i've kept every sticky note, letter, mindless, simple gift ever given to me by a friend. every memory, from valentine's day cards to ticket stubs. i'm a hoarder, but of a very specific breed: a scrapbook's worth of paper with no home and no purpose. more akin to an archivist for no one. i started crying yesterday because i couldn't find my memory box, the shoebox i've stuffed all of my sentimental nothing into. i still can't find it. i'm afraid someone threw it away. (the box is full of letters and notes from my friends, starting from 8th grade. i go off to college in a week.) but if that someone saw it as trash, they were probably right. i have old letters from people i haven't talked to in years, that hate me now, all crammed in this little shoebox because i could never bring myself to throw them away. my own personal museum of all the relationships i've let die of starvation, hung taxidermic and pointless within the walls of my heart and cluttering the floors of my room. exhibit a: when i broke up with my first girlfriend, i opened my memory box and burned the letters she'd given me. but, i went through them first so i could keep the ones i couldn't bear to get rid of. i'm a hoarder. i latch onto every crumb of affection i've ever been given and never throw it away. wouldn't you? exhibit b: i was an angry child i am an angry adult i have spent my life roaming the desert of a lonely god, and finding people willing to love me is a long and empty walk from one oasis to another, with nothing to show for it but a shrine made up of immortal-dead remnants of every person i've ever known. i have been alone before and i never know if i'll be alone again. experience hath granted me the wisdom to hold onto, dig my claws into what is not guaranteed. so yes, i am a hoarder, and, exhibit c: one day i will die alone surrounded by garbage and words that some person out in the world doesn't even remember writing, and i won't be able to bring it with me into the black abyss of wherever else and they will clean out my house after i am dead and throw it all away. but for now i'll keep looking for my memory box, because it's gotta be around here somewhere. i really do hope it's around here somewhere.