Being in your 20s is special because for the first time in your life, you start to have memories that span over a decade. When you’re ten years old and younger, ‘the past ten years’ is all you know. They’re not memories; they’re just your life. In your teens, ‘the past ten years’ include your childhood, but in a way, you still feel like a child, so it’s not really valid to say things like, “I remember this one time when I was a kid…” Plus, you’re probably trying desperately to define yourself as an individual, so anything that you associate with childhood is ‘uncool.’ Now, in your 20’s, you have memories of your childhood, high school, and college. You’ve actually known people for ten years or more. You actually know and embrace nostalgia. It feels good talking to other twenty-somethings about things like that episode of Rocko’s Modern Life when they made Wacky Delly or about Dunk-a-roos, Caprisun, and Fruit by the Foot. It’s like you’ll never really forget those things because you have a collaborative memory with your generation, and especially with the internet, pop culture references are just a YouTube search away.
But what about memories that weren’t so universal? What about the ones that were specific to your experiences as a child, as a member of your family, and as a resident of your hometown? When I was a preteen, I saved everything. It was almost as if I knew that they would spark a world of memories for me ten years later. Maybe that episode of Full House when Danny, Jesse, and Joey dug up a time capsule from their childhood really got to me. Who knows, but I have SO much stuff. From high school, I mostly just have my photo albums and year books, but from grade school, I have AOL chat conversations printed out, original song lyrics from my aspiring popstar days, photo albums, *NSYNC and O-Town memorabilia (this is an understatement), journals, report cards, phone books, posters, gel pens, old seashells, and so much more. I even have a year’s worth of printouts of Z100’s Weekly Top 40:
Why I printed them out every week for a year is beyond me. I have all of these things though, and I can name a story for everything. Why did I keep them all these years? And why is it mentally exhausting having to let all of it go? I think I’m just a memory hoarder. Yesterday, I caught myself using a word that for years has been forbidden from my everyday vocabulary — regret. I said to myself, But what if in five years I regret throwing this away? That word is a super red flag for me. It just screams out that there is something there that I don’t feel complete with.
As I move out of this house, I fear that my memories of it and of my childhood are going to become hazy. I feel like I’m losing a part of myself because my childhood is a part of me… Isn’t it? Those adolescent years were clearly something I’ve tried to preserve for as long as I could. It was a time when my job title was #1 *NSYNC fanatic. A time when we treated sleepovers like it was a trip to Vegas; we looked forward to it all week. It was a time when I wore a uniform 200 days out of the year. A time when we didn’t even know what ‘organic food’ meant. A time when the only schedule I knew was the after school Nickelodeon shows announced by Stick Stickly. I didn’t care about winning the lottery, but I did want that free trip to the Universal Studios in Orlando Florida, so I could meet Tommy Pickles and Doug Funnie.
This was also a time in my life when my family was the most complete it could be under one household. Five of us at the dinner table. My pop reading home entertainment magazines in bed. My older brother barging into my room, like he was Buzz from Home Alone. My eldest brother cracking up at Chris Farley in the family room that housed one of our two TV’s. My mom on the phone as she smoked a cigarette and cooked dinner. When I leave next week, it will just be my pop here until he sells the house. Obviously, a lot has happened since the 90s and early 2000s, so this sounds much more dramatic than it really is. My brothers have long since moved out, and my mother passed away eight years ago. Once I leave, my part in the story of our house will be over, too. If I throw away all of the keepsakes from my adolescence, will I still be able to tell my story? Or am I just afraid of getting old? Is that what’s really going on here? Sooner or later, I’ll have another decade under my sleeve. How will I try to preserve, then, THREE decades to memory? One of my greatest fears has got to be losing my memory and not being able to tell stories about my parents to my children one day. This is a crazy fear, I know, but I think that’s why I’ve been holding on so tightly to these memories. It is bizarre though, being afraid of losing your memory at 23 years old.
I was with a group of friends the other day, and we were talking about this idea of letting go. Someone suggested taking pictures of everything before I throw them out, but another friend chimed in, “But then you’re living through artificial memories of what used to be.” The memory is inorganic. It’s like using cheat sheets. I really have to let go, and trust that that beautiful time in my life, before my mom passed away, is living out in my life right now, just in a different form. Ten years ago, my nephews, my boyfriend, and some of my dearest friends weren’t in my life. It’s like my mom just reincarnated her love in all of these people for me and for me to share with the world. Why try to hold on to these THINGS (because that’s all they are) when I could be giving it back to the world instead?
In Bikram yoga, we are often taught to breathe in all that’s good and positive in the world, and breathe out everything in our body that doesn’t serve us. This stuff that I’ve collected is not serving its purpose anymore. I’m just attaching the memories that I already have to them. This is going to be a whole new chapter in my life. It’s time to exhale and make room for all things new and inviting.
*NSYNC posters that I finally parted ways with after graduating college.
A seashell that I can’t recall the origin of but I can remember the weight and the texture perfectly.
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The Sum of 20Something 