Moving on, moving in: The reveal. The god-awful, naked reveal

Here it is. The basement. 

Posting this photo is like taking off all of my clothes and jiggling my mama belly at taxi drivers and moms I know in SUVs and young guys who think they look especially hot in tricked out Hondas while they are pressing on the gas to enter the expressway. 

I'm a mess, I'm screaming while dancing nakey. And I'm not even saying a word.

But I'm not really a mess. And I'm not a looky-loo lady at the intersection of the expressway and Hoarders HQ. I am a woman with a real life that has been packed full of experiences. Some of those moments have left me wiser, inspired, healthier, happier, ready for more, centered, still. Others have left with me boxes and boxes of binders, wedding china, someone else's skull collection, important papers saved methodically on discs that can no longer be used on any computer anywhere, newborn clothes worn only once, college memoribilia, toys nobody plays with anymore.

I am like you. Even if you are a methodic minimalist, if you've already de-cluttered your home, haven't been divorced, aren't storing several lifetimes of stuff in a locked-up closet -- I imagine we are a lot alike. We all, to some extent, hide pieces of our former selves in the basement. 

My basement just happens to have dumpsters full of real stuff in it, symbols of the stuff I've pushed way down to the deepest levels of heart and mind. 

And because I think we are alike -- whether you fess up to it or just nod compassionately, write about it or tuck it away secretly in a journal, spill it out in the confidential confines of a $275-a-partial-hour therapy sesh or laugh about it with a big group of girlfriends after too much Malbec -- I am revealing this photo to you of what I've been ignoring for nearly six years. It's not easy. But there it is.

I want to fast-forward to reassure you that all this stuff has been better organized than it looks, piled by category of Baby, Kid, Dishes, Furniture, Holidays (and it has..ish).

I want to underline that some of this was saved in hopes of Another Baby, A House, A New Relationship, perhaps a One-Day Wedding (and it was).

I want you to know that I pulled lots of bins out, opened their lids to air out the contents and mildewy smell because it was time to stop shoving them aside into semi-catalogued teetering stacks that towered from the icky carpeting to the flaking ceiling. 

I want to explain. But none of the words or tears or rabbit-frantic looks of panic and embarrassment would make this go away or look like a design show swooped in to give me relief and Ikea shelving. 

I want to yell that I have it all together. Upstairs. Occasionally. In the hours after the cleaning ladies work their magic and after a very big donation drop-off.

This is my basement, as it is today. This is what I am dealing with, one bin, one box, one binder at a time. 

You can judge me. I judge me. In fact, that self-criticism has made it harder for me to go down and there and just deal, and easier for me to do my laundry in the one sort-of organized corner and then scurry out like the rest wasn't there at all.  

It has made me ban the Not Boyfriend from seeing it (this is his first viewing, too) and allow only a handful of family and friends into the catacombs of my heartache and hopes. Dramatic? Indeed. Time has definitely made it even more so.

But I know that somewhere in your home or garage, but mostly likely, your own mind, there is a place that feels cluttered and overwhelming and you are afraid will make others gasp if they witness the messiness inside. Maybe if I show my own mess, it will open the door for you to open your own door to that shameful basement that's packed full of your life.

Maybe not. That's OK, too. But by revealing what's under all my lipstick and clicky-clicky heels and nostalgic words about my life is a single mother, I'm putting aside the self-criticism and welcoming in the self-committment to tend to this room. 

It's going to be hard. It's also going to be OK. And it will probably never be empty. But I'm going down there bravely, nakedly, and I am going to let you see it all.

More from Moving on, moving in.

Moving on, moving in: What do I do with all this STUFF?

"Are you still nervous to move in?" The Not Boyfriend asked. We were stretched out on his couch at midnight, after a drink, after his long shift in a kitchen downtown. 

"Yes." It was the honest answer. I am.

I have a long list of whys, most of which revolve around the storage space the size of my whole apartment, a basement stacked with remnants of babyhood and marriage. Purging that stuff, or a good deal of it, is more emotional lifting than physical work. I've spent years intending to be done with it all, have a giant garage sale, send it off to Salvation Army or the teen mom organization not far from me. Instead, I go down to the basement with Sharpies and giant black garbage bags, look around, well up with overwhelm and turn around and leave. 

Sometimes, I've dropped six or seven bags of old clothes in a donation box or taken a box of books to our church library. But more often, I've rearranged the stacks of plastic tubs, thrown something over crates, ignoring or attempting to ignore what's all not-hidden there.

I've worked with a professional organizer friend several times, exchanging services in a lovely barter relationships. She's helped me get my desk or my schedule under control and I've offered social media and website advice. 

"My basement," I've said to her on several Skype calls. "My basement."

Those two words to her, and rattling around in my head, are a cry for help, to be saved from all this stuff. The Not Boyfriend is not allowed down there. I don't even want to be down there. And even if my professional organizer friend steps in to help, I am the one who has to deal with it all.

The space where the boxes are is generous. But it feels like a stadium. 

I don't want to end up on Hoarders: Single Mom Special Edition. And my head and heart pound with the understanding that the the worn cardboard and all it holds is from another life that I no longer lead, one I no longer need to harbor in the haven of my musty rooms underneath this building.  I don't want that STUFF to be the wall between me and my love, between us and a new home together.

So...deep breath. Now what? One box at a time? Five a day? One painful weekend of massive purging? 

