Lessons in Letting Go

by Corinne Grant

  We walked up two narrow flights of stairs to meet with one of the doctors who helped run the clinic. Through an open door I saw a teenaged boy with a blank stare hooked up to an ECG machine. Something about him looked wrong, not medically, but psychologically; his eyes were dead. Passing another room with the door wide open, Dana told me that the woman I could see was talking to a gynaecologist. Then we entered a third room where the doctor was still consulting with his patient. We stood there watching them until the consultation finished and the patient got up and left the room. I wondered whether all of this was normal in a Jordanian health clinic or simply the plight of the disenfranchised; perhaps when you were forced to rely on charity you became accustomed to your whole life being laid bare.

  We sat down and Dr Jameel, a cheery, enthusiastic man in his early forties, introduced himself. I asked him what were the most common illnesses he saw at the clinic. He ticked them off on his fingers.

  ‘There is a lot of high blood pressure, diabetes and stress-related illnesses, but Iraqi refugees also have a higher incidence of cancer than the Jordanian population. Some say this was caused by depleted uranium used during the war with Iran but really no one knows for sure. All we know is that they have more cancer.’

  He told me that the Jordanian government had recently declared that refugees and non-residents could access the national health care system at the same rates as non-insured locals. This meant that for those who could afford it, the health care they needed was always available, irrespective of whether they were a citizen or not. For the rest, Caritas worked hard to find them a place in one of the hospitals that had agreed to take on such cases at a reduced fee.

  ‘For every twenty-five people per week we refer to other hospitals, we can afford to pay for the treatment of the ten most urgent cases. The other fifteen have to pay themselves, or hope that a place becomes available in the future. We are increasing the number that we help every year but it is hard to help everyone.’ Dr Jameel smiled at us both and apologised for not being able to stay any longer. He had a lot of patients to see. He took us into a little room off to the side and introduced us to his secretary, who then escorted us back down to the street.

  We got into the car and I looked back at the building. There were many more people out the front now, as well as all of those still waiting inside. I couldn’t imagine how the clinic would get through so many people in one day. So much about being a refugee rested on luck: luck in getting out of your home country alive, luck in finding somewhere new to shelter, luck in finding a way to earn money and the sheer dumb luck of remaining healthy.

  It was lunchtime and Dana had meetings in the afternoon. My two days with her had passed so quickly and now the entire reason for my trip was over. It felt surreal. Tomorrow I would be flying home. I thanked her profusely for giving up so much of her time to help me and she offered to drop me in a part of town where I could find a taxi back to my hotel.

  I didn’t pay any attention to the scenery out the window as we left the clinic; I was too absorbed by the image of that boy attached to the ECG machine. He had looked irreparably broken.

  The car slowed down and stopped at a corner. I smiled at Dana, shook her hand and sincerely thanked her again. Then I stepped out of the vehicle and turned around to discover a world as far from the one I had just left as it was possible to imagine.

  I was in Abdoun, the most affluent suburb of Amman, and all around me stood houses of astounding proportions. They were just as white and unadorned as all the others I had seen but they were immaculate and tri-levelled and there was grass (grass!) complementing the elaborately landscaped gardens I glimpsed behind their fences and railings and walls. There were workers tending to the flowers and fountains. There were stained-glass windows and mosaics. I walked downhill for twenty minutes, agog the whole way.

  I was hungry and ahead I could see what looked like a little restaurant. I crossed the multi-lane road and walked into a café that may as well have been located in inner-city Melbourne. I had seen nothing like it the whole time I had been here. The glamorous locals seated at the tables in front of me had ordered baguettes, pasta, prawn salads and croissants from an entirely European menu. In less than half an hour the poverty, the uncertainty, the illness and fear of being a refugee were as distant as if I was back in Australia.

