Recently, I acquired Joan Didion’s posthumously published work, Notes to John, from the library. The book was subject to much controversy, raising questions about the ethicality of publishing letters or notes that may not have been intended for the public eye. I began reading with a sense of apprehension, guilt even. Discussing everything from her daughter’s struggles with alcoholism to Didion’s own struggles with mental health, the work consists of Didion’s meticulously written notes to John detailing the sessions she had with a psychiatrist she saw in 1999.
It’s possible that this book was never supposed to be published at all. Its contents were found lurking in a box near her desk after her death. As I read it, I wondered if I should be reading it at all, if my curiosity about an author I admired should really outweigh the semblance of privacy she might have wanted to maintain (if she’d wanted to keep these notes private at all).
But more than anything, reading these leftovers of another person’s life reminded me of another memory. I had a very philosophical history teacher my freshman year of high school, and from a conversation with him emerged a discussion about how different the science and practice of history would be decades or centuries from now. Excavation and archaeological study would involve less digging through physical dirt and more digital: the archives we dig through might be hidden USBs, e-mail drafts and people’s notes apps instead.
This very rambling train of thought brought me to the question that inspired my very rambling thoughts in this piece: What do my archives look like? What have I kept that I’d like to get rid of? What have I thrown away or deleted that I wish was still around?
It’s a point in my archives’ favor that I’m a chronic hoarder: they may be messy and unhinged, but they’ll be comprehensive.
My self-collected histories go back at least 15 years, to a reusable plastic cup on my bookshelf from Olive Garden that I got on my fifth birthday with my childhood best friend. A “throwback” to a time where Olive Garden was a fancy restaurant and fettuccine alfredo was a rare delicacy, not a weeknight staple. From that same era of my life I have a painting of the Truffula trees from the Lorax — my sixth birthday, a day where there was a lot of laughter and pink paint splattered across my mom’s dress.
My very first Build-A-Bears: Snowflake and Peanut Butter, dressed in baby onesies my mom bought from Costco. Age seven is marked with a dream jar. My second grade teacher had us all read The BFG, who used to collect good and bad dreams and store them on his shelf. I made up a silly little dream about my cousin and me, which sits on my bookshelf now.
Then there’s my very first “letters” box, an old chocolate box that was covered in red wrapping paper. Originally it was for a “dress as your favorite author” day when 8-year old me dressed as Laura Ingalls Wilder and wanted her very own tin box to carry around. Now, it holds an amalgamation: birthday cards from friends I left in California 10 years ago, whose names I know by heart but faces I cannot remember. A friendship bracelet from a girl I was best friends with in the third grade who I didn’t even know by the next year when I moved schools and we we were separated. A plastic frisbee, signed by everyone I knew in kindergarten and first grade when I first left Austin to move to California.
Eleven is when we turn digital: the first pictures in my phone are from a camping trip in Seattle with my Dad’s college best friend; but pictures don’t capture the silly song the kids made up when we lost the tea strainer and tried to distract our parents while we looked for it. Dance videos, Halloween costumes, scenic pictures that I thought were aesthetic at the time but in reality are just unintended Dutch tilts of pink and purple flowers. Hundreds of pictures of my mom and dad, because being the only daughter means being the designated couples photographer.
Ages 12 through 18 are more of the same: birthday cards, letters, gifts and broken collections of gifts. But what’s more interesting is what’s missing: there are so many things I’ve thrown or given away that I’d do anything to get back. The first polaroids I took freshman year at the freshman formal, an empty tin of Trader Joe’s green tea mints filled with guitar picks. I’ve deleted hundreds of pictures of ex-friends who I once wanted to forget, but now I recall as key parts of my history, memories I wish I could maintain when my own mind fails me. I even gave away a beautiful scrapbook, inspired by Carl and Ellie’s Adventure book, that I’d always wanted to fill with my own adventures.
A growing awareness of all the aspects of my life that I’ve deleted or lost has made me more conscious about preserving everything, good or bad. I’ve stopped deleting the bad pictures and started boxes for all my friends — I even keep my own box for my new design team, containing everything from sticky notes with our old ideas to a ratty blood pressure cuff all of us signed from the first time we reverse-engineered something together. I cannot get back the items I’ve lost, but I can be more diligent about chronicling my life. Hopefully, when some historian (or unpaid undergrad intern) looks through my things centuries from now, they’ll find these relics of a girl who loves her friends and family. And who knows? Maybe, by some miracle, the letters on my iPad, my half-written poems in my notes app and my document of unsent texts, can be sent to the people for whom they were intended.
Shreya Tiwari is a junior from Austin, Texas, studying BME. She is a Managing Editor for The News-Letter. Her column, "Invisible Strings," shares stories about all the people, places, and feelings to which she has “invisible strings,” intimate hidden connections that she hopes to reveal to readers with each piece.
