Found: The Forgotten

It’s an odd thing, when your parents move out of the home in which you lived throughout high school. I thought I had gathered all of my belongings from their house years ago. I was wrong.

From the depths of the garage, they found these choice nuggets of my past and handed them over.

A touchy-feely pre-teen self-help book titled “Your Changing Emotions” written by the esteemed doctor of….hang on…co-written by… Jill Whelan?! The spunky little kid from The Love Boat? Man, I wanted to live on that boat.

What’s left of my once-MASSIVE collection of Sweet Valley High books which I spent hours and hours reading in elementary school.

And what I call the Crate of Type-A Chaos: a white crate (hellooo college dorm memories) filled with speeches, articles, pictures, poems, and schedules neatly divided into manilla file folders. Yes, I really have always been this organizationally obsessed, apparently.

My favorite folder? The one labeled “MEN/<3/SCUM.” Inside? Empty. Apparently I just wanted to have this file folder ready, just in case I encountered scummy men whom I loved.

There were also photos of captured moments I had long forgotten with people who once were my world, notes from friendships that fizzled for this reason or that, articles that were published with my byline but in a voice and a perspective so different from today.

These boxes of paper goods that I haven’t needed in 15, 20 years are now sitting in my garage. Logically, I know they should all just go into the recycling bins. But they won’t. I don’t know why, but they won’t.