Today as I was in my room, cleaning things and redecorating, I decided to totally overhaul the whole entire room.
For any of you who have ever been in my room, you'll know that i have a ridiculous amount of shit in there. Trinkets, junk, little souvenirs, magazine clippings, etc. Everywhere. Three bulletin boards crammed with 10 years' worth of mementos.
I decided to rip it all down.
It started with me accidentally tearing a magazine clipping when I was taking something off the shelf. I paused, and as though in a trance, slowly ripped the rest of the clipping off. After I started, I couldn't stop. It all had to go. Every collage, every pom pom from a football game, every movie ticket, every lei, it all had to go. I'm not entirely sure why.
I had three large bulletin boards behind my door, each chock full of bits of memories from middle school and high school. It held everything from every movie ticket of every movie I'd seen in the last 5 years, brochures, pennants, pictures, mardi gras beads, buttons, tags from clothes I'd saved, and many, many other things.
As I took it down, I removed everything from each board piece by piece, very carefully. It was odd; it were as though I were slowly removing bits of my childhood and adolescence from that wall. They were things that I glanced at everyday, but it wasn't until i took them down that they brought to mind the vibrant memories that came with them. A pom pom that was passed out free at Homecoming my sophomore year of high school. A picture of a boy I'd had a crush on; long forgotten. A ticket to a haunted house I went to with a friend, nearly five years ago. A pennant from my tennis team.
I felt a certain aching sadness for these memories. High school is supposed to be the best times of your life; memories that you treasure forever. Sometimes I feel that I either wasted my high school memories, or didn't live them to the fullest. I wish I had done this, I wish I hadn't done that. But the smile never left my face as I took down these bits of paper memories and carefully packed them away.
Maybe we don't live our lives exactly the way we had imagined them to be, but at the very least we can say we made memories. Maybe I wasn't homecoming queen, and maybe I didn't play powderpuff football. Maybe I was never student council president or a cheerleader, but at least I made it through that hellhole they call high school.
I think Charles Dickens best sums it up in A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
Indeed it was the best of times and the worst of times.
Taking down these bits of my high school years also makes me lament how the years are beginning to go by quicker and quicker. The years used to pass seemingly as slowly as honey drips out of a jar. Now they go by so fast, I have to catch myself in a daze and wonder how January turned into May and May into December.
I'm no longer a teenager. Even though I've yet to know what age really is, I feel as though I've already lived a lifetime. High school is a bit like a lifetime. But that life is over, and no amount of clinging to it is going to bring back those glory days. Someone once told me that when you're in high school, you can't wait to get out. But once you're in college, you'll want those high school days back. I scoffed at them, never thinking I'd think that. Now I understood what he meant. No, I don't miss having an 11:00 curfew, or not being allowed out on a school night, or tedious homework assignments. I don't miss 90 minute periods, or the drama of high school, but I do miss the simplicity. I miss the routine, I miss the predictability of it. I miss being told what to do, and sleeping during study hall. I miss having someone mind after me.
But don't we all miss that?
I guess it can just be chalked up to growing up. You've got to bite the bullet and put your big-girl panties on sometime, and there's no time like the present. I once thought that high school ended for me when I walked across the stage and received a diploma. But now I understand that we create our own endings and beginnings. We can only close a chapter on our lives when we chose to close it, not when society dictates we do. As I scraped off bits of tape from my bookshelves, it's almost as though I were shedding bits of my proverbial skin. I was finally, finally moving on and becoming the person I knew I should be.
We often cling to bits of our past, hoping that they still hold the magic that they once provided for us. But I now know that the true magic of these objects is most powerful when we no longer need them. When they have served their purpose, and we're ready to carefully pack them away; that is when we get the most out of them.
All of these things I took down from my room now sit in the hall outside my room. It looks like an aisle in Goodwill. The paper will eventually crinkle and crack. The colors will fade. But I'll never forget how each individual object made me feel.
It all looks like a mess. But to me it all makes perfect sense.
