Who's That Girl?

I got a few boxes of my stuff down from my mums loft last weekend. I still have so much stuff (crap) up there that I have stored over the years and I thought it was time to start transferring it now that I’ve got a loft of my own.

The boxes have sat untouched for ten years. Countless folders stuffed full of letters from friends and family, my University coursework (a concrete reminder that I was clever once, before the fug of motherhood and years of pickling my brain in alcohol set in), a programme from a Chippendales show I went to (seriously, the Chippendales???!!!), Reading Festival programmes, the obligatory Boyfriends Box, an envelope of things from my very early childhood including a home typed by me certificate of adoption for my Cabbage Patch Kid (all my friends CPK’s came with a certificate, mine didn’t which is highly suspicious, maybe my CPK was illegitimate?), random collections of giraffes and Lion King memorabilia, and a huge scrap book of all my Kylie and Jason clippings. Yes I know, how sad.

Looking through the boxes has been a very strange and fascinating journey. All this stuff doesn’t even feel like it belongs to me. The owner is familiar, maybe someone I might have met before but can’t quite place.

The truth is I’m not that person anymore, I don’t feel like I ever was. It makes me squirm to think of some of the things I did and said, particularly in my terror years age 13-21 (when I thankfully met the man and everything seemed to slot into place). Who was that provocative, loud vixen in platform trainers (still can’t get over that one, I blame the Spice Girls) who used to occupy my body?

I now know, with the benefit of hindsight, that it wasn’t me at all. She was just a child trying to make sense of the world, work out who she was, someone actually very self conscious and anxious, not that you would have known it at the time. I was trying on different coats for size until I found one that fits. And I think that’s what growing up is, we’re all trying on different coats until we find one that fits us perfectly and we can become comfortable in our own skin.

It’s a tricky business, piecing together which parts actually were me, and which were trial runs. Chippendales concert: not me, Reading Festival programmes: me, Uni coursework: me (thankfully), random collections: not me, typing up my own certificate of adoption for my Cabbage Patch Kid: erm, well that does sound like something I would do.

So now that I’ve reacquainted myself with this person what do I do now? Do I keep her or throw her away?

When I told big bro yesterday that I had found my Uni coursework, he said “My coursework made no sense to me, I binned it and kept the text books.” My text books were the first thing to go, I can’t imagine throwing my work away, it really is a part of me.

We all have to decide what, if any, reminders of our old selves we want to hang on to. The hardcore clutter experts say you should keep nothing that isn’t highly useful, highly practical or seriously sentimental. I don’t consider myself particularly sentimental and a lot of this stuff just makes me cringe. But despite the fact that most of it represents a person that I don’t even recognise, I won’t throw her away. I’ll put her back in my loft along with the other ill-fitting discarded coats from the years. To be got out and remembered but never worn again.