Cool, Calm & Contentious - Merrill Markoe [66]
As I moved from room to room, I recalled performing this same unpleasant task during the evacuation of 1993. Back then I’d decided that I would sacrifice all the albums full of the nineties, since presumably there was more ahead. This time the present seemed more pleasant than the past. A new relationship meant a new unfolding narrative. That made sense right now, but would it after everything had been reduced to cinders? What about saving letters from old boyfriends to use as comedy material? Was any of this crap worth money now just because it was old?
No, no, no, I had to argue, grabbing myself by some imaginary lapels that were not on the T-shirt I was wearing. Do NOT pursue that line of thinking. The only place that road can lead is to your own segment on Hoarders.
I quickly changed my focus to the three big plastic tubs full of my diaries in the guest room closet: occasional writings that I’d been updating since I was about eight. Did I really want to relive details like “My hair was really oily today”? Or “Lyn’s party was horrible. I borrowed a muumuu from Kathy because I thought everyone would be wearing them but only three people did”? Or “Oh God, please please let Jeff call me and I will promise to become a devout Buddhist”?
Absolutely not, I thought, turning my back on them but not really finding it possible to walk away without first packing the little pink-and-red vinyl diaries with the fake locks from elementary school because … well … come on! Aww! My little eight-year-old self, sunburned and overweight, hair pulled back in a too tight ponytail the way my mother insisted, writing embarrassing things I never in a million years could have imagined my much older self would one day not only find funny but reexperience, with almost as much intense embarrassment as I’d felt when I originally wrote them.
I rifled through the messy closet in the guest bedroom, in which I had stashed junior high school drawings of horses, membership cards for stupid fan clubs, and scrapbooks full of photos of cute boys I loved who were on the TV shows I watched. There were also annotated programs from the Beatles concerts I attended and an old pink plastic box that I bought with my allowance when I was ten, embossed with a drawing of a teenage girl wearing a ponytail and talking on the phone alongside the words “My Treasures!” I knew it was stupid and cheesy-looking even back in grade school. But what kind of cold, unfeeling monster would let a “My Treasures!” box melt into a pink puddle?
Next I hit the bathroom. Moisturizer? Definitely. I’d need that. And one lipstick. No, two … er … five. Definitely mascara. And under-eye concealer. Got to have my bite guard, my hot rollers, and just this one other lipstick. And this tube of cortisone cream. And this bottle of Wellbutrin. And my toothbrush, and that’s all. Oh my God! Clothes! Better go pack some clothes! But what clothes, exactly? Where was I going? To some motel with a small, kidney-shaped pool that looked out onto a freeway in a nearby city that I had intentionally avoided visiting for years. There I would sit on a musty-smelling bed scrutinizing aerial footage of televised fire devastation for signs of what was happening to my neighborhood. Not really a dress-for-success or formal-evening-wear kind of occasion. Unless all the cheap rooms were booked and I wound up in some overpriced but more glamorous hotel, where the other guests would shun me if I didn’t have something nice to wear in the dining room. That meant I had to bring along good clothes? How long was I going to have to stay?
During the course of this rambling internal debate, in which I simultaneously undervalued and overvalued everything in my possession, I realized I’d been pulling clothes off hangers in a frenzy of dissociated energy and throwing them into a suitcase.