Skeletons in the closet

First day of summer came and went past on the 21st of this month without more than a whisper. But yours truly had taken it upon himself to clean out the skeletons/memories in the closet. I had been planning to do this when spring started but I've been rather tardy with all the cleaning up stuff these days.

This was all triggered by the fact that I lost my swim shorts in the gym - again (Yeah, I do realise how that sounds but you're wrong.) and after much searching in the almost empty lost and found bin, I gave up. You see anything you leave in the gym seems to automatically become the property of some unknown ghost that likes to steal the shorts. Any ghost that haunts a gym has to be a gay ghost! This is the third time I am losing shorts that I left behind and which disappeared when I came back for it. Anyways, I decided that this was the perfect time to buy new ones.

I went to buy swim shorts, which I ended up buying two of, and also bought two shirts and a t-shirt which I totally don’t need. Yes. I know I have a problem. I have in fact started tracking the clothes I buy to make myself realise that I am buying way too many. God knows I could save a lot of money by not buying any more clothes. It’s not like I need them. Now shoes, you need! All 15 of them. :)

I came home after my brief shopping and found that I didn’t have any space in my closet to hang them! Here is a before and after picture of my lovely closet.

Before:





















After:




















And now tada, I have space! See all those empty hangers. All hangers where I can hang my future clothes!

Each time I go through my closet looking for stuff to throw out I always end up reading a lot of stuff that I really should not be holding on to. I found cards from my parents for my birthday when in college. I found the little pieces of paper that had the handwriting of guys I had had crushes on in college. One was a note left for me when he didn’t find me in my room. One was a timetable that this other guy had drawn out for me after I had helped him select classes. Then I found a diary. I think 90 percent of my skeletons are in that diary.

It’s actually a tattered old, dirty looking diary at the bottom of one of those cardboard boxes in my closet. It used to have company with a red, lively looking diary where in fact I had written down 4 years of pining in code. The code was simply the usage of animal names instead of people. I had assigned one animal for each person I knew so most people could not have guessed directly who I was writing about. But eventually when I left college I felt that it was a very dangerous one since if somebody who knew me read it, they would know who I was writing about. Personally I guess I didn’t really care, but somehow it was a bond that we both had taken and we had decided to destroy every piece of evidence of our love. So while he had in fact burnt off the stuff he had, I couldn’t bring myself to burn it but I did go out to the dump near my house and personally place it gently on the top and never looked back. That was the last I saw of it. But that red diary had a friend and I did write some of the rough drafts of some of the cards I sent to this guy in this other diary. So this diary has some stuff that I had sent in my cards to him.

As I read it I couldn’t help think that I was really bold back then. The amount of outpouring of feelings is something that I would never do even today. There was a certain dignity in those hidden feelings expressed as they were. Hoping that they would never find their way into the wrong hands but never fearing.

I do love my ex-soul mate very much and think highly of him but I can’t help wonder if I can deny that I resent him just a little bit today. I think he dragged me deeper into the closet than I would probably have been otherwise. He taught me fear. But for better or for worse, if I had a chance I would still do it all over again. Love is simply worth all the pain. Fear Vs being careful. It’s a thin line.

I found this poem that I wrote to this other guy in which I pretty much declared that I love him. It was a little cheesy but very daring. I had worded it in such a way that I had complete deniability but really I was professing to him that what I felt for him was a stronger feeling that was beyond friendship. But luckily when I wrote it, he was already in a different city and I knew I would never really see him again in my life. I was lamenting that fact that I didn’t have a picture of him. I never did see him again but I remember that he had replied to that with a photo is his. I still have it. This was a brief love in my first year. I met my guy the next year.

I went through the diary and quickly kept it back at the bottom of my box in my closet to be opened another day yet again. It just evokes and awakens feelings long forgotten of past loves and past hurts, past experiences and past lessons. id rather leave them settled down in my subconscious rather than try to draw them out and let the old brain churn out another round of processing for about a week or so. And yet, I can’t throw this one out. It’s my last link to a past that made me who I am today.

Mood: Pensive.

Some more pictures of my cleaning efforts.

All the junk I threw away. Old shoe boxes, wrappers of martini glasses I recently bought. I always wonder why I keep boxes from stuff I bought, since I hardly ever return any of them.
















I rearranged my mantle.