I’ve spent this past month slowly moving back into my parents’ house, and back into my childhood room. I say “childhood” as if my absence from this room wasn’t merely a one year hiatus. But bear with me here.
To my surprise, it wasn’t the process of moving out last year, but the process of moving back in that has turned up once lost items and remnants of a past me. Possessions left in my care belonging to old friends with whom I have long since lost touch, faded photographs of kids who thought they were so hard mean-mugging the camera, and gifts from my various short-lived romantic relationships.
It’s the last category that has evoked the inspiration for this post.
As I was sorting through a box, I came across a silver cardboard box, the size of a hardback novel. Inside lay a clay figurine of two doves in flight on a backdrop of blue sky and white fluffy clouds, made by a teenage boy I had dated in high school. It was his art class project, and he gave it to me as a Christmas gift.
As I made a move to the trash can to throw it away, I hesitated. And it was my hesitation that surprised me. Why, after 7 years, was I hesitant to throw away an item that had no use and no context in the present day? The lovechild of a relationship that ended badly, from a guy that I have had nearly zero contact with since our breakup and is getting married next week to the girl he left me for. Yet, what I should have done 7 years ago and was trying to do now tugged at my heart strings.
Damn you, nostalgia
But then I stopped and thought really hard back to that exact period of time, I realized that I can’t actually confidently and accurately remember many events or details. I suspect that most of the details I do recall are ones I’ve created in my mind, used to fill into the spaces to create romantic and movie-like scenes in my memory. I also noticed that many of my “nostalgic” memories have a soundtrack— which leads me to believe that nostalgia is a romanticized exaggeration of the past. With no possible way to revisit the past, and the time between now and then steadily growing greater and greater, I begin having greater difficulty differentiating between the real thing and my mind’s substitutions for those quickly fading details.
With the realization that the sentimental value I placed on this object was misguided by my faulty memory, I took one last look at the doves, and placed the box into the trash.
The moving process has been challenging and stressful, but in the process, I have begun uncluttering my life, both literally and figuratively. I am discovering that as uncomfortable as it can be, the occasional cleanse is necessary to detach the excess baggage and to make more space for the amazing people in my life and the endless possibilities in my future.
So from here, I continue on. If I come across any other epiphanies or realizations worthy of sharing as I progress, I’ll try to share the wealth.
