Souvenirs And Goodbyes.
Midnight productivity pesters me too much; for it arrives unannounced and leaves me prone to the riptide of emotions to follow.
The motivation to turn my room upside down arrives at the odd occasion and hour; for it’s trapped under the debris of my mind, without the slightest space to wriggle out. But this time, I held on to it before it spirals away in the vortex of thoughts again.
The moment I perceived the room to be a reflection of my mind, the urge to fix it never ran this high. Once the silences had resumed their place in the house, I was set to declutter the mess that has creeped it’s way stealthily in my room; for it’d turned the little cuboid I’d spent my blood sweat and tears on into shambles; much like the state of my head.
An hour was what it took for me to separate the futile from the functional; which left me with space so capacious, I was astounded; for I like to call myself a hoarder of memories, and as an accumulator of objects across a broad spectrum; from obsolete chocolate wrappers to perfumes and bracelets, I’m often left with space so scant, that no amount of expanse will ever be adequate to accommodate these takeaways from the past.
I scrutinized the pile of articles on the floor that once resided in my cupboard. But before I did anything, I knew what I was about to relinquish. So I dived in; and there it was, old textbooks full of handwritten notes and inside jokes; all the moments stored safely between these pages.
While collecting memories as tokens is my guilty pleasure, I restrain myself from revisiting them; nostalgia isn’t that kind. But it was too late, I was buried knee deep in them, reminiscing. Tidying up this box wasn’t important anymore.
Humans are strange creatures. We claim to hate clutter, but still hold on to objects as souvenirs and refuse to let go; and I’m no exception to it.
We fill ourselves with memories yet are left empty when the objects related to them are gone, which is why I stacked them away in a corner; for I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Not just yet.
–Ananya Sharma
SYBSc (2021-2024)