getting rid of stuff

Well not this, obviously.

There were two reasons: one- I was procrastinating doing my homework and putting away my clean clothes, two- thoughts like these; "Why do I have so many things? What is all this shit? Where did this all come from?"... etc. So I grabbed a beer and dove in. Something things were easy to get rid of; expired tube of Monistat, workout stuff I've never used, shower curtain rings. Then there were things that should have been easy to get rid of but weren't; old schoolwork, textbooks, half-used bottles of lotion. The hardest things to get rid of were my high heels. Something about loss of femininity, youth, agility, blah blah. But the truth is they fuck up your knees, make walking impossible, and hurt like hell. Screw lengthening my leg line- I want to be able to move.

I made some weird discoveries as I was poking around in my things. Like for some reason my photo album was full of pictures of the Idaho landscape but all my dance team photos were in a box in my closet. Some sort of metaphor there? I dug through my boxes of old notes and letters- found some sweet memories, some sad memories, and some memories I wasn't ready to get into yet. There's something so triggering about going through your belongings. They become physical manifestations of your memories and emotions and that don't go away no matter how long you tuck them away in your closet or basement. It's amazing how taxing it can be to find something as silly as an old post-it note. Well, I wasn't ready to go through all of that yet. Hopefully someday, but in the meantime I was able to make a pretty good dent in things. You can check out my Facebook page if you want to see some of the things I found. Below I'll share some exclusive blog content of other treasures I came across.

Letters from my brothers while they were in boot camp:

 

Notes from Blaire written in our secret code:

A letter from George W. Bush himself and definitely NOT from Brianne Messer:

A note from Niki for every single play I've ever been in:

I also found that will from this post:

An old photo of me and Jen whom you might remember from this post:

And of course a bunch of dance team photos that have been hanging out in a box:

As a bonus, here is a poem that a boyfriend wrote for me once:

Basically, I've kept everything that anyone has ever written to me. I have every love letter, every bit of correspondence, and every note I've ever passed in class. If I were to ever have some sort of character development arc that involved me rising above and getting rid of the things I love, the climax would be me burning these letters one by one as I bawled uncontrollably in the light of the flames. Listen- that just isn't going to happen. I will be clutching these letters in my greedy paws until the day I die- or until someone approaches me to have them put in a college course text (it could happen!).

So there you have it; I made a dent in a long-term project, avoided chores (that I still haven't done) and learned a little bit about where my priorities are. I also fully mixed my books together with Alex's. Yeah, that happened. Now off to band practice. We are getting much better! I'll post a new video soon so you can keep up on our progress.

Bonus pic of what Amelia thinks of my letters: