Sunday 19 December 2010

Memory Lane

The date is not set in stone, but it looks like I will be moving out in a matter of weeks. The house is nearly finished and I am just waiting for the final inspections to take place and then I will be out of my parents house..... at last.

However, as I sit and start to box up my life again I am beginning to feel the weight of the change beginning to settle in. I'm going to be paying a mortgage, I'm going to be paying bills, i am even going to have a tumble dryer. In a sick way I feel like an adult for the first time since I moved back home, and suddenly all my memories are more vivid and powerful than ever.

I'm in the middle right now of clearing out and throwing out all of my unwanted things and boxing up the stuff I want to keep and move over to the new house. However, its become a bit of an emotional minefield, with every other item throwing up another set of memories, good and bad.

This morning while I was clearing out my wardrobe I found my old school sports bag. It packed with two pairs of jeans and some shirts and a battered pair of trainers. I remembered I packed it at 16 when I tried to run away from home after yet another row with my mother, I never left but it was never unpacked. Right next to it was a bottle of vodka, emptied when I drank every night to get over the pain of first love. When I looked at my bookcase I still saw a glass rose he gave me for our first valentines together, it has the word "Forever" carved into the base, sadly the relationship didn't last quite as long. In the bed side cabinets I found my old black and white mobile I got after pestering my parents for nearly a month, then the coloured one I got to replace it about a year later. Old Christmas cards from my grandparents, who are now almost all gone, were tucked in the drawer under my bed, often never read once I extracted the money from them.

Childhood art projects that are little more than sketches, much loved and battered books, clothes I'll never wear again. I see the truth that most people seem to want to ignore. We as a species are emotional pack rats, and it's not just objects that clutter up our lives. Every item is a memory, every memory is a feeling, and every feeling still feels as deep, as painful and as beautiful as they were when we first felt them.

Is it any wonder that we can't bear to part with even the most mundane and awful things that fill up our cupboards and drawers.

I found one of my old school notebooks, half filled with my Law class notes, but mostly filled with doodles and badly drawn penises.... or is it peni for the plural. A shoe box filled with pictures and souvenirs from almost forgotten holidays, most of which in hated at the time. I found the suicide note my mother once wrote after a bad bout of whiskey induced depression. She survived but I kept it to remember how angry she made me, and I wouldn't ever think it was my fault.

After an hour of digging through my memories I decided it was best I stopped. There are only so many scars I can reopen before I need a break.

Not all of my memories are bad though sometimes those are the ones that stand out. I still have pictures of happy times with my ex who I'm lucky enough to still talk to. Old cloakroom tickets from amazing nights out with my uni mates. Ticket stubs from some of my favourite London shows. Everything comes back to me so easily the more I dig through.

It reminds me of the importance of my past in how it has shaped me so far. As I now move out and move on, I look forward to my future, and all the other opportunities to make more memories, good, bad, and both together.

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