Memorabilia

She dragged herself up the stairs. Her tummy was jumping up and down. She made the last step and took a deep breath. She looked into the big room with no windows, packed with boxes of all sizes. Some of those boxes were hers. From years back in time. Boxes jammed with memories. Some good. Some sad. Some embarrassing. Some she didn’t want to remember, of different reasons. The problem was not the stuff in the boxes itself, but the emotions she connected to some of those things. Let’use the box with kitchen stuff from the first time she moved from home as an example. Friends had given her all those glasses, pots and pans as gifts, but she’d hardly used it, although she needed it. She connected that to the reason why she had decided to move from home already as a sixteen year old girl. That stupid stepfather of hers. She’d ran away from home a few times, had huge fights not only with him but also her mother - because of that man. That man who did all he could to destroy her relationship with her mother. The man who lied, controlled and behaved like the perfect neighbour when being outdoors and like a devil within the house’s four walls. She’d been relieved to get away from there. She found the box, decided not to look into it, only pushed it into a free corner she named the “bin-corner” as all the put there would go straight to the junkyard. She kicked the box, and she was surprised how it made her feel. It kind of felt good kicking that box!

She found another box and opened it. The contents made her smile. Posters of her teenage idols. Well, no longer use for any of that. Her husband probably wouldn’t be too happy if she put those up around the house. Another kick towards the “bin-corner”.

The third box was full of papers. She sat down on the floor to read some of it. She had to smile at some of the letters which were from her good friends from childhood days. Some of the friends she still had in her life, who had been there for her through her ups and downs in life…just like they wrote in the letters when they were ten years old. It almost made her cry- happy tears, of course. She found some old diaries. She put her hand on a blue one as if she could feel a heart beating. She noticed it was her own heart. Was it worth opening the book? Would be worth it reading the words she’s once written in frustration. Sadness. Fear? She remembered the ‘chaos’ which had been inside of her sometimes. The ‘chaos’ she had no words for until she got twenty years older. The ‘chaos’ she thought no one would ever understand. The ‘chaos’ which made her feel so alone and sad but also scared and worried. The chaos she never told anyone about until many years later when she realised she did not have to do that struggle of her own. She was not the only one with some ‘chaos’ inside of her. Her hand was still on the blue book with flowers on it. She opened it and smiled. “I love…” she’d written with her childish handwriting as a nine year old girl. Oh, how she remembered that boy, she was sure she was going to marry him some day. Those innocent childish thoughts. It felt safe to realise she had had those as well. That the days back then had not only been all that serious. It was so easy to forget about the happy things, the little things, the funny things, and it was way too easy to hold on to the down sides. Why was that? She browsed through the book. Stopped at a page she’d been rambling down a story about a sad girl who had to watch her siblings and be strong when mum was at work in the afternoons to make sure her father wouldn’t hurt them because he was sometimes behaving really strange and sometimes very scary. It was hard to know, but the sad girl learned to read her father’s footsteps in the morning before he went to work. She would read on the walk and the way he was breathing whether it would be safe to spend the afternoon outdoors with her friends - or if she had to guard her siblings.

She knew the story was not only a story. It had been her reality. She had been that girl. Suddenly she started crying. She couldn’t stop. Her whole body was shaking. This was the reason why she had excused herself for so many years to actually clean the attic and open those boxes. The memories. The emotions. She didn’t want to reflect on the past. She didn’t want to remember some of the feelings she so often had, but never really understood – until now. Now that she was an adult, had a job, her own family and a good life. The so-called chaos inside of her was gone. She was happy and content with her life. But thinking back hurt so bad. Not all of it, of course, but some of it. She kept crying for a bit. Suddenly she threw the book away, got up on her feet, raised her head and shoulders. She found all the old boxes, decided not to look into them, put them in the “bin-corner” in quite a hurry. When she was done, she took another deep sigh, nodded her head and said out loud: “That was then, this is now!” She smiled at herself and yelled at her husband to give her a hand to free the “bin-corner” and make the car ready for a trip to the junkyard.