Cleaning Out My Life

I came back from Canada last night, and am leaving for Los Angeles on Saturday morning. Thus, there has been the traditional cleaning of my room. I hadn't unpacked my things from UCLA, so I have to do that, then REPACK a select number of things for when I move back up for the summer on Satruday. I can't really bring up that much stuff.

In cleaning out my room I am amazed by how much I hold onto the past in everything. I foudn things from 4th grade! But they're all just sentimental things -- letters, tickets, pictures. Everywhere. And everywhere I look I am reminded of something in my past. The problem is, they are memories which I just don't want to be reminded of. I'm not sure why a few of them are giving me such a difficult time, but even then, I can't bare to take down that picture, or throw awaysome of the things. And I should, I know I should... but I don't. I just place them in a box and tell myself that I will never look at them again.... but they're there. The main problem is when I have to put somethign new in the box, and all those memories come back... and I just sit there until I force myseld to recall why they are in the box in the first place, and then close the box and put it away.

When does a remembering a painful memory cease to be more valuable than eradicating it? Does it ever? For me at least?

For now, those things sit in the box. In the corner of my room, bottom shelf, behing the door, in a shoebox. I'm afraid that's where they are always going to be. Something I HAVE thrown away. Small steps.

I remember watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and thinking how horrible it would be to erase something or someone from your mind.... so easy in the movie. I guess it just scares me that I won't remember anything one day. And when everything is destroyed and no one remembers, how can you prove the past ever existed?