The box of my ex-husband's things I can't throw out but won't open

Found a box in the back of the closet today. Ex's stuff, the stuff I couldn't give to Goodwill after we split. Not sentimental stuff either, a cracked lamp he fixed twice, a stack of his old field guides, some cassette tapes. Four years and I still can't bring myself to open it, let alone get rid of it.

Weird part is I don't miss him. The marriage was done long before the divorce was. But that box is the one thing I won't touch. I make work about objects carrying weight and here I am with a literal box of dead weight I'm too chicken to deal with.

Maybe it becomes a piece someday. Maybe that's the only way I let myself look at it.

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8 comments

Tomáš Havel·2h

That box is the piece. Before you even decide what to do with it, it's already doing its work. You're standing at the closet door every now and then, four years later, and it hasn't stopped making you feel something. That's more than most installations manage.

I've got a room full of things people threw out, and every one of them held somebody else's dead weight at some point. The cracked lamp is not a broken lamp, it's a lamp that got fixed twice. That's the whole story right there.

Open it or don't. Doesn't matter. The weight is real either way, and that's the material.

Teddy Lin·2h

ngl "the weight is real either way" is the most on-the-nose thing i've read all week and i mean that as a compliment. you're right though, the box is already doing more work than half the stuff in galleries. cracked lamp that got fixed twice is a whole life in an object. maybe the real piece is leaving it closed forever and just knowing it's there.

Mira VeyOP·1h

ha, "the lamp fixed twice is a whole life in an object" is gonna stick with me. you're not wrong about it being the piece already. maybe the move is I just never open it and it sits there doing its thing and I keep making work about everything except it. that'd be very on brand for me honestly.

Mira VeyOP·1h

the lamp fixed twice out of spite, that's the whole thing. guilt and spite both got welded into that lamp and he carried it around for years. i knew that story and i still couldn't open the box, which tells you all you need to know about me.

you're right about the material part. i keep thinking a piece has to be made, but it's already sitting there doing it. maybe the point is just to leave it alone and let it be the thing it already is.

Inês Costa·2h

The box is doing its work whether you open it or not. That's the part I trust. Objects keep time differently than we do, they hold whatever we put in them and don't ask for anything back.

I understand the not opening it. You don't need to know what's in there. You know what it is. And maybe that knowing is enough, for now. There's no deadline on it. The lamp that got fixed twice, those field guides, they're not asking to be dealt with. They just sit there, being the things they are.

If it never becomes a piece, that's alright too. Some weights are just weights.

Ananya Iyer·1h

This is a really kind way to put it. "Objects keep time differently than we do", that's the line that got me, because it's true. That box isn't frozen in 2021, it's just sitting there while you move around it. It doesn't demand anything. The pressure to resolve things is usually something we put on ourselves, not what the object asks for.

I paint old houses for a living, or trying to make it a living anyway, and people always ask me why I bother when they're getting demolished anyway. And the honest answer is nobody's asking me to document them. The buildings aren't asking. But I need to look at them while they're still there, and that's reason enough.

Same way, maybe. You don't need the box to ask for anything for it to matter. 🙂

Mira VeyOP·58m

the houses thing hit me. nobody asked for those either, right? you just decide they matter enough to look at. that's kind of where i'm at with the box, i think. it's not about him or the stuff in it. it's that i made the call that it mattered and now we're both stuck with that.

painting houses that are about to be gone though, that's not a small thing. somebody's going to want those later even if they don't know it yet.

Mira VeyOP·2h

the lamp fixed twice is the thing that gets me honestly. he hated that lamp, it was his dad's and he kept it out of guilt, kept fixing it out of spite. and i remember all of that without opening the box. you're right, i do know what's in there. i've always known. the box is just the receipt.