Well then, plastic storage container. It’s moving time. It’s moving time, and I need to lighten the number of objects I have to move. What exactly have you got stored in here, Plastic Storage Container? Art projects, sketchbooks, notepads, old pictures, I can see that much through your clear plastic. So what’s important about all this? Why should I put the effort into shoving my own past into a moving truck to go across the country, hundreds of miles away from where these all might have been relevant?
Let’s start with the sketchbooks. I haven’t looked at you since high school, what’s so important about it now?
…Well, for starters, at least I know how bad I was at drawing back then. And shading. And coloring. Come to think of it, I might not be so much better now.
So much more than pictures, actually. Stories, half caught on pages in half drawn form, half born from my half developed adolescent brain. Nothing I can use now. But so significant from then. Characters, I had taken the time to name each and every one, and create a past for them…mostly tragic. Overly tragic. Some of them are interesting, a nymphomaniac demon for one, complete with angels fighting past their own desires, all those pages read like a self help book for teens dealing with suppressed sexuality. If someone saw how shapely some of these lady angels were, they might assume I was dealing with confused sexuality, instead of a lacked development in anatomy.
Repeated characters are the hardest to forget. Page after page after page, slightly altered poses, same exact haircut, some in color, some in ink, good Lord, some in very badly shaded mechanical pencil, but I was learning. An entire school of characters here, friendships formed, hearts broken, battles fought, marching on and on through…God knows how many sketchbooks. And here, scattered throughout, you have a name, at some point I must have loved you. Enough to attach you to this paper, instead of letting you float freely away from my mind. Slightly more than a passing dream. I have no recollection of you now. I’m sorry.
Next layer of excavation, please, what was hiding beneath these pages of anatomical anomalies? Photography. Of course. I studied it for a year in high school, and therefore, assumed I knew everything there was to be known about it. The worst part is, of course, not the grades-above average to good. Every high school student casually studying photography will, of course, make their friends models. And that’s what’s staring back at me. Friends caught in laughter, here, and here. Three teenagers sitting on top of their desks instead of in their seats, and I’ve only seen one of them since. A former best friend. She’s the worst. Photo after photo after photo, dressed up, dressed down, posed, freelance, tank top and mini skirt, sweatshirt and jeans, she was so close to me, and so damn photogenic, and it still hurts, not so much the months of fighting and agony that drove us apart but the clear and undeniable evidence that before all that, how much we truly did love each other. I called her a sister once. About the time these pictures were taken. These are not art. These are moments where I happened to click a button that froze time, to take with me always and carry around as a sick and demented trophy as surely as if I’d cut off a finger or an ear of someone I’ve hurt so deeply been hurt by so truly that reconnection will never again be an option.
But that was just high school stuff. Nothing that happens in high school really matters in the real world. What was high school? A conglomeration of kids who happened to be born at approximately the same time, who reside in approximately the same area, all brought together by chance.
My other best friend, here, here, and here. We still remain quite as close as before. We’ve recently visited, and rekindled. It had been a year before then. In high school, we could count our separation in hours, usually. If that. As a matter of fact, we shared the photography class. I dressed you in a black affair, old and from someone’s closet, laced and melodramatic. I had brought you to a field frozen over in snow, laid my winter coat on the ground, and made you sit there, as frozen as your surroundings while I clicked and clicked, and you were so very, very, very angry with me. But you did it. I posed for you in similar situations, my joints aching in similar ways as I fought to hold an unnatural position, and we’ve done far worse for each other.
Just high school.
Next, please.
Debris. Dirt. Dust. A lot of D words that sound like I should be doing some vacuuming. Now what? An empty box that once held a variety of chocolates, labeled Wilson. About the size of a hardcover book just big enough to look impressive. Maybe something by Charles Dickens, or Jane Austen. I remember when I had first snagged the box for the purpose of memory keeping, I must have been twelve or thirteen, but I have added things as recent as two years ago that I’d forgotten about. From my preteen years, two small dolls I’d made out of corn husks, a spare bit of blue netting, and a gold wrapper. Results of boredom at a wedding reception dinner. My mother had been so impressed with me, building two people while quietly sitting and letting the grownups talk, that I’d kept them. In all honesty, if left to my own devices, I probably would have thrown them out. My mother’s admiration was enough to hold on to them for over a decade. Tags from anime conventions, the most recent contributions. An odd fuzzy thing that I don’t quite remember. A few bits of wax from candles that had been shaped prettily, before burned. A piece of sea glass. And…oh my. A braided hemp necklace, the centerpiece three clear pink beads, probably worth ten to a penny if bought in bulk. Broken to be too short to be worn. Probably because I had worn it to that point. I still don’t remember if the boy who made and then gave it to me made it a gift because I happened to be sitting there and talking to him, or if it was a hint of something more that never had a chance to happen. It takes too long for me to remember his name, so dusty from the past that it truly has no more significance on my today life. But it had meant something, as surely as the sketches I had spent hours on only to scoff at in a moment years later. A picture of my best friend in high school, the one I still keep in touch with, bent and frayed a bit. Pictures of her surface no matter where I turn in time.
An empty sketch book, bonus. In fifteen years, I’ll look at what I put in there now, and wish I had the willpower to throw it away so no one else will see.
A binder full of old birthday and Christmas cards, since I can never throw anything away. Some of them are handmade. I had so many, from so many friends. I collected the misfits of my school until I couldn’t count the number of people I considered close with both hands. That ability is not something I have carried with me into the present, unfortunately. Somewhere down the line I stopped trying to open myself to whomever would accept me. That might be a good thing. The only thing I do know is, I don’t get nearly this many cards these days.
I wanted to pack. I wanted to clean, and unburden myself, and become lighter. All I’ve got is inspiration for what’s too long to be a poem, and too short to be a story, and too insignificant to become something. It’ll be coming with me across the country. And quite possibly be carried into the rest of my life.
Unedited. Just written. CNF.