In the midst of moving today and for the next week or so. This isn't the first time I've moved, but I think this is the first time I've gone this deeply into my own past. I'm digging into the depths of my and my brother's childhood, sneezing in the dust clouds of a lifetime. School notebooks going back to early highschool, full of doodles, oddly synched up in their themes to content of the lesson. Signs and portents of who are today in every line. Treasured texts, that opened the door to the world of the mind for us, from the Hardy Boys to the heights of fantasy, to books of science and car repair and philosophy. RPG modules and books, some in pieces, like scattered dreams or broken archeological relics that will never tell the whole story or its meaning. Half-formed, maddeningly scribbled home-brewed campaigns, most of which never left the ground. Whole towns of PCs and NPCs written up and stuffed into binders, ideas that were birthed incomplete. Who they were or might have been can't be told from the numbers and the names alone. Lovingly-crafted illustrations of the heroes of old, our heroes, whose names we still invoke with reverence today.
And of course, a solid box full of well-meaning but poorly executed gifts over the years. My German relatives must have given me about 4 books large photo books over the years, all cleaving to the "Das Ist Hamburg" theme.
Still I can't help feeling a little twinge of sadness as I toss things into the garbage, though they are completely useless. It's not that I'm a pack rat. I just have a habit of making totems out of things. And it's weird, to look back over who we were and are today....and to not feel the things these people felt, in a sense to not know them anymore. I suppose a lot of people transition to being an adult with the same feelings and get over it. But I don't really want to. Nostalgia is a wound whose pain never goes away, and sometimes I feel like life is trying to take my dreams of a golden, simpler time from my unwilling hands. I want to get back to how I used to feel, when the world was a place full of magic that was stronger than pain, worry and loss. To when I smiled more than I frowned, celebrated more than I hated.
And yet I know I'll be doing this again, many more times over my life.
And Vector, I'm sorry to hear about your troubles. You'll get through it though, you're strong.