Reminders.

Cleaning my room, looking around I find that I leave myself little reminders of the ones I love, and the ones who love me. I used to think that I kept these things because I couldn’t let go of them, because I was a pack rat. In a way that’s true, but mostly, I think I keep these things, these little trinkets that to the untrained eye may be stupid junk, for a very specific reason. I keep them because when I’m cleaning my room I see them and think of the person they remind me of, and it always makes me smile. I love to reminisce, and this helps me do it.

For example, yesterday I saw a pink dinosaur water bottle, made for children, purchased for adults. The liquid inside that they had the audacity to call juice, tasted like swamp water. And not the swamp water that kids make at soda machines where they mix them all together, but actual moss filled swamp water. That was the first thing I remembered when I saw the bottle, but then I remembered why I had it in the first place. My twin, who actually is not my real twin so much as me in another body because of the ridiculous amount of things we have in common, that’s who I had this one for. I bought us both one, she loves dinosaurs and I saw them at the store and knew we had to have a pair. Twins need little twins. Then the bottle that reminded me of her reminded me of her laugh, how it was contagious and could always brighten my day. I wish I could bottle that laugh and sell it, I would probably get rich pretty fast.

I put the bottle down and continued cleaning. Next find: a normal looking, old, piece of paper, folded and unfolded nearly a million times. It’s a letter I have had for 4 years from one of my best friends back home. It always makes me laugh because she is a writer, a great writer, and her letter was in a sense a short story. It was a story about how the pen she was writing with was coming to life and having a conversation with her, about me. I love her handwriting, and I love that letter.

I leave myself little reminders of the ones I love, and the ones who love me.