All That I Said

One of my projects over the holiday break was to unpack the guest room. The guest room is really like my "dressing room" because half my clothes are in the closet there and our dresser with clothes is also placed in that room. In addition, there are about 3 big rubbermaid bins just full of stuff.

Well, it looks like stuff to the common eye. I know better.

It's like everything in my life that was important enough to carry with me since I left home in kentucky. I packed those bins back in 2003 when my mom told me that when i came back from New Zealand, they would have already sold the house and moved. So i packed up all that "stuff" that usually your parents keep for you up in their attic. Like report cards from middle school and a copy of the hand drawn birthday invitations courtesy of yours truly for my 5th grade birthday party.

So when my dear fiance told me it was a project to unpack - I hesitated. Sorting through all that stuff again would take me a year. How to decide what to keep - what is trash, what is worth remembering and what am i not ready to forget yet?

I ended up starting this project at the very end of the break and i'm not anywhere near done. It will take me forever to truly finish. I think it's mostly because these boxes of "stuff" are literally boxes that i need to keep. Now - i agree that some it can go. Everytime i sort thru these boxes, i'm ready to let go of something.

But there are those stories and daydreams i wrote daily all through highschool, those painful entries about my struggle to be who God wanted me to be. The entries after my sister was born kept in a school journal when i was in elementary school. The account of my father telling us we were moving from my birthplace into a new city and i would have to make new friends when i was 10. How much it hurt when he moved a year before we did and i only got to see him on weekends.

In highschool, all the notes that I got from Genie and Jennifer and Sarah Biggs. Folded in crazy ways that i know i'll never figure out again. The art is lost on me. The funny pictures and sayins we had that i would forget about if i didn't have them stored away so i could read them again - later in life.

The terrible pictures of me from middle school. Braces, hairspray bangs and no clue how to apply makeup. Why did my mom let me wear that outfit? And i look at them now and am thankful that i turned out pretty okay, even though i still want to lose those 20 pounds.

1000's of cards i've gone through. Happy graduation - 3 times over. Highschool, College, Grad School. Finding my constants. The people that have been there through it all, or most of it. The birthday cards from my now deceased grandparents. My finger moving over the pen marks on their card - wondering if it will help me reconnect with them. Do i keep it? Does throwing it away make it trash? Or just something i have to let go of?

The pictures from past relationships - wondering what i was thinking. Who was i at that moment to be with them and them with me? I inspect my smile and wonder: Was i happy?

Keeping a few of the pics because I need to remember. I need to document my life. On paper. I need to keep a few momentos from even those darkest times to remind me of how far i've come. Looking around in this guest room - I see my engagement ring in my jewelry box, the envelope with a few copies of our engagement pictures, the new necklace RJ got me for christmas. This is my present. Things that aren't going in the box to be reviewed later. It's mine to keep out in the open and hang on the wall for others to see. The tears this time are because I'm happy, finally, with how things turned out.

And the tears as i continue to place items from these boxes into "keep" "trash" and "i'm not ready yet" are bittersweet. I see the flicker of an old photo - me and my friends. Friends who are still in my life. A chill runs through my body. I realize it's not the end of a road at all, it's just the wind at my back as I continue this journey.