one box at a time

It’s such a challenge boxing up everything. You’d think as many times as I’ve moved that I’d have a great system. But it’s always one box at a time. Sifting through, sorting each item, trying to decide if I really need to hang onto beads from a pride parade five years ago or finally let it go or will I ever really read this book again or am I keeping it mearly for the value of what it communicates about me sitting on a shelf – decorative book titles.

I have a whole plastic tub filled with pictures and letters and cards from old loves and anything else I have felt connected too. I can’t seem to part with a single picture or slip of paper, no matter who or why. Sometimes I wish I had the ones I gave to the people I loved and not just what was given to me. I want to read my words from ten years ago and how they were different when I loved another years later. My memory is shallow (though I would prefer to think of myself as ‘a live in the moment kinda person’). In any case, I don’t remember how I felt or how we lived. I even find myself unable to remember with pepper and it’s been less than a year.

I was back in Dallas for the weekend and was hanging out with all my old friends. It felt good to be surrounded by all these people who I know and our shared history. It’s easier than where I’ve been more recently. I might be in a group but it takes so much effort – effort to be happy, to be easy, to be friendly, to be likable, to be everything and not be somethings. All the things that disappear once you’re old friends, once you seen the best and the worst in the people around you.