So, turning over a new leaf from the past twelve years, on Monday I actually decided to take her seriously. I will be the first to admit that although I am painstakingly neat about all things visual -- handwriting, my bulletin board, any art project that I have ever done -- I am regrettably a failure in three dimensions. I have never been able to keep my stuff organized, and it has stretched beyond the ground of laziness and simply into bad habit. It isn't just the clothes that I periodically scrape from the middle of the floor and put them where they belong, it is every single surface of my room (my desk, the shelves above my desk, the large shelves holding books and shoes and art projects, my bedside table) is covered in paper. Binders. Books. Art projects. CDs. Electronics. Dust (simply because I choose to pretend that these messes do not exist rather than take care of them).
Am I a slob? Perhaps. I don't think my thoughts are quite so haphazard and disorganized, but there is just something about me that has been entirely incapable of bringing myself to keep my living space tidy. It has gotten to the point where I spend literally no time at all in my own room because I can't stand to be around the disgusting mess that I have let accumulate. It's even more than a bad habit -- it is a deep loathing (for the mess and for myself for letting it get so bad) that I don't like to face because it just discourages me.
But on Monday I held my nose, squeezed my eyes shut, and dove headfirst into a knee-high (maybe higher?) pile of junk sandwiched between my futon and the wall of my closet, hiding behind a bedside stand that failed to conceal its existence. Beneath a few useless bags and posters that I hadn't had the heart to throw out, I found a mountain of notebooks and binders (from back when I actually used binders to keep my stuff organized -- we're talking like freshman and sophomore year here).
Ultimately, I decided that the best decision would be to simply throw all of it away, regardless of how reluctant I was about trashing an entire year's worth of hard work. If I was going to find a gem of something in the midst of my old binders from freshman year, I would have already done it instead of letting them sit shoved in the corner and collect dust. But I did get the opportunity to go through some of the notebooks (just out of curiosity) and I was pretty surprised at what I discovered.
Here I was, thinking that I had found my voice in eighth grade during the Power of the Pen season, when I finally learned how to think outside the box and write about things that meant something to me. But the writing that I found from freshman and sophomore year was ridiculous. Of course, I could write a short story if I really sat down and tried to make it presentable -- but my tone was so undeveloped, my style so crude. Did I even think about words before I wrote them down?
The funny thing is, I definitely thought that I did do that. And I probably did, probably more than most of the people in my English classes. But I realized that I only remember the randomly good pieces of freshman-year writing of which I am still proud today -- I forget all of the stupid ones. I struggled to express my thoughts and feelings and reading what I once thought was eloquent and descriptive and emotional, I realized truly how far I have come as a writer -- and a person -- throughout high school.
Instead of writing nonsense about boys that I was confused about, instead of spewing out my most idiotic and repetitive thoughts over and over and over again on paper, I now write about things that matter to me. I write about things that will have significance (at least a little bit) in a few years. I have learned how to express myself and convey emotions in complex and far more eloquent ways. I don't think this is just development as a writer, though -- I can't help but believe that my improvement in expressing myself has stemmed also from the fact that I have learned how to understand myself. Reading my writing from freshman and sophomore year brought those days back vividly in my memory, and it is only in remembering them from my senior-year perspective that I realize how much I have learned -- and accepted -- about myself and the people around me. It happened so gradually, so subtly that I didn't realize it was even taking place. But today during swim practice when I was thinking about how happy I am to be emotionally stable for my senior year, I realized that I have learned how to stand on my own two feet.
As I came to the realization that I have learned how to be happy with who I am regardless of who feels the same, I felt at peace. I felt mature. I felt free.
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