You can't do it for me (I mean, you can. I'll pay in copious amounts of booze. After it's all done). But you can help me go back down there and do something this time.

When you've had a mountain of stuff to get through, how have you started? What's your best purging advice? How have you finally, finally gotten rid of the tokens of your past lives?

A little bit of big news: Moving on, moving in

We are nearing on a year since the Not Boyfriend changed his address to Chicago. The transition, slow and methodical, has wrapped around the calendar. 

He was here for trick-or-treating. We shared a table for Thanksgiving (a table at a restaurant at a spa, but still, a table). He celebrated his first Christmas in decades with us. We kissed during a New Year's countdown, were together a few days after Valentine's and sped off on a spring break road trip. The summer staycation and inaugural camping trip and lazy Sunday mornings have included him. Birthdays? Together. After drill weekends and weeks, he's come home. To us. 

The Not Boyfriend took charge of a school pick-up or two during the week, planned Man Time at parks and Dave & Buster's and chasing kids on the playground with E. He's seen us both sick, come over when the house was a crazy mess, jumped in when I've desperately needed coverage while I attend a school meeting. My nephew, who once called him DatGuy now asks for him by name (by name with an adorable w-sound for the r, but by name).

He's made me many Wednesday-night dinners after E has shuffled off with his dad, met me at the door with cocktails mixed with my favorite gin and extra squeezes of Meyer lemon on days when I feel defeated or stressed or have a lot to say. We have stretched out on his couch, binge-watching season after season of Downton Abbey, Girls and Newsroom. He's lent me full, fresh water bottles before dropping me off at the gym.

He held my fidgeting hands during a mammogram. He sat on the bench beside me and my dad during a court date over long overdue child support and texted me words of calm while I stood ground in a mediation battle over my child being allowed to go to church. 

When my dad's best golfing buddy passed away, the Not Boyfriend said he'd love to hit the links with my father and son. He kisses my mother's cheek, both hello and goodbye. And wedges himself into the stepstool to sit and talk with her, offering little cooking tips, while she makes Sunday night dinners. He's arrived with flowers, a raspberry bush for Mother's Day, saved corks for E's ongoing recycled art project.

We have had so many conversations about money and work and dreams and parenting and politics and that one Isaac Mizrahi documentary from the mid-'90's. We have laughed hard. Cursed his upstairs neighbors and the T-Rexes who live below me. Delivered double tall dry soy cappucinos (him) and grande skinny vanilla lattes (me). Argued about whether sexting is important. Been asked to events with both our names on the invitation, been called a family when the three of us are together, driven long distances across and beyond the city to see each other for short amounts of time, just because the other person asked.

We've made plans. Big, dreamy plans. Detailed itinerary-type plans. Real, pragmatic long-term, big-life plans. We've posed a lot of questions. Heard some tough answers. Argued loudly in our apartments and less loudly in a corner of our favorite bar. We've got a favorite bar. 

Love-i-versary celebration of our first date, December 2013

We have ventured to new restaurants, popped into the spots his chef friends have opened, and eaten a lot of sushi. We've gone home together, nearly every other weekend since he arrived almost one year ago.

And now it is time to share an address. 

I'm nervous. I'm excited. I love him. We love him. 

First camping trip, car packed far more full than he could have imagined for a family road trip

We began the process as, apparently, we do this whole relationship: quietly and steadily. That was March. We've explored buying and renting and homes and condos and closer to my place and just around the corner from his. We've worked with agents and dug through Craigslist and walked into places that make us gasp and others that we cannot get out of soon enough. 

I've reeled over the boxes and boxes and plastic tubs of stuff in my basement -- unopened wedding china, breast pumps and furniture nobody wants anymore. I've fretted over leaving this nest of neighborhood, my parents only five blocks away and these safe and familiar environs. I've carefully, mindfully seeded the idea with E in conversations for months and months.

And then I see a home with a room that has a steep-eved ceiling and a closet that would make the perfect hideaway for a boy who loves to read. Or a kitchen my love of a chef would love to cook in. Or a room flooded with sunlight that could be full of inspiration and quiet, where I could type, type, tap away on my laptop. Then the tears come. And the relief. And the time-softened blanket of security. 

"This could be our home," I think. "Where our family lives. Together." 

One little thought, a change of zip code, an extra bedroom or two -- in the big map of our lives, it is a small town. Maybe a frontage road connecting major interstates and big cities. But to me, it takes up much more space.

The day we moved in to our place, April 2008

Inside this home, the one I created with a very small child when I had a very demanding job and was under the weight of some very heavy stress, we have normalized a life. We've got a good gig going, stomping neighbors and piles of papers and too few closets included. And in this home, I have built walls of protection after times of trauma and mistrust. I've buried my marriage and the baby years in the basement, set up shop with my desk in the corner and hung galleries of photos of my boy and I together and laughing and hugging.

His first big-boy bed, brand new

This safe space is too small for another person. So now it is time to pack up and push the pedal, driving a very full car on to a dirt road that feels like a freeway.

We'll go together. Like we have during many moments this year. It will be kind of scary for us all. But the best stuff always feels a little like that.  For three years, once upon a time, the monthly miles we traveled were in the air, and alone, full-speed ahead to meet for 48 hours. Who knew this is how where that would lead? (We hoped, but who could know for sure?)

When I know where we'll exit and when, I'll share the good news. For now, we - the Not Boyfriend, my boy and me - will stay just a tick under the speed limit, hugging the curves and holding hands as we go.