that necessary void.
It seems to be straight out of a bad fairytale. The mother that takes glee in making her daughter lose her temper. This WTF keyboard with the keys that stick together in mutiny, refusing to be pressing down into submission with fingers of hastiness. seriously. wtf is wrong with this lousy keyboard?! why is it only certain letters that are finicky?
I'm getting rid of an entire decade of rubbish, and my mother is determined to"save" as many things as possible. Oh, its not out of sentimentality, mind you, but because my mother has the very tradtional "what if" mentality that makes her think that a piece of cardboard would one day come in handy, say, when we have to build a raft out of cardboard and plastic wrap to escape a flood.
what if my art class's fellow student's daughter's friend can use this empty box?
what if this blank video tape which we can't play has something important taped in it?
what if this bunch of plastic sticks that I got for free for some phone promotion has some hidden meaning to life?
what if I can use this fish tank water fliter for pumping oxygen when we are all living underwater and singing "Under the sea"?
It is killing me to turn a blind eye to the weird ass stuff my mother deems saving whenever I throw it out. doesn't help that she has instructed the maid to also decide what is worth saving whenever i secretly try to throw away things. I feel like I'm in some espionage mission. Get Rid of Crap from The House Of Crap. I'm trying to hold out in believing that as long what i throw out doesn't crawl back into my room, I'm fine with it.
Honestly, I look at this house, this house full of crap and rubbish, and dust gathering in all the nooks and crannies, and I don't feel like its a house of memories. Its a house of denial. ever since we moved here when i was ten? nine? all my mother did was to move the boxed stuff into the storage room and the cupboard under the stairs, and leave it there. no unpacking necessary. the books in the shelf downstairs have become "collectibles" - no longer read and untouched. its so pointless. all of our drawers are filled with strange odds and ends, as well as newspaper clippings of coupons and pieces of paper with numbers scribbled on them. no one knows what they are, not even my mother, although she will insist that she will need it. "someday.".
in a way, this house embodies what my family stands for. whenever something is wrong, we stuff it under books, thinking that we'd get around to sorting it out, but we don't. we don't bother about the pile of rubbish growing in our cupboards, because we don't care. nothing is sorted, nothing is categorized, nothing is ever handled - and thus, after a time, when we have managed to hide all our problems away, nothing is worth caring about. it makes me so...angry.
i'm so quietly seething that an ulcer the size of a pimple has sprouted on my upper gums. i touch it with the tip of my tongue every now and then, when i want to be reminded of the pain. and my anger.
i am a little sad that i'm throwing away so much of my past, but i no longer need them to define who I am at present. i no longer desire to be a pack rat, like I did when I was young. I remember, seeing the old things that my mother and sister saved away as precious memory keepsakes, and I wished that I had enough in my life to deem worth saving as well. so i started saving everything, even rubbish. I must have thought their value would increase over time, like gathering interest in a bank. i followed the example led by my family members, believing it to be an admirable trait, and worse still, an indicator of an interesting life that i will have led. well, perhaps it was partly true.
as i got older, i started collecting things because i didnt want to forget. i was so afraid that i'd forget some minor detail. so i saved the notes passed between my friends in secondary school, the receipts from restaurants, the empty snack wrappers. but what i've come to realize, is that i dont need to have things in order to remember. what i am able to remember, are all the important things. the smell of cKbe, teva sandals, shakespeare, bus rides, carrot cake and wednesday chicken rice. i dont need to remember everything....much less fear forgetting anything.
i will not be able to agree with those people who deliberately choose to forget everything in order to "move on", but nor do i want to be a person who saves everything in order to remember either. Its a nice balance, methinks. I am beginning to like my new found philosophy (one of many) immensely, "If you dont miss it, it probably wasn't even important enough to be kept.".
It may sound a tad strange, but I feel that by clearing my room, I'm freeing up space for new things and experiences to enter my life.
As it is, only halfway through my room, I feel a lot less burdened by the unimportant things. and a lot braver to go after what I want, to fill up the new space.