  I sat down, ordered a cup of tea and a piece of quiche, and looked at the people around me. A television attached to the far wall was mutely showing an international soccer game and pop music wafted from hidden speakers. Everyone was smiling and chatting in air-conditioned comfort, everyone was relaxed and oblivious. The unfairness of the world was slapping me right in the face. How easy it was for us, the lucky ones, to talk about the new dress we had just bought, or how many pairs of shoes we owned, or to complain about how our garages were filled with junk. I stirred my tea and smiled bitterly. How easy it was for us to block out everything else and pretend these things really mattered.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When I returned to Australia, I attacked my stored-up house of horrors with new vigour. After meeting those refugees in Jordan, I just couldn’t look at my stuff in the same way. It was daft to be so obsessed with it all—in fact, it was more than daft, it was a waste of the precious, lucky life that I had been granted. I had a roof over my head, I had friends, I had family, I had everything I needed and I’d been carrying on like I had nothing. Now I had perspective. Now I could see how pointless and irrelevant most of the stuff I had been hoarding really was. And besides, it was winter now and after the heat of the Middle East, the freezing foggy mornings of Melbourne were making my toes shrivel. If I was going to be cooped up inside, then I may as well do something useful.

  I’d gone through my wardrobe countless times but I’d always ignored the hard stuff. In fact, one whole third of that wardrobe had not been touched since I’d moved back in. Today, after I’d put on every heater in the house and attempted to warm myself up a little bit, I was going to sort through all of it and this time, instead of flapping around like some daft twit from a Jane Austen novel, I was actually going to do something.

  I opened each box, pulled out its contents and dispassionately sorted everything into piles. After four hours I had covered the entire lounge room, some of the kitchen and all of the hallway with little heaps of jewellery, schoolwork, magazines, gifts I had never used and myriad other piles. I stood back and eyed it all objectively. I was not going to play favourites today. I was not going to start with the easiest bits and pieces and ignore the hard ones. Instead, I was going to start with what was directly at my feet and slowly make my way towards the bedroom.

  As I worked, I remembered the women and men I had met in Jordan telling me matter-of-factly about running for their lives from men with guns. If I had to leave in a hurry and could only take one or two things with me, what would I take? I looked at the piles I was sorting through. Nothing jumped out at me.

  I crawled over to a stack of student newspapers from my university days. I quickly flicked through them, smiling as I read the familiar names of students and friends I had not thought of in years. I didn’t need to keep all of this. I found two articles that I had written and one student union election notice containing a spectacularly hideous photograph of me, complete with half-grown-out perm and poorly concealed pimples. I laughed out loud at it. For a brief period of time I had fancied myself as a politician. All hopped up on teenage idealism, I had run for student council, intent on changing the world. My election promises had included the earth-shatteringly original ideas of discounted vegetarian food, cheap movie tickets and free beer. Still laughing, I ripped out the two articles and the election form. A box of newspapers was reduced to three A4 sheets. Every memory from that period of time that I ever wanted to spark, I could do with these few bits of paper. The rest was nothing more than repetition.

  Next, I moved to the jewellery. I divided it into childhood, adolescent and adult piles. The adolescent imitation pearl necklaces,
multi-hued chandelier earrings and ill-fitting rings that left copper marks on my fingers were easy to throw out; I didn’t want to be reminded that I had ever worn such ridiculous stuff, especially the inexplicable pair of Playboy Bunny earrings. The childhood pile was much harder. I couldn’t throw out the little bracelet I had worn every day when I was six, likewise the first pair of earrings I had ever bought. I reminded myself that I had shrunk the pile by well over two thirds and moved on. I was not going to waste time flagellating myself for not being able to purge absolutely everything. Now that I had met people who had lived through real suffering, my days of sitting around and wallowing in guilt and self-pity were over.

  I worked into the night, only stopping to make fresh cups of tea or put a new CD in the stereo. For the first time in my life as I sorted through knick-knacks, odd socks and cassette tapes that were missing their covers, the ‘keeping’ pile was significantly smaller than the ‘letting go’ pile. And for the first time ever, the ‘letting go’ pile didn’t look like a mountain of precious memories about to be destroyed. It simply looked like what it was: a pile of inanimate objects.

