Throwing My Life Away

Today I threw my life away... quite literally. My passive avoidance finally caught up with me and this afternoon I faced 20 years of meaningful junk. I went to my mom's house for the first time in a long while. I walked into my old bedroom to rediscover childhood habits and adolescent battle scars buried beneath the bed and jam-packed in the closet. Two hours of sorting and trashing barely made a dent. There will be many more days like this in the near future. The only way I came to grips with getting rid of certain things was jotting down my findings before dumping them out. Here are a few for your reading enjoyment... some will make absolutely no sense to you, but feel free to ask:

TRASHED TODAY

1. Calendar/ Planner (2001-2004)- note in my October "to do" to visit scott
2. Sad birthday invitation
3. High School Econ paper about my "Career Dreams"- I wrote that my 3 passions were writing, justice and God, so I wanted to be a screenplay writer, supreme court justice or pastor.
4. Calligraphy set
5. 6th & 7th grade poetry portfolios- laughable musings of an 11 year old (now gone forever!) hah
6. Donna's Phone Number- it was scrawled on a piece of paper & must've been the first time I got her # 5 years ago
7. Letter petitioning to change Mt. Carmel's mascot- actually led to my mom getting saved
8. 2003 Halloween Drama Scripts- these 5 plays never got performed because of the huge fires in October 03... the only good thing that I recall about those fires were that my shockingly trite and melodramatic scripts never got performed!
9. First love song I ever wrote- embarrassingly, it compared first love to candy, chocolate and stars. I guess those things are really important to 10 year olds!
10. Film negatives I always meant to develop... never did and never will
11. HUNDREDS (yes, hundreds... no exaggeration) of pages of poetry and writing
12. ALL of my past schoolwork... except I kept my Lewis & Clark journal from 8th grade
13. THE bright pink purse... Nicole is the only one who will get this =)
14. Cherry stem in a knot (except I kept this)
15. THE BEST ONE... All of my old Halloween and Easter candy from ages 10-14. What preteen kid doesn't eat their halloween candy, especially after sprinting from house to house to earn it?! Me. I loved candy, but had a dream to win a Guiness World Record for most Halloween candy saved for the longest amount of time. Crazy record huh? I'm pretty positive it does not exist, but I did it anyway. I literally ran from house to house to collect it... brought it home... sorted it... counted how many of my favorite types of candy there were... and THEN put it in a box in my closet and NEVER ate it. Now, 12 years later I rediscovered it like buried treasure. Surprisingly, it spoke to me a lot about myself and what God's doing in my life right now.
    

It was pretty sad to look into colorful bags and boxes of my favorite candies that were never opened or enjoyed, all for the sake of achievement. I've bypassed years of pleasure in the present for the sake of an empty future. Now I'm here, living my whole life in retrospect.