27 Tupperwares

Adventures in archaeology of my own mind. An essay on memory, PTSD recovery, and making sense of my life through the collected scraps I held onto all these years.

Hello beloved human and hello Friday.

I’ve always loved Friday. You can just count on it unlike so many things you can’t count on when you are living a life while fighting serious mental illness. But the goodness of Friday – that is something that I trust. I know it will happen weekly, no matter my mood, symptoms or residual exhaustion from the week. And it always holds such promise – one more day of work and then – A WHOLE WEEKEND (to sleep). Or, if you’re me, a whole weekend to sleep and explore the 35 odd years that came before today.

Such a weekend plan sounds undoubtedly odd but over holiday break, I began to organize all that I’ve collected over the years – macaroni art projects, diaries, plane tickets, teachers notes, journals (are they different from diaries?), report cards, schoolwork and health records – and I have a long way to go to make sense of it all. The sheer mass of material is astounding. I actually have twenty-seven 16-gallon tupperwares that hold everything from nur…