Those damn boxes

I'm staring at the mass of boxes filling my garage. The entire garage is filled to bursting was boxes containing my past and my present. But ~not~ my future. I've carried these boxes for 20 some odd years, the numbers growing as my personal life got more and more tangled. There's high school memorabilia and notebooks from college. Children's first toys and precious baby clothes. Boxes and boxes of my mother's things because at 22, I became The Keeper of the Stuff after she died. There are gobs of Christmas and Halloween decorations, old bookshelves and garden implements, some boxes are just filled with receipts my ex-husband would never let go of. And all this stuff, ALL THIS STUFF, is mine to sort, make decisions about and put in it's place.

This mass of cardboard and plastic that I have carted across the country and across my state multiple times has always been too intimidating to deal with. It has created anxiety attacks, hysterical tears and worry beyond belief. And finally, finally, 2020 broke me. I have a new point of view. One of gratitude. I am so grateful for these boxes and boxes and boxes. They finally broke me down and are allowing me to clear out my past, my present and my soul.

Each weekend I open the garage door and pull out some boxes, sorting until the garbage and recycle bins are full. I have found pictures and letters and children's artwork. I have found broken holiday decorations, too many odd pieces of paper to count and pay stubs that need to be shredded. Most surprisingly I have begun finding myself. In many of these boxes, I find validation in the person that I am today. I see the beginnings and middles of my journeys, and now also my present. It turns out, I am the same person in essentials as I have always been. That was unexpected.

I have run from my youth, ashamed of the person I was, saddened by how she behaved, how she thought about the world, how she allowed herself to be boxed in by others. All these years, I have wondered how she ever had any friends at all. I have not been able to reconcile who that girl was with who I am today, so I let her live in a box, in a garage full of boxes, until I could face her. In each box I unload, I find hints of who I would become, the connections that would remain or become most important to me, and memories that are precious still.

As I come across some less-than-endearing memories, I'm letting them and the things associated with them go. Sometimes with gusto, sometimes with tears. I'm seeing this girl with compassion and understanding, recognizing that she was young and she didn’t have the benefit of experience I now hold. It makes me sad that I couldn't save her then so today I try to think of her with compassion and the same love and tenderness I had for my own daughters at all those ages.

When I started this project in early 2020, I didn't expect epiphanies, just a clean garage. And freedom from a gazillion boxes of mental torture. What I continue to find is myself, and a way to love myself from across the years. It's popular now to ask, “what would I tell 15 year old me to give me hope”. But it was my 15 year old self who saved me across several decades by embedding the mantra “next year will be better”. That girl, and all her iterations across the years, in all her moments, is teaching me how to love myself up close and personal.

2020 was an eye-opening year in so many ways. That which no longer served us, came down. Faulty foundations crumbled, and new growth forced it’s way up. And I'm so grateful that I had this opportunity to face this multitude of boxes - and the overwhelm, grief and understanding that they contain. I recognize these boxes as the actions I must take to embrace my freedom and healing.

So Saturday, when I open that garage door yet again, and I decide which boxes to go through this time, it will be with a grateful heart and a willing spirit. It will be in joy because I have become who I was always meant to be.