  Patterns were emerging. I discovered that I didn’t need to keep the poster, the script, the notes and the old costume from a university-era play; just one thing, the smallest and most easy to store, would do the job. All of the clothes from my university days brought back the same memories; I only needed to keep one T-shirt to be transported back to that time, not a whole bag full of them. My problem was not that I attached too much importance to objects, it was that I attached the same level of importance to everything. Keeping every single earring I had ever worn meant the ones I really treasured (pearls given to me by my grandmother, a set of little onyx earrings from an aunt) had been dumped in a pile along with a bunch of cheap mood rings and a peace sign I had made myself out of cardboard, glue and dried split peas. Nothing meant anything if I kept it all.

  By the end of the week I had reduced four boxes of university memorabilia to one, three boxes of high-school memorabilia to one and my entire childhood was stored in another. As I was packing everything into the university-era box, I realised that the story I had built up of myself from that time was complete fiction. I wasn’t nearly as hopeless as I had thought I was. I had started out that way (with terrible hair, agoraphobia and the kind of dress sense that even Helena Bonham Carter would have baulked at), but by the end of four years I was an almost completely different person. It was only after going through those boxes that I remembered I had written two plays that had been produced by the student theatre group, had finally conquered my fear of city people and joined a bunch of clubs and had become confident enough to start auditioning for—and to perform in—a few plays. Not only had I been elected to student council, I had gone on to become president. In short, over that time I had transformed myself from almost-useless to almost-obnoxious. The scared and somewhat ridiculous young woman who spent four years cowering in a dormitory room didn’t exist. In front of me—in this box I was now taping shut—was irrefutable proof to the contrary. I smiled. I’d wasted so much time wishing that I could become a strong and independent woman and it turned out I had been her all along, I’d just buried her under a mountain of negativity, depression and rubbish. I didn’t need Thomas to look after me—I never had—I’d just lost myself in all the stuff and had thought that he could pull me out again. Now I could see the situation clearly: I had been quite competently looking after myself for years whilst simultaneously telling myself that I wasn’t. The contradiction was almost comical: it was as if I’d been sitting in a wading pool, the water barely covering my thighs, and screaming that I was drowning.

  I looked at my handiwork. Three boxes in chronological order now held all of my achievements and memories from childhood up until graduation. I had a life story. I made sense. And if I ever started to doubt that, if I ever started to scream that I was drowning again, I could open up these boxes and calm the heck down.

  After I’d been home for two weeks, Adam called.

  ‘Are you alive?’

  It was a fair question. I had been so absorbed with my clearing out that I had completely ignored not only him, but everyone.

  ‘Yes! Sorry, baby, I’m a bad friend.’

  ‘How was Jordan?’

  ‘It was fine. I got felt up in my armpit.’

  ‘You went all the way to the Middle East for that? Lord, I could have taken you down King Street and got you pregnant for the cost of a Midori and lemonade. Did you ride a camel?’

  I giggled. ‘No camels. I swam in the Dead Sea though.’

  ‘Oooh! What was it like?’

  ‘Salty.’

  I didn’t know why I was being so circumspect.

  ‘So, what are you doing now?’

  ‘Nothing much.’ Again, I was lying. I was waist-deep in a pile of old pyjamas, trying to sort out if any of them were worth giving to charity or if they constituted something more akin to medical waste.

  ‘Well, let’s go get a drink somewhere.’

  I hadn’t seen Adam in ages and I had been cooped up in the house since I came home. I no doubt had cabin fever and, as a consequence, tonight would probably end with either one or both of us dancing on a table.

  Before getting ready to go out, I threw all the pyjamas into a garbage bag, labelled it ‘rags’ and set it near the door for my next charity-shop run. I was well past the point of over-analysing everything I owned. Somewhere else in the world—probably right at this moment—people were trying to decide whether to stay in their homes and risk getting shot, or leave behind their country and everything they had ever known forever. Dithering over a pair of old pyjama bottoms was making a mockery of what the word ‘decision’ really meant.

