Opening the Box

What if you were given one year to live and a blank check? What would you do? 

I have been intolerably stressed out over how much I hate my job and struggling with figuring out what to do about it. That thought struck me in the shower today. What if I was only given a year to live and a blank check? What would I do? Like so many people out there my first thought was to quit my stressful job and be with my loved ones. I would start throwing around the L-word like glitter at a fairy convention. I would enjoy all the rich foods and luscious wines of the world. I would surround myself with beautiful things and kind people. And I would try to remember my own life.

Something I’ve struggled with for as long as I can remember is my terrible memory. Funny, right? If I didn’t write it down, it may very well have never happened after a certain length of time. The exception to that rule is anything that hurt, I remember with nightmarish vividness and often at the most inopportune moments. Little things like a smell or a food will transport me back in time to a place where I was in pain and it takes me an extra second to get a grip on myself and come back to present time. I jokingly blame the excessive marijuana smoking I did in my early 20’s for my memory issues. Sadly, I know that it started long before that. And that’s why I have always written. 

Through all my moves a box of notebooks full of my writing has followed me. A few years ago I invested a few bucks at an Army surplus store and bought an old fashioned cammo-green footlocker. It’s just a wooden box with a latch that is designed for a padlock to secure it, minimalist handles and “US” stenciled on the top. Inside I have all of my journals dating back to the late 80’s when I was still in grade school. Some of the notebooks were written in pencil and have faded away. The rest are inked in ball point pen with photos taped inside and names with hearts around them on the inside cover. There is a paint can that my 8^th grade boyfriend used to give me a ring in filled with photos and school ID cards. There are folders of scattered writing from notebooks I’d start then repurpose for less personal things like school work. I would carry these notebooks with me to school, to work, to doctor’s appointments- anywhere that I might have time to wait around and observe things. They are the daily scraps of life that I’ve recorded out of habit from childhood. 

Years ago I dug into the box and tried to re-read them. I organized them by date, labeling the covers numerically so I would be able to read them in order. I remember being really sad when I attempted to go through it all. I wasn’t sad because of the things I was reading, the topics I focused on at such an early age, or even the morbidly depressed suicidal ideations held in those pages. I was sad because I didn’t remember any of it. I would be writing about a crush from math class, a friend I had gone to the park with, or a teacher I hated. I wrote about them by name without any explanation of who they were beyond the daily interactions I was writing about. There were countless names without faces and locations that I simply had no memory of at all. It was like reading a page from the diary of someone I had met once in passing who lived in the same town I did. None of it felt like a part of me. 

Knowing what I’m facing when I open the footlocker, it’s with trepidation that I announce my plans. This is big. This is scary. This is the life’s work people talk about finally undertaking after a terminal diagnosis or near death experience. This is the thing I have talked about doing for as long as I can remember, and longer than that even.

The Mr. moved the box from the bottom of the new stack of boxes he just created in the sunroom. When we get back from Boston next week I will begin the process of digitally documenting it all. I will treat it as a clinical experiment, an impersonal archeological dig, or just an exercise in improving my typing skills. Once it’s all in digital format I will start again from the beginning and write about everything I have written about. I will piece it together like a puzzle and fill in the gaps of time with whatever fragments of memory I can find. I will rediscover my own foundations and take a fresh batch of cement to the holes that even today, cause a slow leak in my soul. These are the cracks that I used to try to fill with sex, with booze, with the ‘Naughty’ and the ‘More, Now, AGAIIN!’ cycle of my 20’s. 

This will be the ultimate navel-gazing experience.

In the end, my goal is to finally figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Or maybe decide that I don’t want to grow up. Or maybe the thing that will prove that the only thing I’ve ever wanted to be when I grow up CAN earn me a paycheck and a living that will finally let me enjoy the amazing LIFE I have finally found.

Either way, this project will be an accomplishment I will be proud of even if nobody ever sees a single sentence. 

But who am I kidding? I’ll be blogging about it all starting time Meow!