As I struggle to push the drawer in, my hand patting down folds of material which refuse to stay within their allotted space, I know that I can no longer put off the clean-out that I had been planning and avoiding for the last six months.

I fetch a plastic supermarket bag from the overflowing bundle under the kitchen sink. It crackles in my hand as I contemplate where to start.

To do a drawer I would have to tip it out and sort things as I put them back. I'm not quite ready to make that commitment.

The wardrobe.

I put my right hand in the open door, seeing my left side reflected in the door-mirror. I run my fingers across the many different materials hanging from cold metal wire. The smoothness of silk, slightly coarser cotton, heavy woollen coats, a light cheesecloth dress.

Set the rules: look at each piece; have I worn it in the last two years? No? Then out it goes. That seems easy... and safe... enough.

This is the side of the wardrobe most easily accessible to where I normally stand. Summer just over, all my regularly worn summer dresses have accumulated at this end. Wrong end to start really. Stop procrastinating.

I try the other end. A heavy, dark, woolen coat. I was so impressed with this when I first wore it in my earliest days at Elwood High. Long and secretive with deep pockets that would hide the stolen chocolate bars that made their way there from the milk bar shelves after school. It saw me through the rough nights on city streets on the innumerable times I ran away from my mother. A roughly mended tear remains from when I scaled our eight foot high, corrugated iron, back fence at age thirteen, fully intending never to return.

The leather jacket that came a few years later. An indispensable accessory for the black motorcycle I acquired the moment I turned eighteen, though the accessory came first. The years of brushing in Dubbin give it a dirty waxy feel. It doesn't even fit me well anymore. The zipper is broken, dangerously so as it turned out.

Next to the leather jacket the scarf that fits in with the other half of the story. This scarf was knitted to replace the one that worked its way out of that broken zipper and wound itself into the back wheel of the motorcycle I was riding pillion on, winding me on with it. One of my closer brushes with death.

That was an even more significant night in that it was the first time that Darren, the driver of that motor bike put his arms around me. He thought that I was dead, that he and his bike were responsible for taking the life of a woman he hardly knew.

Because my head was attached via my neck and the scarf to the back wheel and my arm was pinned between my chest and my thigh, the only way I could dismount was to somersault off the seat. I lay on my back in the dirt for half a minute filling my lungs with the cool dusk desert air that suddenly tasted so sweet. That half-minute was so terrible for him. A week later he became my fiancé, four months later he became my husband.

My eyes go back to the large white plastic bag hanging upside-down at the start of the rack and the white tulle and creamy satin flowing out from under it. I take a fold in my fingers and pull it out so the material fans out hugely before me. I move the plastic up, more crackling, and search through the undulations, I know it is here somewhere. Yes, a grass-stain. It looks incongruous against the miles and miles of finery.

An outdoor wedding on a windy September day. On my father's arm I gingerly tip-toe through the duck poo that surrounds the Ornamental Lakes. As I picked up the flowers that morning the wide-chinned flower woman shrilly exclaimed, "You look so calm! I was a bundle of nerves at my wedding. Aren't you excited?" It was just another party really, I was far removed from the import of the occasion. I had made the preparations in a totally business-like frame of mind - it hadn't touched me at all.

Then came the photographs. The photographer is taking the traditional pre-ceremony poses of bride-mother-father. "Now stand over there in front of the poppy bed. No, no, just the bride on her own thanks." Click. "OK Mum, now you go stand beside her. Yes right there. Fine." Click. "Now look at each other."

I turn and look into my mother's eyes. They are wet. Suddenly my strength, my distance, my calm is gone. "Oh Mum, don't cry, you're going to make me cry too." I verbalise my fear in an effort to still the sudden swirling in my stomach, but something has shifted inside me and will not go back.

Concentrating on the duck poo keeps the tears back during the walk from car to celebrant, but the moment the vows start I am so choked that I can hardly say the words. My nose is running and I have no tissues. I can't bring myself to ask anyone for a hanky during my wedding vows; wetness starts to creep onto my upper lip. So conscious that I am the focus of attention of some one hundred on-lookers, afraid of making constant horrible sniffing noises, I put my hand to my face trying to disguise the large runny drip that I transfer from nose to fingers. I have no-where to wipe it. Oh-no there's another drip slowly making its way out of my nose. Another surreptitious swipe of the hand clears the area for the kiss that seals the ceremony. Only then do I dare ask for a tissue and end my ordeal.

More white silk, but from a different world (A long, long time ago in a city far, far away). This dress was bought in a Canberra City second-hand shop. I didn't notice the slight scorch mark over the backside as I tried it on. Neither did Chris who came into the fitting booth to zip up the zipper and tie the bow at the back. He stood behind me, his hands cupping my waist and looked over my shoulder straight down the gap left by the criss-cross wrap over my breasts.

He gave the dress his approval, we paid for it and left with it in a crackling supermarket bag much like the one I threaten it with now. Funny how even after ten years there are things that are still the same. Some the same, too many too different.

The plastic supermarket bags crackle in just the same way - then, now, even after we find Chris blue and lifeless from his last ever heroin overdose. Into the crackling bag we nervously throw our syringes and paraphernalia - hurrying to beat the arrival of the authorities - all but the one that had delivered the fatal dose, until it seemed that he had died in a void.

This is too difficult. I retreat from the wardrobe with the still-empty shopping bag trailing noisily.

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