Holy Crap, Minus "Holy"

Today my dad dropped off about 10 boxes of Stuff my parents have been storing for me at their house.

Stuff. Not Tools; not Treasures; not Things. Stuff.

Tools are useful. Treasures are valuable. Things have potential to be useful and/or valuable. Stuff is just Things without potential.

Packed away in dust-baptized boxes, my Stuff hadn't enjoyed daylight for years. A trophy for 2nd place in my elementary school's spelling bee. Ticket stubs from every movie/play/concert/ballgame/church event I'd been to since 1989. Artwork by kids I babysat for, unsigned and unmemorable. Every single card, letter, and valentine I'd ever received. Ugly keychains from Oregon. Mounds of paper dolls - I mean seriously, ridiculously too many paper dolls. A mostly empty bear honey jar.

Why am I attached to it? It all feels like a chain connected to my ankles at one end, and my past on the other end. I don't need these things, I don't even want them, but chucking it all feels like a betrayal of my childhood.

For real: when I was 13 I thought it would all be in my life forever.

I think it's about time 26-year-old Bethany had a talk with 13-year-old Bethany. I need a visual aid here.



Hey, bitch.

Guess what? You're young and ignorant, and you're afraid of the future - what you will become and how different that will be from who you are now. You feel an impulsive need to gain control over the frightening Unknown. You don't want to lose your identity as you grow older. So you hoard.

But you don't hoard Tools or Treasures or Things - you use them, admire them, and discard them when their day is done. Instead, you hoard Stuff... and call it "Memories".

Somehow, you've stumbled across the one way to keep your fingernails sunk deeply into my reality - the reality of 26-year-old me, trying to let go of the past and stretch forward into the future.

You make my Memories contain pieces of me, like glass jars holding my identity. The foggier the jars get, the less I understand myself. I'm afraid I'll lose my knowledge of who I am, who and what I love, and what is important to me. I need to know what came before to understand what is now and what will become.

God forbid I forget I went to the flipping Nutcracker ballet when I was 8.

When I die, I refuse to leave behind a heap of meaningless Stuff to burden my loved ones the way you've burdened me. I don't need my spirit to haunt them through Stuff they feel too guilty to toss out.

So this is what I'm going to do: all Stuff goes into the dumpster, starting tomorrow.

Thank you for your attention.