  I went into the bathroom to put on some make-up. Every surface now presented an opportunity to de-clutter. As I looked for a lipstick, I realised that my make-up was strewn through two drawers, across the bench and hidden in both cupboards underneath the bathroom basin. Forgetting that I had an appointment to keep, I started clearing out three-year-old mascaras, bottles of solid nail polish and empty talcum powder bottles. I found half a dozen little soaps that had been given to me as gifts when I was still living with my parents. I unwrapped two of them—one for the shower and one for the bathroom—and put the rest on the bench to remind me to use them when the others ran out. I then pulled out at least fifteen half-used body lotions that had also been gifts. If I had put them all on my skin, I would have wound up leaving an oil slick to rival that of the Exxon Valdez. I quickly thought of each person who had given one of them to me and silently thanked them. Then I threw the bottles out. When I was done, I was left with one body lotion, one salt scrub, one face moisturiser—one of everything that I actually used. I then spent a good ten minutes admiring my cleaned-out cupboards. I only came back to my senses when Adam sent me a text message saying ‘Where the hell are you?’ I pulled on my coat and walked out of the house into the wood-smoked winter air.

  When I got to the bar, Adam had lined up shots of tequila. He was grinning and waggling a salt shaker at me. We downed the shots then, with eyes stinging and the breath knocked out of us, we ordered a bottle of white wine and found a cosy spot up the back, away from everyone else.

  ‘So have you finished running away now?’

  I frowned at him. ‘I wasn’t running away. And it was your idea that I go to Bali in the first place, remember.’

  ‘Well, yes, but you just kept going after that. Have you spoken to Thomas at all since the whole wedding thing?’

  I hadn’t thought about Thomas’ wedding in over a month. He would have been married by now. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Why would I want to speak to him?’

  ‘Because, Corinne, you never told him that he hurt you. You never mentioned it to him at all. Are you going to avoid this forever?’

  I thought about it. I didn’t feel like I was avoiding anything. Yes, Thomas had hurt me but I didn’t need to tell him that, I couldn’t see what it woul
d achieve. And besides, I’d hurt him as well. So much time had passed and so many things had happened in both of our lives that we were never going to find a way to apologise to each other. Maybe we didn’t need to anyway; maybe it was more important that we forgave ourselves. I had already done that in Bali; whether he had or had not wasn’t anything to do with me. I smiled at Adam in wonder. Six months ago, there was absolutely no way I would have seen things in this light.

  I bought us another bottle of wine, sat back down, kissed Adam on the cheek and said, ‘There’s nothing to sort out with Thomas, honey. Now shut up about it and tell me something interesting.’

  He grappled me into a bear hug. ‘Now, before I tell you about what I’ve been doing, why don’t you fill me in on the last two weeks of your mysterious life?’

  I waved him off. I didn’t need to show off about how much stuff I had thrown out. I was a grown-up now, I took care of my own life and didn’t look for other people’s approval.

  ‘I’ve just been jet-lagged, that’s all. You don’t want to hear tedious stories about me readjusting my body clock. For god’s sake, Adam, there must be some kind of ridiculous scandal or gossip you can tell me.’

  We drank too much wine and, once we had successfully obliterated all our common sense, we moved on to shots of ouzo. The night ended with the pair of us dirty dancing to Kylie Minogue songs in the middle of a bar that didn’t have a dance floor.

  The next day I woke with a hangover so vicious I thought my brain was going to pour out my nose. I didn’t pull myself out of bed until the afternoon and when I finally did and looked around the house, I started to feel a little deflated. Perhaps it was the throbbing of my hangover, but the house looked miserable. There was still so much to do. I had been concentrating on cupboards and wardrobes and spaces that were out of sight. The clutter sitting on the coffee table and benches was all still there and I hadn’t even started on the kitchen, not to mention my desk. There were also all the cupboards in the hallway to go through, three bookshelves stuffed with paperwork, trinkets and the occasional book, and I’d completely forgotten about the boot of my car. When I added up all that I still had to do, it didn’t feel like I’d done anything.