Early & Alone #55: What We Hold Onto
It started with a floral hatbox my grandmother gave me. I was maybe 10 or 11. I put it under my bed and it slowly filled with movie ticket stubs, notes folded into neat triangles, and various Playbills, pamphlets, and souvenir keychains. Over time, the collection swelled and now includes that original hatbox as well as a few others and an assortment of shoeboxes. It’s been culled a few times, notes from friends long forgotten thrown away, fossilized movie tickets discarded. But the collection still takes up nearly a whole closet, especially with the milk crates full of old journals, yearbooks, and papers.
I’m moving tomorrow, and my new apartment has less storage space than my current sprawling loft apartment. To that end, I’ve sat down with the boxes and tried to whittle it down again, tossing birthday and holiday cards with just a signature, wedding invitations from people I haven’t spoken with in years. Still, it’s a lot. I found myself wondering, more than once, why it was so important to me to hold on to what would amount just to meaningless scraps to anyone else. Would I ever miss the medal from high school academic decathlon, the letter welcoming me back to campus for my favorite college job with a note from my boss that I had a big crush on, an empty envelope addressed to “you (not me but close)” from my ex-husband, a yellowed piece of dot-matrix printed paper with my 9th grade schedule, a “treasure map” a coworker from my first full-time job drew for me of our terrible call center? Maybe not, but together, these things serve as physical reminders that I have lived, I have loved and been loved.
In a recent issue of Jami Attenberg’s “Craft Talk” newsletter, she wrote about how she archives each book, putting all of her long-hand writing and drafts into a box and stowing them in her attic. She writes:
“It’s hard for me to imagine ever going through all the boxes in the attic, but I must admit it is at least a little bit important for me during my time on earth that these messy drafts of books and life exist safely somewhere. I don’t need to ever look at them again. I just need to know they’re there. If they’re there, it means I’ve done it before. I’ve written before. I’ve loved before. So I must be able to do it again someday. Evidence. Actual facts. I’m alive.”
I think, though I haven’t written any books, what I’m doing is something very similar. I needed evidence of a life as a deeply insecure 11-year-old and I still do as a somewhat less insecure 39-year-old.
It’s been staggeringly difficult to be in the world the last few weeks. I consider myself extremely privileged that I haven’t been personally touched by the string of natural disasters and cruelty of politics, but it still weighs me down, keeps me up at night, makes me wonder what the point of anything even is. This tower of boxes in my closet anchors me, in a way, reminds me that life does have shining moments, that people do love me, that I have things before and will do things again.
Bright Spots:
I’ve been using the saving app Digit for almost a year and have saved thousands of dollars. It basically goes into your bank account and regularly pulls small amounts of money that you don’t notice and puts them into your Digit account, where you can designate different saving goals. (It monitors your spending so it knows not to pull a bunch of money when rent is due, for example, and there’s also overdraft protection.) I had one for my new couch and new car, and now I have a home and vacation goal, as well as a “rainy day” fund. It’s helped me work toward certain goals and when I purchase something like, say, a bunch of paint for my new apartment, I withdraw the money from the Home bucket in Digit. I truly love it, and if you sign up for an account with my link, you get $5!
This Instagram account gives me so much joy. I watch their videos on repeat every time they post.
Shoutout to Karen & Steve for introducing me to Durand Jones & the Indications, who I have been listening to on heavy rotation.
I hope you’ve all found some bright spots and some anchors and are enjoying this long weekend.