If there were a meter that measures how attached and invested a person is toward an entity in this world, my meter would go amuck and unable to read mine. In my brain, there is value to every little thing: that dirt that somehow gets stuck onto my otherwise immaculate white shirt, the half of the pair of earphones that refuses to work, the two-year-old flip-flops that hang on despite a loose strap.
I am in a position where I attach worth to something - regardless of shape, size, and relevance - and sometimes, it gets complicated. Throwing away old stuff gets very difficult even when they are essentially useless. For instance, what use would a couple of broken, little pink candles have in one of my drawers?
Well, the succinct answer will always be the same: nothing.
But those tiny candles, despite their mangled disposition, were a reminder of a special night in my life. My roommates surprised me on my 21st birthday with a small round cake peppered to the hilt with 21 candles. I remember laughing, tearing up quite a bit, and getting them to explain why they forced all candles in. (Thankfully, the poor birthday cake didn't catch fire.)
These candles were reduced to disfigured sticks made of pink wax, and surely, they couldn't be of any purpose in my drawer. My brain, meanwhile, tells me to not let go. Don't throw them away, it said, even when the practical part in me itches to grab them and shove them into a nearby trash bin. The still vivid image of that birthday night from a few years ago would always flash, and I knew I will not be able to let go.
This is just one of the many situations that measured just how attached I can get to something despite physical appraisals. In fact, I can now imagine how it would go once my new favorite series of fairy lights start to dim: I won't be able to throw them away, too. They came from a close friend, and at a very timely circumstance to boot.
So I am rendered confused.
Why? I would constantly ask.
What was it with a stained old shirt, a pair of useless earphones, a death trap of a pair of flip-flops, and more that made me want to keep them? If I were a practical person as I paint myself to be, why can't I do something almost methodical like throwing away useless things?
Looking around my old, humdrum gray-walled bedroom and into a box full of useless things in one of its corners, I get the answer. I do attach worth to these things... but the value comes along the memories with them.
If there were a meter that measures how attached and invested a person is toward an entity in this world, my meter would go amuck and unable to read mine. I get so invested into some things because what I associate them with.
A person. A memory. An occasion. Maybe even a word. Or a song. Sometimes, a specific smell.
In the future, it isn't impossible that I will get over them. I will find the motivation and right reasons to throw them away. But for now, they stay.
In a tattered box in the corner of my dull bedroom were my treasures.
