Diary of the New Kid
At five years old, I experienced my first move, and then again at seven, ten, sixteen and eighteen. I have lived in five homes and attended eight schools, both split between two countries, and two continents. I was always the new kid, and always the one to leave at some point or another. While the reasoning behind my constant moving always differed, and was always valid, the moves never stopped feeling random and abrupt. Being only twenty years old and carrying more similarities to a vagabond than the archetypal young adult, you can only imagine how many items, connections, friendships and belongings I have lost along the way.
Unfortunately for me, this created my deep need for collecting and keeping anything and everything. From prom corsages to concert and movie tickets, birthday cards, flowers, trinkets and anything else that can be found under the sun, I am terrible at throwing things out. Anything I called mine often had a limited lifetime, and that was my norm, what I was used to. I don’t mean for this to come off as materialistic in any way, but as I neared adulthood, I found myself latching on to all these physical items, in hopes of preserving not only my belongings, but the memories attached to them.
“While I may move around a lot, I am the outcome of all my experiences and recollections.”
While forgetting is simply part of growing older, I think I feared the gaps conceived from my moves, and wanted to avoid the future ones at all cost. And I guess for some reason, the only way I knew how to patch these cracks was with tangible items that served as souvenirs in my mind. Although this knack for accumulating clutter was always deemed as one of, if not my biggest, bad habit, I’m choosing to ignore that. Because despite my prom corsages being dried remnants of what once was, they never fail to remind me of my old high school friends, and how lighthearted life used to be. In spite of my old movie ticket to “Everything Everywhere All at Once” being half faded and ripped at ¾ corners, it always reminds me of the first time I truly cherished my own company enough to watch a movie, in theaters, alone. And regardless of my old elementary school uniform shirt being completely unusable and kind of a waste of space, if we’re being honest, it instills a sense of comfort and warmth, from the life I lived in a different country.
After connecting where this habit stemmed from, I now find it kind of heartwarming. Some may call this hoarding, but I’d like to think I’m just collecting enough memories to make home, homey. Because let’s face it, the Pinterest collages and wall decals are true, home is where the heart is, and my heart lies with my memories, whether old or new. My identity is the coalescence of all the memories that have formed my existence. All the pivotal core milestones, and all the small joy-sparking, grin-inflicting moments of eureka, that often stem from absolutely nothing, are what make me who I am. And while I may move around a lot, I am the outcome of all my experiences and recollections, and in a way, keeping these tangible items is an aide-memoire of all the different facets of my identity, of what makes me me. With that, I look forward to the plethora of future collectibles that will augment my clutter, because it’s not hoarding if it’s for the mems.
Illustration by: Sam Andersen
