Cleaning Out My Closet

 

Hello to all! I pray that everyone has been well thus far.

September has come and gone. I am a year older, but it was hard to be celebratory. It feels more real, especially with the holidays arriving, that my grandma is gone. I know she wouldn't want me to be too sad ... to be festive in her honor ... but everything is still fresh.

October has been a doozy. 

Another medical complication was discovered while trying to get to the source of the worsening of an existing one. However, I will expand on that in a separate entry.

On top of that, I got an upper respiratory infection the last week of October, and the antibiotics' side effects were intolerable.

Ultimately, I stopped taking the antibiotics and relying heavily on lemon and echinacea tea, cough medicine, cough drops, and resting. I felt well enough to come to work for Halloween, and it was great for so many people to coordinate to dress in their representations of the same costume.

What was going to be a week-long break from the gym (since I had upcoming knee injections) turned into two because of being sick.

Okay ... enough of that. Now to the subject of this post.

This has been an ongoing affirmation for me. I have been applying it heavily during my organizing and decluttering. I have also utilized it in terms of how I shop for certain things, doing such with more purpose and mindfulness.

I went through the process of shifting my walk-in closets. They aren't huge (like movie star closets) but it's more space than I've had in the previous places I've resided. There is one closet that I use for items in the current season and the other for storage/previous season. I purchased some new items (which is a post that is still in draft ... I just have to take pictures and get everything together), but I found more stuff to discard and donate.

Admittedly, there is one item that I've had ever since before I got married. It was originally saved until one had the big ceremony (since I did not get one with him), but once that didn't happen and we got divorced, it was out of sight and out of mind. More because a friend of his family was holding onto the dress so he wouldn't see it.

Eventually, I took it off her hands and set it aside ... took it with me as I moved from one place to the next location back in the spring of 2017. It got put in the attic with other items I did not get to until I made the move to where I'm currently living.

Yesterday, I pulled out the bag.

The bag has seen better days but I haven't put on the dress since the day I saw it in the bridal shop and knew I wanted it.

The company that makes the dress has since gone out of business, so I doubt if I would get anything for selling it.

Plus, I don't know the trends as it pertains to wedding dresses ... I've been so out of touch. 🤷

Back when he and I were planning the wedding, I did not want to spend lots of money on a wedding dress. I was focused more on the right location, having great pictures and music, and the honeymoon. If we had a daughter, I would have saved the dress to pass down to her ... like an heirloom.

My vision of the dress had splashes of color that would match the wedding decorations (which would have been blue, gold, or both). I did not want too much lace since sometimes, lace makes me itchy. I wanted a train but not one that was too obnoxious. Yes, I had this vision of the dress, and once I saw what I wanted, I made the forty-five-minute trip to the boutique to make the down payment. The dress was too big (a 24W), so it would need alterations to get me to the size I was at the time.

Note: This was years before the "Highway to Healthy", but I never questioned that the dress was for me.

 

A few years prior, there were talks about repurposing the wedding dress and going through the inquiries of how much it would cost for such an undertaking.

Yet, it just didn't feel right to me.

I did not know if it would be a reminder of the dream wedding that never was. Or if I'd try to relive a part of my life that was dead to me even before the divorce was finalized over seven years ago.

This beautiful wedding dress serves no purpose here. It's time to let it go. I am going to donate the dress so that someone else will have a glorious memory.

Anyway, that's all I have ... or at least all I want to type for now. I have many entries in the queue, so I'll be seeing you sooner rather than later.