The Resurrection

Today was the one day this week where I didn't have to play mom for a needy child and instead decided to embrace my inner child by watching old Jem episodes and cleaning out my time capsules. I am well aware that a time capsule is meant to be buried and opened by a person gazillions of years after I've bitten it, but being buried in my closet is damn near close enough.

When I find myself home alone, I try (key word here) to be productive...it makes the pain of unemployment lessen a bit. Being the oldest (and only) woman-child in my household, I am given my own room and allowed to redecorate. This requires me to clean, usually a task I reserve for desperation, depression or a caffeine super-buzz, but today was different. This Friday was what I like to refer to as "Kaitlin's Trip down Nostalgia Road", filled with pictures of friends in silly outfits circa 1999 and all my bad poetry.

As a teenager, I kept a memory box for each year I was in school. Anything and everything from that year (that includes, I kid you not, empty tins of mints and Sam Goody receipts) was smashed into a shoe box (probably Sketchers) and left to rot on my mom's side of the closet.

As I palmed every article, examining each item carefully for relevance, it crossed my mind that these boxes were pieces of me (god I hate that song), things I probably should have tossed out but that were critical in my growing period. Now that I've grown up enough to have taken that path to find myself, I no longer need these boxes.

I kept them anyway. Besides, I'm going to need to read my next boyfriend a little bit of that poetry...