there are days when I look at my blog and groan, thinking about the time it would take to sit down and write an entry, because I wouldn't write and post anything I didn't like or put myself into. and when I need an incentive to put something else up...I read the comments tagged onto the end of another long entry of mine, and remember there are people out there reading it and checking to see if I added something else. and the rush from that gets my creative juices going once more, remembering funny stories and thinking of the day's events, wondering if I can make it enjoyable for one of you guys to read.
So, I've been assigned the task of cleaning my room. In other words, I pulled out my handy jackhammer and put on my trusty hard hat, just to be safe. I don't think you could understand - my room is a Teenage Junk Landfill. I wouldn't be surprised if I find something living under my dresser, once I finally work up the guts to reach my arm under there and I hope it doesn't get gnawed off my some giant 7-legged spider mutating in my room.
So my philosophy of cleaning my room before has always been "get the hardwood floor to show and that's good enough", ignoring the tests from 7th grade crammed into my shelves and the dust bunnies 14 generations along in their uninhibited reproduction. But finally, this laid-back college girl finally can no longer stand the squalor of her own room, and I have decided to go on a room-cleaning purge. I am going to find every spelling text from the 7th grade and their equivalents and haul 'em out. already, I have an ENTIRE TRASH BAG OVERFLOWING with junk like that. Is that pathetic, or what? and my room still isn't even remotely respectable.
But going through those papers, I found some great stuff. Not everything was mundane homework from middle school - I went through everything carefully and found bunches of things I'll never pitch in a million years. Poems scribbled into the margins of algebra homework; a short story I wrote in middle school that I haven't read since; sweet notes written during study hall from a boy I loved before he cruelly broke my heart; school pictures with rude scrawls on the back when all my friends were at their utmost-geekiness. In the middle of unwashed clothes, my feet crammed under my laundry bag, my back pressed up a set of shelves, I felt a wave of sentimentality wash over me. I was enjoying this, simply because of the memories it brought back with them. and I think it means even more now since high school is long over and moved on without me, now that I'm one of "those alumni" wandering around the Tree of Life halls searching for people to greet.
Anyone ever seen "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"? Amazing movie - very well done. For those of you who haven't, Jim Carrey's character gets the memory of his girlfriend wiped from his mind after he finds out she's done the same thing to him. And the whole movie is basically this internally struggle, going over every moment with this girl he's forgotten he's loved, because in the end all he saw were her bad qualities. And then he relives every single memory involving her, and remembers how much he loved her and why he loved her and wondering why he stopped loving her. At one time, he pleads quietly to no one, "Please, let me just keep this one memory, just this one, please!" And going through the notes of a boy I loved and who loved me...I found the same thing. Once everything between us started to painfully fizzle out, I wanted to torch everything he'd ever given me, ever written me, ever emailed me. But I kept them, because I knew I couldn't do it. I couldn't destroy them, because they were the one piece of him I could still keep and love in my strange way. And looking back on them now, I basically read the story of our relationship from beginning to end, watching the innocence decay into bitterness, and feeling so sad. It was like seeing it as a different person, which I guess I am now. I love someone else, and with a very different much better love, and I no longer love this other boy like I did. But unlike Jim Carrey's character, I got to keep those good memories. I have to keep the bad ones, too...but not at the price of losing the good ones.
I'm going to spend my Columbus Day holed up in my room, but I don't regret it. Not in the least. First of all, it's not like I would go outside unless I really had to by myself. And if the payback of cleaning my room all day is remembering things like this...and I can't think of anything else I'd rather do. *smiles* unless my wonderful math-brained boyfriend calls in mid-nostalgia and asks for help on his crazy English paper. well, all's the better. Making one more memory I can think of fondly when down the road I think of Dave is not something I'd soon begrudge, even at the price of reliving old ones.
heather, over and out
So, I've been assigned the task of cleaning my room. In other words, I pulled out my handy jackhammer and put on my trusty hard hat, just to be safe. I don't think you could understand - my room is a Teenage Junk Landfill. I wouldn't be surprised if I find something living under my dresser, once I finally work up the guts to reach my arm under there and I hope it doesn't get gnawed off my some giant 7-legged spider mutating in my room.
So my philosophy of cleaning my room before has always been "get the hardwood floor to show and that's good enough", ignoring the tests from 7th grade crammed into my shelves and the dust bunnies 14 generations along in their uninhibited reproduction. But finally, this laid-back college girl finally can no longer stand the squalor of her own room, and I have decided to go on a room-cleaning purge. I am going to find every spelling text from the 7th grade and their equivalents and haul 'em out. already, I have an ENTIRE TRASH BAG OVERFLOWING with junk like that. Is that pathetic, or what? and my room still isn't even remotely respectable.
But going through those papers, I found some great stuff. Not everything was mundane homework from middle school - I went through everything carefully and found bunches of things I'll never pitch in a million years. Poems scribbled into the margins of algebra homework; a short story I wrote in middle school that I haven't read since; sweet notes written during study hall from a boy I loved before he cruelly broke my heart; school pictures with rude scrawls on the back when all my friends were at their utmost-geekiness. In the middle of unwashed clothes, my feet crammed under my laundry bag, my back pressed up a set of shelves, I felt a wave of sentimentality wash over me. I was enjoying this, simply because of the memories it brought back with them. and I think it means even more now since high school is long over and moved on without me, now that I'm one of "those alumni" wandering around the Tree of Life halls searching for people to greet.
Anyone ever seen "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"? Amazing movie - very well done. For those of you who haven't, Jim Carrey's character gets the memory of his girlfriend wiped from his mind after he finds out she's done the same thing to him. And the whole movie is basically this internally struggle, going over every moment with this girl he's forgotten he's loved, because in the end all he saw were her bad qualities. And then he relives every single memory involving her, and remembers how much he loved her and why he loved her and wondering why he stopped loving her. At one time, he pleads quietly to no one, "Please, let me just keep this one memory, just this one, please!" And going through the notes of a boy I loved and who loved me...I found the same thing. Once everything between us started to painfully fizzle out, I wanted to torch everything he'd ever given me, ever written me, ever emailed me. But I kept them, because I knew I couldn't do it. I couldn't destroy them, because they were the one piece of him I could still keep and love in my strange way. And looking back on them now, I basically read the story of our relationship from beginning to end, watching the innocence decay into bitterness, and feeling so sad. It was like seeing it as a different person, which I guess I am now. I love someone else, and with a very different much better love, and I no longer love this other boy like I did. But unlike Jim Carrey's character, I got to keep those good memories. I have to keep the bad ones, too...but not at the price of losing the good ones.
I'm going to spend my Columbus Day holed up in my room, but I don't regret it. Not in the least. First of all, it's not like I would go outside unless I really had to by myself. And if the payback of cleaning my room all day is remembering things like this...and I can't think of anything else I'd rather do. *smiles* unless my wonderful math-brained boyfriend calls in mid-nostalgia and asks for help on his crazy English paper. well, all's the better. Making one more memory I can think of fondly when down the road I think of Dave is not something I'd soon begrudge, even at the price of reliving old ones.
heather, over and out
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