Spring cleaning. I guess I could call it that even if it’s actually what I do every summer. Usually, it’s a full day job. I tear apart my room, and then reorganize several things so that there’s just enough space for the new things I’d accumulated throughout the year. My room usually ends up looking a heck of a lot neater, albeit with telltale signs of a lazy shift-and-stuff job.
It was easier those earlier years. Every time I came across something I couldn’t bring myself to throw away, I would be able to convince myself that it would come in handy sometime next year. This time, however, I couldn’t do it. I’ll be leaving in exactly a month from now and won’t be back home for a year. I won’t be able to bring much over and even so, what’s the use of high school textbooks? That’s like child’s play now. So, basically, I can no longer lie to myself. With that, Spring cleaning had somehow gone on for days. My room is still in a state of fashionable disarray and it shows no sign of neater pastures. Example: my door can only be opened to a sliver of about 3 inches before everything else behind it, be it my luggage bags or my clothes, jams it right up. Being the contented Taurus that I am, I’ve learnt to suck in my tummy and slip in and out of that 3 inch crevice. The good thing about this tight situation is that I haven’t heard my mom nag about tidying up since the jam. I guess she can’t get in.
I can’t complain though. I put myself in that position by being the obsessive hoarder that I am. I sat amidst the mess – old papers and projects I had done years ago, syllabi and criterion sheets with grades and teacher comments, crumpled sheets with amusing notes scrawled across them, even embarrassingly lovey-dovey poems and songs I had written dating back to when I was in my early tweens (You don’t want to know). They could possibly be referred to as my life’s work. Yet, there I was, volunteering to make the decision on whether to keep (and let collect dust) or to chuck. Neither seemed appealing or even, vaguely appropriate for what had been such fixtures in my world.
It was really a matter of “do-or-hoard-forevermore”.
…
My entire Extended Essay folder, which includes hundreds of pages of (expensive, mind you) research, numerous drafts and questionnaires, is now in a trash bag ready for recycling. I gave it some good company too – the Personal Project journal pages I had saved, which includes photographs and handwritten notes I had spent many painstaking hours copying out.
It may not sound like a lot but those two projects collectively took two whole years of my life to complete. That’s a big deal. I mean, if you want to start tossing, why not start off with a grand gesture, right?
They’re still in the bag. I left it by the pile of newspapers a day ago for my mom to look through. I’m secretly praying that she’ll decide to keep some of it, but somehow, she hasn’t gotten round to it yet and the wait is getting desperate.
It’s sitting right there in plain sight, probably saying, “Are you sure about this?”
Perhaps it’ll get easier later on. I really hope so, because it’s taking all of my self-control not to sneak that little black bag back into my room and to force it into that tiny space between the yellowing Sweet Valley books and the ancient speakers that haven’t worked since…ever.
