So I think I mentioned that we live in a loft space with few actual walls and essentially no closets. Don't ask how, I'm not sure, but somehow our place is usually quite neat and organized except for one area. A closet we refer to as "Understairs" because, well, it's under the stairs.
Over the last few years, Understairs has become a symbol of my mental state during our life on IF Island: chaotic, overwhelming, a complete disaster. What started as a decent sized closet where we could store camping gear and my equipment for ceramics class, a lone box labeled "Maya grad school" and some extra chairs for when we threw larger dinner parties, became a dumping ground for all of our attempts to stay somewhat afloat during tumultuous times. We bought different workout gear, various stuff for new puppies we tried to adopt, and of course stored our bags and boxes of meds from multiple IUI and IVF cycles. The closet looked like this:
Yeah.
It was where I could shove things I didn't want to look at. While the rest of our place seemed orderly, Understairs was a nightmare. It was the physical manifestation of how I tried to live my life as normal as possible, yet I had this part I was battling that I had no control over. No way to get a grasp on. No clarity or direction. Just chaos.
Yesterday, Noah and I decided it was time to clean out Understairs.
We woke up with a feeling of dread and a tiny bit of excitement (probably for me only, Noah doesn't get too excited about stuff like this). "I think we should have a game plan," he said, at which I laughed. "The plan is to pull everything out, see what's there and figure out what to do with it," I replied. I know better than to make a game plan. We all know how those go. So we started doing just that, pulling out the crap.
Noah was not too pleased with the ordeal, or what he discovered I was hoarding in there. I kind of have a problem with saving scraps of wrapping paper and tissue that can be reused, and I hoard bottles of vitamins that I buy but decide make me feel weird but can't throw away even when they are expired by years.
But Noah has things like this that he refuses to give up:
His shovel. Actually, it was his granfather's so I get that it has sentimental value, but it's also filthy. His solution was to "just put it in the car," which sparked a discussion about our very different ways of dealing with life dilemmas. Maybe I should also put the word discussion in quotes.
And then there's this:
He calls this "Hollywood History," as it's the panda suit from the first Jackass movie (he worked on various TV shows with the Jackass guys and some how accumulated not just the head but the full suit.) I call it, "can we please figure out what you want to do with this?" He also has a full bear suit his mother made him, not as a child but as a grown ass man. Did I mention Noah is six feet tall? So there are several bins and duffel bags labeled "costumes" that take up a fair amount of space. If we had a garage these things would be a perfect candidate for sitting in a box in the garage for the next 40 years, but for now they are in the living room in a pile that looks like this:
His costumes are next to the green bowling ball with custom finger holes my dad got me for my sweet sixteen when everyone else was getting cars, and old buckets of paint.
We will need to get a little storage bin that can go in the garage of our condo (not anything like a house garage you can shove crap in but a small plastic shed that goes next to our tandem parked cars). Noah has agreed that the shovel can live there for a while.
So after hours of digging through the rubble, throwing a lot of stuff out (I still couldn't throw out my boxes of syringes and meds so we put them in a contained box and taped them up. I'm not ready to let them go yet, I know, I know), and discussing our different patterns for holding onto the past and prioritizing ways to leave the path open for the future, Understairs now looks like this:
It feels so good (though the living room is now insanity).
Sometimes we have major chaos going on in our lives and it's too overwhelming to deal with. Sometimes no matter what we do we are a hot mess. Sometimes the best we can do is shove the disaster aside in order to try and look at the tiny space in front of us so we can take one small step at a time. But there comes a time when we have the strength to tackle the mess head on. We have the ability to see a clear path and the drive to just start digging. It took us four years to get to that place and we are now ready to fill Understairs with stuff for Momo, which is its own kind of insanity.
Today we are going to finish tackling the office aka the man cave. Noah will continue to have a love affair with the giant paper shredder he got the other day and I will try to figure out what one does with years worth of old checkbooks.
Hi RockPer12! Ha! Yes. I think many of us IF Island survivors have a hard time letting go of that box of meds and syringes. Keepsakes from the journey perhaps. At least mine are now in a closed box rather than falling all over the place. I see that as progress.
Posted by: Don't Count Your Eggs | January 06, 2015 at 11:14 AM
Happy New Year Maya and Noah! This will be a big year for you guys and I wish you all the best! As I opened your blog and scrolled through the pictures first before I start reading ,It was like I saw my pictures there... I kept all of my boxes of syringes and meds as well and couldn't get rid of them for a while. After I got pregnant with my son later in my pregnancy I gather all of the syringes,meds and the 5 positive pregnancy tests that I took for a group shot :) I wanted to add the picture in his baby book! After that I still couldn't let go of them, so I put them back in a plastic container and put them back in the closet. I finally got the courage to toss them after my second successful pregnancy! Good Luck with what's ahead and thank you for sharing your journey with us!
Posted by: RockPer12 | January 04, 2015 at 03:36 AM
Meliss!!! Yay to a heartbeat! How amazing. I know it's day by day but everything is going well so remind yourself of that!
Posted by: Don't Count Your Eggs | December 31, 2014 at 10:12 AM
Thank you !!! I just today had my 6wk ultrasound and we heard the heartbeat. I'm slowly starting to believe (although still filled with fear) that this may actually happen for real ...although each week waiting for my next ultrasound seems like an eternity...trying to take it day by day for now.
Posted by: Meliss | December 30, 2014 at 12:44 PM
Hi Jane, what a terrible Christmas gift. Ugh. I'm so sorry. I know the feeling. You do have options but right now you probably need some recovery time. I wish you all the best with that. Meliss--it is ridiculous. But what;s more ridiculous is buying a storage unit just to house it! Hope all is going well for you.
Posted by: Don't Count Your Eggs | December 30, 2014 at 11:25 AM
Ha!!! That costume is ridiculous. Glad you guys were able to dig through all that stuff and the emotions and memories that are part of them....it IS hard to tackle head on but sounds like it was not only therapeutic but useful to make room for momo's stuff :) hope you have a great holiday and New Years full of good things! Xo
Posted by: Meliss | December 29, 2014 at 02:15 PM
Maya, I came across your blog recently and just wanted to reach out... We live in the LA area and just found out 3 days before Christmas that our first round of IVF didn't yield any mature eggs. The devastation is beyond compare. Thank you so much for your writing and for sharing your story and your eventual success... I am so grateful to hear someone else's story of embryo adoption because it helps me know that even in this grief, we have options. Iif you ever want to get ride of your extra meds, I will happily come get them from you!
Posted by: Jane | December 28, 2014 at 06:15 PM