I've always had a penchant for storing keepsakes, causing my red-and-blue box of memories to overflow for years now. Throughout high school, it's been filled with mementos–those craft-ish letters and cards high school students can't seem to get enough of (the more it deviates from the traditional sheet-of-paper-inside-an-envelope format, the better), flower petals, charms, puzzle pieces, scribbled-on table napkins, flyers, notes inside small bottle jars and nets, graduation pictures.
Even as I entered college, my collection of mementos grew. Class cards (before they slipped away from the computerized registration consciousness), ID's, letters I didn't think would exist in college, receipts, doodles by seatmates while waiting for professors, paper wrappers of gifts, bottle caps from night-outs I deemed must not be forgotten, personalized coaster.
Additionally, my planners for the past few years serve dual purpose. One is to keep me on track of dates, another is to be a place where I keep my stash of seemingly pointless souvenirs–movie tickets, theater tickets, concert tickets, bus tickets, Form 5's, community tax certificates, library cards, loyalty cards, business cards, disembodied journal pages...
Not only is this habit limited to tangible things. Often, I even plan my online presence (and the posts I make) with the goal of making sure that I will be able to look back at it, sometime in the future.
It this this as yet undefined time of finally unearthing the contents of the chock-full containers that prompts me to stash away fragments of evidences of a life in progress–evidences proving to myself that this present time happened, that I've been in this place with these people, that I heard this with my own ears, that I witnessed this happen, that at one point, I felt and underwent things I wouldn't have had I not stepped up, had I not dared.
It's not so much as clinging to the past as assuring myself that my future self will be reminded that I filled up my years with good company and good (and not-always-good) experiences. I know an absurd amount of keepsakes doesn't determine a good life lived, but for now, it is my assurance.
Until that day that I find the time to sit down and go over each bit of memory I've collected, or until I find the confidence that I am enough a proof of a fulfilled existence, I will count on the little things I tuck away that remind me of what was and will be.
