Nervewracking Nostalgia

CWs: mental health, suicide mention, family stuff, religion, death, food

I worked for 3hrs on Latin this morning right after getting up, finishing what I need to do for this week. Back to it tomorrow. I didn’t really know what to do with myself for the rest of the day after that. We didn’t want to go anywhere, and just wanted to chill, especially after having a busy weekend last weekend and the weekend before. So that’s cool.

When my dad came to visit last week, just before we went to his family reunion, he brought about four boxes (two bankers’ boxes and two plastic tubs) worth of my stuff from Oregon. I’ve told not only him, but my mom as well, numerous times that I don’t want any of the stuff I’ve left behind. I haven’t lived at home for almost 20 years at this point. If I haven’t gotten it prior to now, there is a good chance I don’t want it. Nonetheless, he ended up bringing a bunch of stuff, so I left it in the living room until I could go through it. I knew one of the boxes contained my middle & high school yearbooks (fine), but for the most part, I had no idea what any of it contained.

I went through the yearbook box first. It was nice to flip through my old yearbooks, but really kinda bittersweet. I didn’t really love my time in either of those schools overall. It was just aggressively fine. I have always been wary of people who absolutely loved high school, as it seems like they probably peaked then, which is not a good thing, as there is a ton of life left to live after that (usually). Speaking of that, one of the boxes (can’t remember which) contained the program for the memorial celebration for a classmate of mine, really an acquaintance, who had killed himself when we were both in 8th grade. That was jarring. Into the recycling box it went, I do not need that. Looked at some of the yearbooks and the signatures, barely remembered any of the people who signed it. Found a random postcard from my ex in high school – into the recycling box. Lots of stuff went into the recycling box. I love my mom dearly, but I think she curated a lot of this stuff and packed it up for me, thinking I would like to hang onto it. That is not true for 98% of this stuff, which has no sentimentality for me; I do not need to revisit hardly any of this. I like my life now, and I know where I came from, but I don’t really need to revisit it.

Another box contained a lot of church stuff. I was Catholic from about 1994-2005/6, when I renounced it entirely and found that being atheist suited me much better. So seeing memorabilia from church trips, little church texts, &c., was kinda jarring as well. I do not need any of that. It’s gone. Now I am having trouble remembering a lot of stuff contained in the boxes (one was nearly all, to me, trash). The last box, a crate with an interlocking lid, had a bunch of my old Steiff bears and other stuffed animals, and, inexplicably, my turntable mixer. I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I used to DJ as a hobby. I left the turntables and all my vinyl with my parents, so I don’t know why they packed up the mixer for me (which also doesn’t really work, just like the turntables). Oh well, into e-recycling it will go. But there were a few bright spots, like postcards and birthday cards from my family (especially my dearly departed grandparents and great-grandma), which was cool. There were a few books that I’ll donate to the friends of the library, too; I used to love David Macaulay’s The Way Things Work as a kid, but I imagine, being printed in ~1990, it’s sorely out of date. Cool book, though, and maybe some kid will enjoy it.

In general, it was kind of a sad and depressing experience going through all this old stuff. There is a lot I like about the past, but at the same time, I’m happy it’s the past and that I’ve moved on and (hopefully) improved since then. I’m holding onto a decent amount of the old pictures, since you never know. Some of those pictures are of people long-dead, and may be the only copies, so that’s kind of a responsibility. Maybe one of these days I’ll digitize everything so I don’t have to hold onto the physical copies.

One funny thing I did come across was the old DOS CD-ROM FMV game Mad Dog McCree. It is a shooting gallery game, with an American Old West theme, and I remember loving playing that. It was a pack-in with my first computer in 1993, so it’s definitely old at this point. My Pure Moods CD (hilariously nostalgic), as well as my “alternate history” 2001: a space odyssey OST by Alex North, popped up as well. The latter is an interesting curiosity, as I believe it was potentially going to be the score for 2001 before Kubrick decided to go in a different direction and use mostly older classical pieces. I remember not enjoying the album at the time, since, naturally, it wasn’t the official soundtrack, but now that I’m older, I wonder if I’d appreciate it on its own as music. Will probably rip both when I get a chance. One thing I wish I could find is my autographed picture of Carrie Fisher. I treasured that for a long time, and remember writing a letter as a kid in the ’90s, and getting that in return. Who knows, it might’ve been signed by her secretary or something, but it was very cool. Maybe it’ll turn up in one of my own boxes elsewhere.

Anyways, I’m glad it’s trash and recycling day tomorrow. I put the bankers’ box of recycling into the can, but I have a whole trash bag full of stuff that will need to wait at least until after tomorrow. I still have some other trash and recycling in the garage that I need to keep putting in piecemeal, so as not to overload the cans, y’know? Such is life. Enough nostalgia, or at least depressing nostalgia. We’re having dinner in a little while, and I’m looking forward to reading some tonight. I think I’m gonna start Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars; I hear it’s fantastic and I picked it up a little while back. I need some sort of middle ground between Homer and Tolkien, my other current reads. thanks for reading, friends <3