The value of things

I had a restless sleep last night. My body was aching and in my subconscious, I was very, very, scared about the amount of work I've left to do in my last two days before the deadline.

But I got rudely woken up to the terrible realities of life by J – who declared that he was going to drive all our unsold car boot stuff to the charity shop at bloody 0715 hours in the morning.

We did a car boot sale on Sunday and earned about 180 quid from selling our worldy possessions for ridiculously low prices. All the stuff that's been with me the last however many years were bargained over, their value hassled down... and try as I might, to remain unperturbed about the whole event, it finally got to me this morning.

When I could get a quid here or two for things that were mine, but sold. I could accept it. But yesterday, I said to J there were a few things I wanted to salvage from our leftover car boot heap, which we were going to give to charity shops.

But it didn't register.

I got abruptly woken up to him driving the van away with all my precious stuff in it... and I got up, looked around, really disorientated and I realise to my horror that all my beautiful coats, my lovely books, videos, cds, personal paraphenelia, clothes, shoes... everything. Was driving away from my grasp before I could retrieve it. Or prepare myself for it. Or mourn for it.

How we all get attached to our worldly possessions...

I jumped out of bed and threw on my jeans and jumper and literally, for the first time in my life, ran down the streets to look for him in the wee hours of the day. I knew which charities he'd be heading for – he wanted to donate them all to RSPCA because he likes animals better than human beings. But I wanted to donate it to cancer research because my real father died from blood cancer. In the end, in my bewildered, flustered, and hair-all-over-my-face state, I located the van, gave him a bollocking for just driving off without giving me any warning, and started to pick at the loot that he had carefully placed outside the charity shop (it was RSPCA in the end, he won).

I looked so dodgy picking at charity stuff outside the shop – but it was my stuff after all. I took a few jumpers back because it was getting cold, a pair of shoes, one book. I looked around at all the stuff and I suddenly came over all sad. I don't know why.

J said he couldn't bear to look at the heaps of precious clothes he had bought for a crazy amount of money, sitting like golden rubbish outside a shop. He went back to sit in the car because he said he 'didn't want to think about it' while I just stood hopelessly, helplessly, staring at all my things. Easy for blokes to just 'switch off' and 'not think about it'.

I stood there staring at stuff, but couldn't bear to extract anymore of my possessions, with J sitting there staring at me. I decided enough was enough and picked up the few pathetic items I had managed to salvage and we drove home sullenly.

Halfway home, I realised that the one thing that I really wanted to get back – my lovely soft-as-a-bear furry topshop coat – I had left behind.

I got really upset with J. It's not like I didn't want to be charitable – we were going to give all our stuff, which was worth hundreds of pounds, to the charities anyway before we left... but, he didn't even accord me the grieving time I needed, the luxury to look at my things one more time before saying goodbye to it forever, alongside with all the memories that it carried. It wasn't so much the value of things that really affected me, but the memory associated and the period in time of my life that it had come to represent.

I threw a tantrum back at home and almost cried about all the stuff that I was robbed from grieving over. But when I calmed down, I almost felt ashamed at the extent of the value I had attached to them.

I can buy another coat, can't I? I can read all those books again if I really needed. And all those little personal things, bits and bobs... like J said, if we had sold it at the car boot, would I really still miss it?

I'm thinking about my furry boots that I used to podium dance and rave with – I still want those. They were my first pair and they were mad stuff, representing all the good times I had dancing my tits off and getting inebriated with my friends in my university days.

But they're sitting outside a shop now and I can't go back to get them again. I suppose I could go back there and buy it off the shop again – but how stupid would that be. Or worse, the charity shop might have just thrown it away.

So now I'm sitting here, and I should be thinking about my dissertation, and all I'm thinking of, is being robbed of all my memories. Robbed of my chance to grieve. Robbed of my chance to hold on to things I knew I eventually had to let go of. Of that little pipe I bought in Amsterdam, of that coat I left there, of those furry boots, of the stuff that I actually wouldn't mind taking back with me.

But maybe this is my lesson. If I died tomorrow, I couldn't take it with me, could I? Perhaps somewhere else, some other person would put those things to much better use. Someone who perhaps isn't so well off, and can only afford charity shops. Someone who isn't like the rich, middle class twats we see so often, and whom we should always resist becoming. Someone who understands the true value of things.

Sometimes we need to lose our possessions to understand certain aspects of ourselves. I suddenly, weirdly, recall Ed Norton in Fight Club where his schizo other self (played by Brad Pitt) sets fire to his entire house – swanky, cool, wordly, middle-class possessions – and it turns out to be the most liberating thing he has ever done for himself.

I can only hope that in writing this, and forcing myself to forget about all those things I'd left behind, I will finally be accorded my appropriate grief and can finally let go.

Here's to liberation.