Corinne Grant - Lessons in Letting Go: Confessions of a Hoarder

Lessons in
Letting Go

Lessons in
Letting Go

Confessions
of a Hoarder

CORINNE GRANT

First published in 2010

Copyright Corinne Grant 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

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ISBN 978 1 74175 342 4

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedicated to the memory of Graham Middleton.
Thank you for your belief and encouragement.

Contents

Corinne, what in Christs name am I holding?

I turned around. My ex-boyfriend Thomas was holding what appeared to be a bunch of sticks in his hand. Even though wed broken up ages ago, hed agreed to help me move house. He looked like he was regretting it now; wed been packing for hours.

We were both standing in the open-plan living area, surrounded by cardboard boxes, old doonas, stuffed toys and what may or may not have once been a fancy-dress caterpillar costume. The kitchen, just behind Thomas, was littered with plastic bags and bits of packing tape. There were pots and pans sitting on the bench tops and the bits of material Id strung across the windows in a pathetic attempt at home decoration were sagging. If anyone had walked in at that moment, they would have assumed they were looking at a typical flat in the process of being packed up. They wouldnt have known that my flat looked like this all the time. In fact, right now, with the packing under way and half-filled boxes and bags strewn amongst the usual clutter, it was looking decidedly better than it had done in months.

Well? Thomas rattled the bunch of sticks at me.

I attempted a light, carefree laugh. What came out of my mouth sounded more like a chicken being strangled. I took a deep breath.

Theyre the first bunch of flowers a boy ever gave me. It was back when I was at university and

Theyre dead.

Nooooo, I explained. Theyre a dried arrangement.

Theyre brown. And dead. They are dead, brown sticks. He went to throw them in the garbage bag.

Wait! I grabbed his arm. You dont get to make that decision.

Id had enough. Wed been packing most of the night and I had already thrown out a whole lot of things because Thomas had told me tonot because I wanted toand I was not throwing these out as well. I could feel the panic rising.

He held open the garbage bag and suggested I look inside and tell him what, precisely, I thought I should be taking back out again. The broken bread bin? The coffee cup that no longer had a handle? The ripped, blank Christmas cards we had found, inexplicably, under the fridge? To my shame, I started to cry.

The sticks are different. Please dont make me throw them out.

Thomas sighed and rubbed his eyes.

Corinne, I just cant bring myself to put these in a box. I just cant. This is getting ridiculous.

I thought about it for a moment. He was right, obviously. I was being foolish. They looked nothing like flowers anymore.

Okay. Well throw them out.

He looked relieved.

But I want to take a photo of them first.

Thomas held the flowers at arms length, refusing to be in the photo with them, and I framed up and clicked the camera. Then we threw them in the bin. I felt better and worse simultaneously. Thomas and I had lived together when we were a couple, but only now did I feel like I was letting him see me naked for the first time. And not naked in a good way but bad naked, like hed just caught me taking a dump in the shower.

The photo was unnecessary, I can see that. Not only was it unnecessary, it was probably an indication of clinical insanity. And yet, that photo turned out to be what saved everything.

It floated back into my life a few years later, escaping a box that had fallen from the wardrobe. Id been having a bad day. Id been trying desperately, for the hundredth time, to pare back my belongings and for the hundredth time it wasnt working. Id lost my temper, thrown a few things around, yelled a lot and sworn at my stuff. In turn, my stuff had retaliated by hurling itself out of the wardrobe. Not content with that, the boxes of rapidly descending crap had then proceeded to knock over my favourite mirror, which smashed to smithereens at my feet. It was hard not to take the whole thing personally. It was equally hard not to go a little floppy and start sobbing. Of all the things I owned, that mirror meant the most.

As I was standing theresurrounded by broken glass, old magazines, all of my pencils from primary school, two Eiffel Towershaped key-rings, a miniature bottle of Malibu, half a stapler and what I was praying was a ball of hair that had once belonged to a doll and not a humanI saw the photo of Thomas and the sticks. I picked it up. I had no idea what I was looking at. It appeared to be a picture of someones arm holding... what? Twigs? Branches? Really ordinary divining rods? Why had I taken a photo of this? Why had Ioh my god. Oh. My. God.

That was the day I realised I was a hoarder and also, if I was honest with myself, perhaps a little unhinged.

It took a year to drag myself out of the mess. A year in which I lost my dearest friend and then promptly lost my way. A year in which I ran away overseas, came back and then ran away again. A year in which I learnt to let go, learnt to forgive, learnt to grow up and learnt that we can all accidentally find ourselves filming dog porn when we thought we were filming something else. It was a big year. It was a lot of work.

But before all of that, before I could even begin to clear out my life, I had to figure out where it all started. Irrespective of how it may look to an outsider, hoarders dont just pop out of the ground fully formed. Hoarding isnt something anyone is aware of until its too late. Hoarding sneaks up on you in the middle of the night wearing dark glasses and a false moustache and weasels its way in when youre not looking.

Before the stuff went, I was going to have to get to the truth of the matter. And the truth of the matter is this: hoarding doesnt start with the stuff. It starts with something else.

And that something else is much, much harder to get rid of.

Part 1
Where It Started

Chapter One

I was in AlburyWodonga the first time I experienced regret. I was eight years old. I was standing next to another little girl in Waltons department store, looking down through the railings of the first floor to the toy section below. The other girl was the same height as me and had dark hair and a red pinafore. She turned her head, looked right at me and asked which I liked better, bears or dolls. I was so overcome by terror that instead of answering, I ran away.