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[Narrator] I kept this box hidden
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in my room as a teenager.
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Whenever something bad happened,
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I’d nip a piece of evidence from the scene,
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take it home, and place it in the box.
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The self-pity was delicious, but I think the real reason
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I kept the box was because it made me feel in control.
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At that age, 13, 15, 17, the future felt inscrutable
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and the present moment hot to the touch,
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but the past, the past was manageable, material,
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and I thought maybe if I studied this stuff closely enough,
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I could outsmart the entrenched forces that produced
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life’s least favorite memories and secure a future
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free of hospital trips and heartbreak.
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Years later, when my parents were moving out
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of my childhood home, my mom found
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the box and called me up.
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[phone ringing] What do you want me to do with this?
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Do you want me to ship it to you or can I toss it?
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She lowered her voice to a whisper.
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Please let me toss it.
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What if you become famous one day?
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A museum might want these things, or a documentary crew.
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Before I was born, before my big sisters
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were born, my parents had a son.
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He was very sick and when he was a year old, he passed away.
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I never met my brother, but growing up,
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I thought about him when I looked at my mom.
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She always wore this delicate locket
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that held a photo of him, his hair golden like mine,
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an oxygen tube running under his nose.
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The locket taught me how my mother carries the past,
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in fragments, small and light, clasped around her neck
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where she can feel its gentle weight.
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My father taught me that the past,
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all of it, belongs in boxes.
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He prefers it live in the back of the garage,
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coated in a five-year dust and unearthed on strange nights
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when the brackish happiness of nostalgia finds him.
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A few months after my parents moved out,
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I decided with the utmost melodrama to flee the country.
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I had finally ended a bad relationship
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in San Francisco and I needed space,
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7,914 miles to be precise.
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This was one of those relationships
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that’s especially easy to get into when you’re 22,
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where the contours of your person are constantly
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critiqued and tugged on till they collapse.
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By the end I was less identifiably human being
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and more a sickly puddle of melted creamsicle.
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I had been encouraged to listen to different music,
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redecorate my apartment, distance myself
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from my friends, change the way I dress,
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quit my job, talk less to my family,
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and question the reliability of my memory.
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After the breakup, I wanted nothing
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to belong to me, not even a place.
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I’d been pickpocketed of San Francisco.
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I packed the backpack.
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Four shirts, two pairs of shoes,
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a water purifier I never used,
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and something like 50 Clif Bars.
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I boarded my flight at 6:00 in the morning.
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I was gone for 10 months.
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The first to croak was my phone.
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It was the second month of the trip
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and I was in a Thai village.
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By Vietnam, my laptop was gone.
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My raincoat disintegrated in Slovenia.
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In Indonesia, my sandals surrendered
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to a manure-filled ditch.
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My hard drive died in Greece.
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When I flew home to my parents’ apartment,
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I was a woman free of things.
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I stayed mostly indoors because I didn’t want
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to be near other people’s stuff.
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What if it somehow started to belong to me?
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I hated ownership, how it was an antecedent to loss.
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One night, I reluctantly went for a walk with my mom,
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tethering myself to Earth with our portly beagle.
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As we passed a garage sale, we both paused,
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staring at the encyclopedia of unwanted junk
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sprawled out on the green lawn.
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My mom became serious.
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You know, you can keep your old clothes,
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postcards, trinkets, but you can’t
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weld permanence into your life.
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Your son still dies.
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As we headed towards home, my mom turned to me,
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remembering, You never told me
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what you wanted me to do with that box.
