I have the best mom and dad in the world in the sense that they will drive their convertible down from Wisconsin to pick their son up for a birthday brunch and then take him to a great birthday brunch where he will sit on a patio, down a few mimosas, babble about what he has been up to and then bring him back to his apartment where they will then pop open the trunk and say:
"Here. Here's all your stuff from being a kid. Do what you want with it."
Inside the small trunk of their Mustang are boxes and boxes of my childhood.
"Wait... what? What?" I repeatedly stumble out as I stand staring at these brown cardboard boxes.
"B, you've been out of the house for almost nine years. It's time to get this out of my house!" My mom says lifting one of the boxes of out of the trunk.
And now I have boxes in my apartment filled with my childhood life.
I'm turning twenty-six in five days. This, of course, means a lot of things. I won't be twenty-five anymore. That's one thing. I'm still in my mid-twenties. I am only four years from being thirty. I have been alive for almost 9,940 days. Apparently, it also means your parents don't want to to hold on to your previous years things and it's time to figure out what you're going to do with it all.
"So, what are you going to do with it all?" Josh asks me while walking down Broadway a few afternoons ago.
"I dunno... I mean, I have to go through it and see what there is that I'd want to keep. If there is anything. The hard part of it is that I actually have to get rid of stuff that I have so much attachment to."
Josh shakes his head as we turn down the corner dodging a cab.
I know what that head shake means. I see it all the time. It means: You're too sensitive. I saw myself do that same head shake last night as I had a glass of wine and some music playing as I started ripping open the taped boxes. Like Christmas, each box was like a surprise. One was filled with, ahem(I can't believe I'm admitting this), Beanie Babies. One was filled with my pencil collection. As I pulled each one open, I started to remember where all the stuff was in my room and who bought me what. All the stuff was making me want to be a kid again. I would do anything to be that age again!
Except when it came to the last box... from my senior year of high school. Now, I'm not too sure how well you know me, but Senior year I was straight. Yup. It's true. And senior year, I sort of had a girlfriend. We did things that girlfriends and boyfriends do. We gave each other gifts. We took each other to dances(and apparently I was so straight I kept the corsage she gave me in a Ziplock baggy) and we also wrote notes to each other. Many notes. I mean, probably seven notes a day.
I read them for hours. Literally. One bottle of wine later and a stack of old notebook love letters that read things like: "You're the best guy I have ever met..." or "Homecoming will be the most romantic night of our life." or " I can't wait for us to travel around the world together!" You know, things you say when you're naive and think you're straight.
But the second to last note got me. It read: "I'm so glad to know that we will always have each other for the rest of our lives..." Underneath that she signed it with a heart and her name.
That's not true. Years after that letter was written she found out that I was gay and it devastated her and I went in to this huge depression that I had let everyone down. We stopped talking and I recently heard that she is married and pregnant and a flight attendant and that she is as happy as she can be living in her grandmother's house she recently inherited.
I folded the notes back up and put them away. I went in to the bathroom to brush my teeth to get ready for bed.
In five days I am going to be twenty-six. And though there are many times where I am terrified of what the years ahead will be like and how I would love to just go back and be young... there are those moments when you realize there is no turning around because you have come too far to know that it has to only get better as you get older. No more collecting stuffed animals or pencils or stickers. And no more pretending to have to be something you knew you never where just to make others happy.
In five days I am totally going to be twenty-six and not married to someone that doesn't make me happy and not living in a place that would bum me out and not in a job that makes me miserable to wake up for.
If I had a box to put my life in now, it would be filled with a whole bunch of mistakes with a lot more life lessons and tucked in between the empty spaces: contentment.