I smile as I look at the junk, because I know:
finally, I'm free.
For any of you who have ever been in my room, you'll know that i have a ridiculous amount of shit in there. Trinkets, junk, little souvenirs, magazine clippings, etc. Everywhere. Three bulletin boards crammed with 10 years' worth of mementos.
I decided to rip it all down.
It started with me accidentally tearing a magazine clipping when I was taking something off the shelf. I paused, and as though in a trance, slowly ripped the rest of the clipping off. After I started, I couldn't stop. It all had to go. Every collage, every pom pom from a football game, every movie ticket, every lei, it all had to go. I'm not entirely sure why.
I had three large bulletin boards behind my door, each chock full of bits of memories from middle school and high school. It held everything from every movie ticket of every movie I'd seen in the last 5 years, brochures, pennants, pictures, mardi gras beads, buttons, tags from clothes I'd saved, and many, many other things.
As I took it down, I removed everything from each board piece by piece, very carefully. It was odd; it were as though I were slowly removing bits of my childhood and adolescence from that wall. They were things that I glanced at everyday, but it wasn't until i took them down that they brought to mind the vibrant memories that came with them. A pom pom that was passed out free at Homecoming my sophomore year of high school. A picture of a boy I'd had a crush on; long forgotten. A ticket to a haunted house I went to with a friend, nearly five years ago. A pennant from my tennis team.
I felt a certain aching sadness for these memories. High school is supposed to be the best times of your life; memories that you treasure forever. Sometimes I feel that I either wasted my high school memories, or didn't live them to the fullest. I wish I had done this, I wish I hadn't done that. But the smile never left my face as I took down these bits of paper memories and carefully packed them away.
Maybe we don't live our lives exactly the way we had imagined them to be, but at the very least we can say we made memories. Maybe I wasn't homecoming queen, and maybe I didn't play powderpuff football. Maybe I was never student council president or a cheerleader, but at least I made it through that hellhole they call high school.
I think Charles Dickens best sums it up in A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
Indeed it was the best of times and the worst of times.
Taking down these bits of my high school years also makes me lament how the years are beginning to go by quicker and quicker. The years used to pass seemingly as slowly as honey drips out of a jar. Now they go by so fast, I have to catch myself in a daze and wonder how January turned into May and May into December.
I'm no longer a teenager. Even though I've yet to know what age really is, I feel as though I've already lived a lifetime. High school is a bit like a lifetime. But that life is over, and no amount of clinging to it is going to bring back those glory days. Someone once told me that when you're in high school, you can't wait to get out. But once you're in college, you'll want those high school days back. I scoffed at them, never thinking I'd think that. Now I understood what he meant. No, I don't miss having an 11:00 curfew, or not being allowed out on a school night, or tedious homework assignments. I don't miss 90 minute periods, or the drama of high school, but I do miss the simplicity. I miss the routine, I miss the predictability of it. I miss being told what to do, and sleeping during study hall. I miss having someone mind after me.
But don't we all miss that?
I guess it can just be chalked up to growing up. You've got to bite the bullet and put your big-girl panties on sometime, and there's no time like the present. I once thought that high school ended for me when I walked across the stage and received a diploma. But now I understand that we create our own endings and beginnings. We can only close a chapter on our lives when we chose to close it, not when society dictates we do. As I scraped off bits of tape from my bookshelves, it's almost as though I were shedding bits of my proverbial skin. I was finally, finally moving on and becoming the person I knew I should be.
We often cling to bits of our past, hoping that they still hold the magic that they once provided for us. But I now know that the true magic of these objects is most powerful when we no longer need them. When they have served their purpose, and we're ready to carefully pack them away; that is when we get the most out of them.
All of these things I took down from my room now sit in the hall outside my room. It looks like an aisle in Goodwill. The paper will eventually crinkle and crack. The colors will fade. But I'll never forget how each individual object made me feel.
It all looks like a mess. But to me it all makes perfect sense.
I smile as I look at the junk, because I know:
finally, I'm free.
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