mementos

Lately I've been starting to feel like I am a slave to my stuff. I am consumed with the thought of moving all my crap by myself. My brain hurts from deciding what I should keep and what I should sell, what I should give away and what I should throw out altogether. And I'm not moving for another six months so I can't imagine what I'll be like by May. Today I started to throw out some Christmas things and I went through this box of old Christmas cards I've saved because I am one of those sentimental pack-rats. If you ever want to partake in an excercise of sheer torture then I would suggest trying to throw out old Christmas cards. It's pretty easy to throw out the average "Merry Christmas, Your Friend X________" but it is damn impossible to throw out a card from your aunt who died less than a year ago, knowing that you will never ever get another card from her. Or even cards from grandparents, who are getting so old that you know it won't be long before you won't be getting cards from them either. It is also hard to throw out cards where people send pictures instead of the usual trite Hallmark Christmas tree, it just feels like some bad mojo to toss out pictures of people. I ended up saving cards from a friend long lost to the black hole of memories. These cards were particularly painful because this person had been a friend for ages, we went through young adulthood and some really bad shit together. But as she so brutally put it in one of the letters, "I miss hanging out, but I guess we had to grow up sometime." If letting go of really good friends is a measure of growing-up then I plan to remain ungrown forever. But all in all I did okay I guess, I weeded down an entire box to about ten cards. I don't really feel that great about it though.