I'm currently in the process of making an inventory of everything I own. A modest bit of curation. At least that's how I'm romanticizing it. I'm very close to finding out the value of my room, how much I'd be losing if this all burned to the fucking ground.
I've always been fascinated by the accumulation of objects, and it makes me sad to admit that most of what I've accumulated is mass-produced garbage. It makes me feel very far from the kind of woman I want to be because I'm surrounded by imitations, essentially what everyone else has.
"Paperbacks and postcards, Jenny."
"It's all you need, isn't it?"
But I've become somewhat practical. I can't be lining up rocks and seashells on my window sills. I can't tolerate an ugly antique bust staring at me in the middle of the night. I don't go off to exotic places where strangers can give me unique trinkets to remember them by.
I'm not what I own, sure, but I'm starting to think that building a beautiful nest is the most I can do in life.
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There are so many things that I want to get into, but hobbies are expensive, I'm running out of space, and I'd honestly rather waste my time scoffing at children on the internet.
I'm listening to Titanic Rising for the millionth time, and I just remembered that I used to write poems. I also used to kiss on the mouth.
I lost a day reading about paper and fountain pens, but then I told myself that I'd never buy a notebook ever again after splurging on a fancy-ass tablet. My handwriting on it is pretty "lifelike," and I can upload journal pages to the cloud, but of course, it's not quite the same. There's no drama. There's no ceremony.
Mom got rid of our deteriorating papers when she cleaned out the stairs cupboard. Skimming my old notebooks was unsettling, like I was going through someone else's shit.
I let her throw it all away because the thoughts of a 20-year-old aren't valuable. They might have been at some point, but not anymore.