Backwards Self-Discovery/Reflections

Tell me: everyone has a black hole in their room, right? Right?

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just kidding myself to assuage my guilt for my messiness. The black hole in my room is located in my closet - my clothes are kept on surfaces in my room, like my desk, my chair, my computer desk, the floor... Since grade 11 in high school (that would be junior year to you American It Girls), I'd clean out my locker and just shove all my stuff into my closet. In university (college, to you AIG's) it got even worse because I'd bring home even more junk.

In light of Retro Fashion Girl's impending arrival, I dove head-first into the abyss of the deepest bowels of my closet and finally cleaned it all up - and the experience was actually a lot more pleasant that I'd anticipated. In a way, I was almost sort of glad I left it all to do at a time, left a few years' worth of stuff to go through.

Going through my high school stuff was really poignant. I didn't so much pay attention to my work as I did to the evidence of how I enjoyed my high school experience, and through all this stuff, it reminded me of what sort of person I was.

I could clearly see that I was wildly creative and that I loved colour - my agenda and my binders were so spectacularly decorated! My agenda actually started a sensation, so I'm keeping it. I covered the front in dense, pink-sparkled nail polish and set it off with a gold, stenciled butterfly. It was totally worth the awful stink in my room that lasted a couple days. And if my sketches were any indication, I already had a wicked sense of style back then.

I plastered my locker with the characters of my favourite love stories, as well as my celebrity crushes. I found Lois & Clark fanfiction tucked into my notes, printed out on re-used sheets in the tiniest font and in the most crowded page setting possible to conserve paper. I had crushes on the most undeserving losers, but it was fun and totally overwhelming at the time. I could see that I had a ton of friends because I had a million candy grams, which I couldn't bear to part with then - I re-read them before I threw them out this time, of course.

I was superinvolved in extracurrics - somehow it was possible in high school (I find I can only concentrate on one or two in university). I had the lead in one school play and helped write another, both of which were really well-received. I thrived on being superbusy. And I effortlessly got really high marks - that I really miss.

I basically (re-?)discovered that I was a very vibrant, vivacious girl back in then, and I really like the high school version of myself. And the best part is, I realized that I'm still pretty much the same person. How awesome is that?

The whole experience showed me that it's so easy to forget how you were before because we get caught up in the present, and I think it's incredibly important to reflect on the past. It's both a great way to appreciate yourself and your previous accomplishments, as well as an opportunity to learn from your experiences and evolve as a person. Life passes by so quickly; it's such a rich treat for the mind to take a ride back to "before"!