Lessons in Letting Go Read Online Free PDF

room, Corinne. Maybe you should think about getting rid of some of your stuff.’
    I looked at him like he’d just announced I should find a random puppy and have it put down.
    Secretly, I had no idea if Adam had more stuff than me. Until I’d moved, I hadn’t realised how much stuff I had myself. It had built up so incrementally, starting way back when I was still at university. The little grains of my childhood had slowly, almost imperceptibly, migrated down to Melbourne like sand shifting from one beach to another. Every time I went home I’d spy knick-knacks, old clothes or mementos I couldn’t live without and I’d bring them back with me. More often than not they never left the box in which I’d packed them for the journey. In the beginning there’d been enough room for all of it. Now, there was barely enough room for me.
    When I had started looking for a new place, I had known exactly what I wanted: a big apartment so that I could get all of my things out of storage. Cupboards had been my only prerequisite—not dishwashers or courtyards or gas heating—just cupboards. Thomas had never really known how much I owned. The first place we’d shared was tiny, with barely enough room for a bed and even less for the couch. We’d rented a storage cage until we found somewhere bigger and I’d locked away a stack of boxes without telling him what was in them. Better he thought I had a lot of important documents and family heirlooms than ten-year-old newspapers, broken computers and all of my high-school science projects. Likewise, there was no need for him to know that I had kept all of my socks since primary school. When we finally did move somewhere bigger—a large, sunny one-bedroom flat with floor-to-ceiling storage and a massive, tri-door built-in robe—I still didn’t pull my things out of storage. I’d got used to hiding them.
    Adam and I had looked at flats for weeks, slowly radiating further and further out from the inner suburbs, trying to find a place with enough storage that was within my budget. We found nothing suitable at all. In fact, even taking the cupboards out of the equation, there simply weren’t any flats I could afford on my own in the inner suburbs. I was getting desperate. Living with Thomas had become unbearable for both of us. There is nothing more distressing than having to share a bed with the person you have just broken up with, except for a Celine Dion concert. I would go to bed, hearing him breathe beside me, and it was like I had been knocked over the head with a dull object and stunned. I felt like a fish about to be gutted.
    On many of those nights I would close my eyes and will myself not to think about anything. I was scared that if I started to think about what it would be like to live on my own for the first time in my life, I might chicken out and decide to stay. I also didn’t want to think about how much pain I was causing Thomas. I had been too cowardly to tell him my real reason for leaving, instead giving him some cliché about us being at different stages in our lives. I didn’t want to hurt him with the simple, brutal fact that sometimes it feels more lonely in a relationship than on your own. We’d grown apart and I couldn’t see a way to fix it.
    Still, lying beside him every night, listening to him breathe and wondering if he was really sleeping or just lying there, stunned and aching like I was, none of it felt right. It felt like I was severing myself from the best thing in my life. Thanks to Thomas, I was financially stable for the first time ever. I had order and rhythm and someone who was there at the end of every day. I had someone who killed spiders for me and held me when I cried; Thomas had always fixed the things I couldn’t. I thought that I would be able to do those things for myself once I left, but now, whenever I thought about life on my own, I went numb with panic. So I thought about the new flat instead.
    Thankfully Adam had been doing an