Member-only story
Do We Write the Story, or Is the Story Writing You?
Where does choice end and fate begin? I went looking for the line
Most hoarders won’t admit to their secret.
Unless you drop into their house and they’re forced to explain.
I’ve lived an embarrassing life of hoarding. Not the kind where you can’t reach the kitchen sink. Not towers of junk or overflowing bags. Mine was quieter. Paperwork. Bills. Handbags stuffed full of receipts. Pieces of a life I wasn’t ready to let go of.
The kind of hoarding that leaves a child standing in front of boxes, wondering what her mother is really holding onto.
I’ve suffered from loss in my life. My daughter says that’s why I hold on, not to the things, but to the memory of what was. And over the past few years, I’ve been slowly letting it go.
Forty years of holding on. Box by box, I’ve started releasing the story I thought I needed to keep. A steady effort shaped by journaling and repeated questioning. To rewrite the future I once believed was already written for me.
The box I left until last
The other day, I cursed under my breath while sorting through another box. Mostly bills. But tucked between the rubbish were a few old notebooks. The…
