hard. It takes the passage of time, and effort, and even then there are no guarantees. So it feels special when friendship after love can exist, despite the firesale of everything that went before. Or perhaps because of it.
A friend of mine was married once, and the marriage ended painfully. A couple of years later, though, they met amicably for dinner, and afterwards my friend shared the poem below, The Day Of Our Divorce Hearing, by Ruth Lepson1. Both the poem and the context in which my friend shared it moved me.
The Day Of Our Divorce Hearing
you treated me to lunch, a spaghetti place.
We had never been so kind to each other.
When you said I’m still a slob, we laughed.
After lunch, we stood in the parking lot.
You said, you have the last word,
but I said, No, I’m tired of being
the one who sums things up. You get the last word.
But you couldn’t think of one.
So off you went to our silver car,
I to our red one. It’s three years later.
And even that’s just a story now.
Lately I don’t feel as if I lived with you.
But I remember our kindness that day,
when it no longer mattered.
***
When the house sale was finalised, my ex-partner came to my flat to collect a few things I’d rescued for him, and he stayed for a cup of tea. He gave me a little celebratory bottle of prosecco, plus a box of Ferrer Rocher, and he’d got the same for himself. We talked about Palestine, and our families, and this and that. When is a house sale official-official? we wondered. The legal term is completion, and that has stayed in my mind, giving me a word to describe our former relationship: complete.
In the days since I’ve also thought about the poem my friend had shared, and so I sent it to him. A minute later he messaged me back, to say that’s very beautiful. And I agree, it really is.
Further reading: a sweet discussion thread about the poem on Reddit.
Such a lovely piece, Suki. Thank you for sharing it
Alex
xxx
So beautiful. Thank you Suki xx