I've just disposed of a giant black bag which weighs more than I do or did, I've lost weight since the last time I checked, and said bag contained quite a few things. First of all, all scrap pieces of paper and quizzes and tests and things I no longer need or won't help me ever again, for example my Honors Biology binder that was bursting at the seam, all that hard work and information pounded into my brain had memories attached to it and now it's gone. Only because I now have much more extensive and exhaustive materials from AP Biology to cover for all that I threw away. But all those little notes and drawings and small poems... well those were a part of me too and now .... now they're being recycled.
I had a giant box and an entire shelf from my bookshelf devoted to all my schoolstuff, binders and notebooks and folders of paper, stacks and stacks of paper that I went through one by one to see if I should keep it or not. Records and report cards, awards and letters, and books. All my books, assigned or not, were dusted and carefully rearranged now that I have more room. Twenty or so will be donated, books I was forced to read that hold no use to me, books I loathed even if I appreciated any vague literary value they may or may not have had. Sorry, but I don't read essays for fun, I don't read history textbooks disguised as summer reading "novels" or tv series/cowboy western/historical reference "novels," I'm sorry, I just don't. But some other person might, maybe the books will enjoy the store shelves more than the cardboard box...
Now, I just have the lower shelf and, to be honest, it looks pitiful. I feel a little pitiful, I threw away parts of me and my memories, things I never thought about but when I looked at them again, I saw it all. There were old love-notes and poems and a three-page long essay to ask if I like him, things I never threw away, I felt bubbling anger and resentment when I re-read them. I shredded them and lit some on fire, to remove those old pains, hopefully there are some people out there now with scorched burns and ripped wounds because I utterly loved getting rid of it all. Even the stuffed animals, they were tossed in the black abyss of the black bag, dying now somewhere in a landfill under the scorching sun.
My closet is emptier as well. It makes me sad, I pulled out everything I own, all the club and class t-shirts, each one with several memories and moments in my past. Some had holes or the sneaky chlorine stains from work, those were slipped silently into the black bag, some with brand-spanking-new tear-stains. Shirts and pants and shorts and pajama-things that no longer fit or that I never wore.... sigh .... in the bag. I know I don't wear them and that they don't fit, but they were mine anyways and now they're not. Now they belong to someone else, or they will, perhaps they won't and will forever remain in the donation center.
Little baubles and trinkets, small gifts half-broken and dust-covered , all rose from the depths of my "memory box" and some went into the black bag, some fell out of my hands and crashed into a million pieces, some I kept. All those little hats and shirts and ticket stubs and wrist bands and jewelry... it's sorta gone now.
I made the list of what I have and what I need, all because I will soon have to pack it all up and go somewhere new with it, not all of it, but it. That list of things I need kept growing as I threw out socks with holes, broken pencils and leaking pens, strangely twisted binders and notebooks, etc.
I felt tired after the second and last day of this and went running instead of napping. I walked the twenty or so minutes to the track and ran, fast and unthinking, faster until I couldn't run anymore so I walked. I walked for a good long while, talking to some lady who kept meeting my pace, but I felt very disconnected from her. As I have been feeling since I threw the bag away, it hasn't been that long, but I've been feeling it long before I started the ransacking and scouring of my room.
With this loneliness comes burst of excitement and happiness that last for days at a time. I'm so bubbly and jumpy with this new adventure on which I will embark. New people and new things to learn, new experiences and new places, new foods and clothes and books and things I'll love, things I'll like, things I'll tolerate.... I can't wait for it, I want it to be here so intensely, this new chapter of my life, this new horizon, whatever the metaphor, I'M EXCITED.
I wanna know who my roommate is, I want to move into my dorm, I want honors orientation to begin, I want to go to my first psychology of religion class, I want to eat my first actual meal there, I want to use that gym and jump into that pool, I want to meet everyone, I want to decorate my room and put all my things away there instead of back where they always have been, I want to unpack and not have a box left, I want to sleep in that new bed and jump on it, I want to see who will be the first to be thrown in the fountain, I want to go kayaking in the river nearby, I want to attend my first biology lab and spend all those hours working away and when I finish I'll head to dinner and enjoy eating while talking of dissections or microscope issues, I want to sit down to my computer and NOT have either of my siblings there to ask me what I'm doing or why I'm doing it, I want to go somewhere without my parents asking who what when where why every thirty minutes, I want to read without my siblings and/or parents fighting in the background, I want to have POTO sing-alongs while playing Scrabble with people and not be thought weird by anyone who walks by, I want to go out and explore the town without my parents calling to check where I am if I'm not within sight or yell at me if I don't take my cellphone with me if I'm walking-distance from somewhere, I want to share the mirror with three other people and not kill them for ownership of it :P
There's a lot I want and boy am I excited for it, because very very soon I'll be leaving this complicated house of mine and moving into my dorm for the next year. Asbury Hall, Third Floor, with an unknown room-mate and unknown suite-mates, an unfinished schedule, and several friendships already formed.
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