Opening the Memory Box
I have a box i've been keeping since middle school, that contains letters, post cards, photographs, notes, ticket stubs, newspaper clippings, and more. It basically covers the last 30 years of my life, collecting the people who have been closest to me at various times in my life. The box primarily only gets opened to add something; i rarely open it to read something from it. Every now and then when i do decide to crack it open and pull a few things out, it brings up an intense rush of memories.
Exploring the box can bring on a real variety of feelings. I may pull out an end of year letter from a forgotten high school friend and be delighted to remember the fun we had. I may find a post card signed only with a first name, and be mystified at who that person was who was once close enough to send me mail yet now i struggle to remember who they were. Notes written by old girlfriends or senior photos of old crushes may bring a mix of nostalgia and regret in varying degrees. Finding a graduation invitation brings on confusion (Katie invited me to her party, were we friends? I feel like she was someone who would not have liked me). Notes passed between me and friends may bring on feelings of shame at who i was and how much growing i had yet to do. Newspaper clippings about volunteer work i did elicit a sense of pride.
I started saving these all of things out of compulsion as much as sentimentality (maybe moreso even; all four years of high school i saved every paper, report, and piece of homework i produced, only to immediately toss it all out once i graduated), and i think i carry it on due to momentum more than anything else at this point. Do i not open the box because i do not care, or because i want to avoid the flood of feelings, and the introspection that this pandora's box of emotion brings on (e.g. this post)?
Today the reason i opened the box was a conversation with a friend that led me to telling them a story about a text from an unknown number that i received a year and a half ago, asking if we were pen pals a long time ago. Strangely, the message contained details that make me think it was in fact one of my middle school pen pals, and not a very weirdly targeted scam. If it was in fact her it raises so many questions. We haven't written in nearly 30 years, how did she find my number? It's not widely published, to my knowledge, and certainly not a number i had back then, because 13 year olds did not have cell phones then. And more importantly, what was the path that inspired her to remember me, and then decide to search out a way to get in touch with me, and what was they outcome that they hoped for in doing so? I never responded, so these questions remain unanswered, but i do think about it from time to time. In discussing this with my friend today, i wondered which would be stranger, for my pen pal to seek out contact with a person she only knew through the postal service three decades ago, or for me to respond to her text message, a year and a half later, saying yep that's me. We never came to a conclusion.
What's curious is the feeling that there is a big metaphorical hole in the box, that is me. All of these notes and letters and cards are not written by me; instead these are everyone else's impressions of me. Was i really the person who they thought i was? Am i now who i thought i would turn out to be? If we met today would things have been the same?
Anyway, Heather from Wisconsin, if you do find this, yes that was me, and we became pen pals through Wizard Magazine, not through Inquest. And everyone else, maybe take some time to open your boxes and see what's inside too.