The Divorce of Things

letting go of things you once loved

It was 2010 or so, a warm summer day, when an internet friend from a few states away backed into my driveway with her pickup. We loaded the cargo into the truck bed and when she pulled away, headed home with hundreds of my CDs, I cried.

I wanted to get rid of them; I needed to get rid of them. They were ignored, neglected, had become just another thing taking up space in my life. But it was still hard to see them go. I spent years and years developing the collection, nurturing it, looking at with affection and not the exasperation that would come later. I had outgrown the CDs and they would be better off in the arms and home of someone who would put them to good use. As the truck sped off, I waved solemnly. Goodbye, old punk rock compilations. Goodbye, Type O Negative discography. Goodbye Taking Back Sunday and Funkadelic and Melvins and Prong. Goodbye to all that. I felt a pang of sadness, I felt a part of my life being torn from me. But it was all for the best, I knew. It was the right thing to do. It was a material divorce.

For those of us who have a tendency to collect things, parting with them eventually is a sorrowful but necessary part of the process. We outgrow things, they fall out of favor with us, we grow tired of looking at them, we run out of space — physically and mentally — and have no choice.

I’ve parted with so many things that once meant the world to me. Star Wars toys and Pokemon cards — collections I carefully curated for my kids. Beanie Babies. Baseball cards. Sega games. At some point in my life I collected penguins; stuffed, glass, ceramic. I eventually sold everything at various garage sales and always I felt a pang of remorse when I did so. Letting go of people is hard, letting go of things sometimes is equally so. It’s a divorce of sorts, a separation from something you once loved but you no longer have the room for in your life.

It pained me to sell all those Springsteen albums when I did, but the pain of looking at them after the divorce was harder. The same with all the graphic novels I got rid of in 2006 after a nasty breakup left me looking at them with disdain. All the Gaiman and Ellis and Ennis that I once loved were now artifacts of something ugly, and thus they had to go. As each book or record or game sold and went to be with someone else, a part of me went with them, and a part of me ceased to exist.

Divorces are rarely amicable or pleasant. There’s bitterness and animosity, there’s almost always a horrible exchange of words, and there’s a feeling like you somehow failed at keeping together something you swore would never be torn apart. When I first start a collection, I swear that I will be good to it, I will honor that collection and do right by it. But time passes and things happen and all that goodwill is somehow lost when you grow tired of looking at the things you once loved. So you divorce yourself from those things. You part ways. Whether by unceremoniously dumping them in the garbage or selling them to someone who will give them a better life, you release yourself from the constraints of keeping them, constraints that threaten to strangle you at times.

I miss my CDs. I don’t miss playing them, I have no need for that anymore. But I miss looking at them, having them here in front of me. Not enough to want them back, but enough to wonder if I made a mistake in letting them go at all. We have no visitation; it was a clean divorce. I still wonder about them, though, think about if the old friend still has them, if she plays them, if they feel at home.

I rarely start collections anymore. Sure, I’m buying albums now. And I bought over a dozen books during the pandemic that I’ve yet crack open. Maybe the day will come when I tire of these things, too. Or maybe I’ll finally learn how to commit.