Today was a day I cleaned out the closet, at least metaphorically. I actually cleaned out a desk. Its strange the things one holds on to, and maybe they tell a lot about the person, and even more when they finally get rid of them.
The thing anyone who has never been in my room needs to know, is I live in a boring kind of guest room un-lived-in feeling room. Its cheery and warm with warm greens and yellows, but it seems kind of empty. I never noticed it, truly seriously noticed it, until now. My walls have nothing on them, only the door exiting my room (I have four) into the hall has a calendar on the wrong month if not the wrong year hanging on a nail. My closet is organized and neat, like it always practically is; My books all in a rows on my shelfs, shoes neatly in a row with the first inch of the toe under my hope chest, and my desk and dressers are bare on top, nothing hanging out of them. In all honestly minus my unfolded clothes sitting on my hope chest just out of the drier, and unmade bed that I am comfortable sitting with my feet under the covers you could have thought that this room was unused, even with me here.
The signs of me, the me you all seem or at least appear to know enough to be able to read this, lies secretly in the drawers of my desk. And tonight I cleaned out that desk. The desk that represents me, neat organized a little old fashioned, hiding a quirky set of ideas and random things you would be surprised to find with each other. That has been what has consumed my thoughts this late night, as I cleaned the desk.And now I have a bag of failures sitting next to my desk waiting to be taken out to the bin in the morning.
Its these things thrown away that seems to say the most. Most of them failures, the ones I held on to so closely for years, that don't seem to matter so much. A picture of the chosen student of my school to go on the school's exchange program the year I applied, was one of the first found and thrown out. My jealous and failure to meet the 'normal' requirements to be one of those chosen few has long past, my puppy dog love for one of them has long past, and my worry about how the horrible way he was 'used' to met the reasonable except able deviation from the normal one he could not help as he was born that way, and how knowing that messed with his mind has also gone on its way.The pile of senior voting stuff that the school did not allow me to submit.
I threw out pictures of me in the newspaper where I had won first prize at something but still stood with jealous and anger at the world, even though I smiled a bright smile, even through the picture you could feel the contempt for the world rolling off of me. Had I really been that angry person I saw staring back at me? My mirror seems to confirm that if she doesn't exist now, I have smile lines beginning to etch their way into my face, where once I use to complain that smile for more than a few second hurt my face. I now, I am finding I rarely am not smiling at least at the corners of my mouth.
I threw out all my religious papers, yes those whom read this and knew me in middle school or before; I had tons of papers sitting in my desk. My bible-bowl study guides that I had, Kit's and Pete's lecture tri-folds that we got every week, a few dozen tri-folds from the churches in which I tried to reconnect with my lost religion when I moved here. I got rid of them all. Because I realized I had moved on. I no longer question my decision, to walk this path to find my own enlightenment about what god is and what I need to do. I trust myself and I trust my god enough now. When life is tough I have faith, faith in myself, and faith in my god, what ever it is, that I don't run and hide behind what I know isn't my truth. I stand up to the storm and I laugh and keep going, or search for shelter without straying from the path I have found. I feel that this is a bad explanation of what I feel but it is the best I can give you at the moment.
And more failures of myself and other that I kept, I threw them out. What is left is just good stuff, happy memories or the horrible ones that created beautiful things, with a few exceptions.
My drawers are cleaner though I doubt the spattering of poetry and writings, scribbled notes on the colors of the world, letters from friends and family, black and white photos of classmates and friends taken, or every birthday card I have ever got will stay in place. They brought back memories, letters from many of my friends from Kernersville from when I first moved, "notebook' friendship notes for my notebook from High school, and so many small happy memories I can't seem to remember them all this second.
A few exceptions though still remain. Tiffany's memorial service stuff still sits in their little box in the back of one draw, and the bottom draw is still filled with a perfume gift box, a geology textbook and boxes and boxes of rocks. I just can't seem to get rid of these things, I think for two different reasons, 1) that they still hold a lot of things for me, 2) I haven't quite being the person whom those items held great great importances for, and 3) getting rid of them requires not the throwing out with the rubbish but a ceremony like a funeral. A funeral for the dead, the me that is no more. I have found I am burying the old me a lot lately. I feel kind of old at the moment.
