The Garbage Collector: Redux (GUEST POST)
Hey guys! Still in Chicago for BlogHer. Feeling guilty I’ve left you without your daily dose of Funky Brown Chick reading material and my usual dishing about relationships. Huge THANK YOU to my lovely friends at the group dating site Ignighter for stepping up to the plate to provide a guest post. Enjoy! (I’ll be back on Monday …)
I have a problem with using the word “dump” as a synonym for “break up.” By definition, it means to deposit, to unload, to rid. So you can dump out spaghetti sauce. You can dump your work on a colleague. You can take a dump. But no matter how hard you strain, you cannot dump a person.
I started thinking about all of this while reading “The Garbage Collector,” an article in the July issue of Real Simple about Ari Derfel, a man who kept all of his trash for one year straight. He categorized his baggage into piles of compost, bins of plastic, paper and styrofoam, and at the end of the year, he had no choice but to confront his mess. He stared at 143 pounds of glass, 26 pounds of plastic and 6 pounds of Tetra Pak beverage containers and said “Wow. Maybe I should stop buying so much packaged food.”
If you looked at the remnants of your past relationships in the same way, what would you see? Mine looks like this:
- 52 pounds of doubt
- 36 pounds of sex tricks
- 22 pounds of insecurity
- 7 pounds of newfound respect for myself
Only a handful of relationships made it into this pile. The guy I met on the dance floor in Europe went in the garbage compactor real fast. But the others, the ones that meant something…they left some stuff. And it will sit on my desk, in my bed and stare at me until I look at it, like Derfel, and say “Hmm. Perhaps I should stop dating such assholes who have issues with their mothers.”
At the end of his project, Derfel donated his trash to Kuros Zahedi, an artist who transforms garbage into art. Of his work, Zahedi says:
Turning trash into a work of art represents what humanity is
capable of: transforming ugliness into beauty, the damaging into the beneficial, and the fragmented into the whole.ÊOooh, very interesting, Mr. Zahedi. Are you telling me to go to therapy? In this metaphor, he most certainly is. If each of us confronted the waste of relationships past and turned it into something beautiful, something better for the world, well then, well, there may be no need for me to have a job. And in this case, I’d go for it.
So let’s get the movement started. What’s your trash talk?
You can find Blair on Ignighter, where she writes about dating in New York City.
July 24th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
none of you will ever know how desperately I needed to read this and have it sink into my brain right now, and I thank you for it.
hopefully the beauty to come from my current ugliness will be so spectacular I’ll wonder why I ever doubted it.
Thank you!
July 25th, 2009 at 2:17 am
interesting posting. on a similar note, i have a problem using the word “ex.” instead of saying “my ex-husband” i say “my son’s father.” i also call ex-boyfriends “old boyfriends.” i’d be interested in seeing your take on that, Twanna.
July 25th, 2009 at 4:18 am
forward ever,backwards never……. what’s past is past….. when you intro anyone, it’s …
” this is Adam and Adam this is ….. ” and so on ….. if you wish to publish to the world
your bad choices… then, do you at your own peril ….. for ’tis no one’s biz but yours….
if I am with you…. I am with you ….. and if I am not….. then it is what it is…..
lamesabassman…. Time is way too short for maybes …… go for the gusto…..
July 25th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Maybe you can’t dump people, but I took a dump once that looked like an ex-girlfriend.
July 26th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
that’s…….
lamesabassman…… priceless……….
August 4th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Good blog thread! (do they call them threads or is this only used for MSN done-away-with groupls?) Anyhoo… I’ve done exactly what Mr. Z has stated IN MOST ASPECTS my life, including amore`. I’ve even managed to keep a few of the old boyfriends, good guys, assholes, ex’s, etc as “friends” if nothing more. Of course, there are those I wish to hell, but very few.
I’ve dated quite a bit in my past life (I’m engaged for the 2nd time) and have felt much heartache (and for the LOVE OF MIKE would somebody tell me why love has to hurt?), however, I turned it around and although I made new and improved mistakes, I’ve never made the same ones! I mean experience is supposed to be for us to learn from and I use the old saying, ” Once is twice on you, twice is shame on me’ and GOD only knows it keeps me from going backward.
Overall, love doesn’t haven’t to hurt, finances do (a bit of humor), but not the love part. I now only know this because for the 41 yrs I’ve lived on planet earth (20 yrs invested into relationships *sigh*) and due to experiences, loving and living.. it’s smooth sailing if you’re handed out a good deck of cards to play with! So, I’ve taken the lemons and made sweet lemonade out of all of them!