I got a little OCD tonight and decided to organize my junk closet. Ironic, really — a junk closet, when just four months ago I had practically nothing. But there was something comforting about seeing all those boxes, bits of furniture, clothes, and random odds and ends. I took inventory, tossed a few things that had officially crossed into “trash,” and smirked at the fact that I even had junk to throw away.
This summer I was afraid to part with anything. When you have so little, everything feels essential.
Then I reached the back of the closet and found the boxes of photographs I’d taken what feels like a million years ago. They’ve been lost, found, lost again, and somehow found once more — fate finally doing me a small favor.
I sat on the floor and opened them. Report cards from my kids’ grammar school years. Essays. Yearbooks. Little reminders of a life that wasn’t as complicated as the one I’ve been crawling through.
Then the photos. Hundreds of them. My kids, smiling and untouched by the darkness of the world. And, to my surprise, pictures of me — smiling. I don’t allow photos of myself anymore. I rarely smile now. There’s a reason for that, but I’m not ruining my mood by naming it.
The pictures felt surreal. I know those moments happened. I know I looked happy. But I don’t remember what that actually feels like. All I remember is the dark cloud that hovered behind those snapshots, the doom that threaded through everything.
Looking at them made me ache for the storybook life you see on old TV shows — the kind where problems get solved in thirty minutes and no one is living in a B‑rated horror movie.
But this is my life. Unfair, messy, complicated. And somehow, still mine.
Tonight, in a junk closet full of things I didn’t have four months ago, I remembered that I’ve lived more than just the darkness. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel that version of happy again, but at least I know it existed.
Unsure how to feel right now,
K.
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