We are in the process of moving - AGAIN. It's been about 10 months since our move into this 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom townhouse in Hawaii Kai and while we were renting the place with the possibility of buying it when the owners decided to sell it - we weren't sold on the unit when that time came (amongst other factors). So here I am, weeding through boxes that I shoved into the "I'll never ever look in there" closet and I'm left wondering "How much of my past should I hold on to?"
I have oodles and oodles of photos from high school which of course include photos of ex-boyfriends, old friends, and the infamous high school sweetheart (who in later years ended up being my first husband!). It seems like there are a trillion photos (yes, 1/13th of the national deficit!). I've also come across one of those plastic file boxes with old letters (the oldest dating back to 1990 from a pen pal I had during Desert Storm!).
The questions that plague my mind every time I rummage through these boxes range from: "Do I keep these? Do I need to keep these? What would it mean if I didn't?" Granted I haven't looked in these for 10 months (I peeked into them when we first moved) and before then I hadn't peeked in those boxes for at least 7 years. Had I initially done the "grab and dump" method of really just grabbing the stuff and dumping them into trash bags without looking, I may not be in this situation.
Do we hold on to old momentos because we still feel for the people in them - or do we hold on to them to remind us of things (or people) that we've had the pleasure of knowing in our past? Do you have photos of old flames, little crumpled pieces of paper that once legibly held a love poem that someone put in your locker, or even dried up roses from a bouquet you got from prom? Why do you hold on to physical things from your past?
