Nostalgia

I'm in Texas. There is still a closet here full of stuff that belongs to me, it's just mostly stuff from high school and earlier. There are a few items I need to move to Chicago, but a lot of the other stuff Mother just wants me to go through and decide what to keep and what to toss.

So here I am digging through boxes of memories from my earlier days. I apparently used to save everything. Every class schedule, ticket stub, hotel key card, school newspaper, playbill, business card, etc. I have a purple ace bandage from when I gave blood, beverage napkins from junior prom, poker chips from Vegas, a speeding ticket from 2005, an excerpt from a short story that I used for a monologue in drama class, a laminated newspaper article reviewing Baz Luhrman's Romeo & Juliet because I'm quoted in it, and an autographed picture of the Zambian Acapella Boys Choir (who I assumed performed at one of my schools)...I even have a whole shoebox filled with brochures, maps, metro cards, and PLASTIC BAGS (from retail purchases) from my trip to France and Spain in 1999 that was all of two weeks.

At the time, all these things in my life seemed so epic. While the memories are very nice, I must laugh at myself for holding onto some of this. I'm smiling at a lot of it, but it's still all pretty easy to throw away. I'm keeping a few gems that I'll probably share with you (I apparently wrote an essay on why I love the color purple, as well as a letter to my first high school concerning the asinine behavior of a certain teacher...not sure if I ever actually sent it). I suppose I am glad that I hung onto these things in order to have these nostalgic moments, but I really don't see any point in holding on any longer. And I'm glad that I don't stockpile these things in my current life. Maybe if I had the time and energy to be a scrapbooker, but I don't. I want to live my life, I don't want to waste all my time trying to preserve the memory it.