Packing

I'm taking time to pack some of Jake's things away. He won't be needing his button-up shirts, ties, and slacks any time soon.

I don't need them hanging around our house either. I can't believe it took me almost a year to do this. Jake has four times more clothes than I have - no joke. Mostly, he just doesn't know how to get rid of anything. His closet spans the longest wall of our bedroom and is overflowing. My closet is a little, 4-foot-wide, stand-alone thing that we got when we realized that he couldn't possibly make any more room in his closet for my things. Yes, I know, that was a sign that something was wrong, but it seemed more of a hoarding problem than a marital one. I figured we'd work on it over time . . .

Time's up! His stuff is going into storage and I'm FINALLY moving into the main closet.

I was a little worried that the change would bother my three-year-old, Elise. About a week ago, we were sitting on the bed looking at the closet. I said to her, "I'm thinking about taking Daddy's clothes out of the closet and packing them away for a while. Should we do that?"

To my surprise, she nodded agreeably. Then she asked, "Mommy, what's a closet?"

I think I'll be bringing up "the wound" again and again in this blog. It sounds rather cliche, but it's really a good metaphor. I'm wounded by my husband. The wound is worse because I love him. But now I want to protect myself and give myself time to heal. Putting away his clothes is part of that. They remind me every morning and every night of the husband who is not here; the husband who will never wear a tie and shirt to go teach again; the husband who never made room for me in his closet; the husband who wore that white tux (still in the closet) at a wedding that didn't seem to mean as much to him as it did to me. It rubs the wound raw to have those reminders. I'm ready to put them out of sight.

The codependent part of me insists on sorting and labeling all the boxes, just in case he needs them someday. Really, I should just burn them all - wouldn't that feel good? But that's not my style. Sigh.