Fears and phobias

I've managed to make it for today, eh?

This post was supposed to go up a few weeks ago, when it was more relevant to the topic at hand (moving).
While I was sitting in the garage, sorting out 5+ years of junk (tossing out about 6 boxes worth of trash), I realized why I became such a pack rat, and why I kept (worthless) things dating back 10+ years. Of course, it was far worse in middle school, when every single thing had 'sentimental value', but it was still hard to throw away some of my trinkets that I held on to. It felt as if every item thrown in the junk pile was a memory lost, that I would never again have a retrieval cue to that particular memory.
Then, of course, I'd realize that the memory in question didn't have any significance in relation to anything (like that fish keychain I got as a party favor at a birthday party in a store where we painted ceramics. I can't, for the life of me, remember whose birthday it was, or what grade I was in, or who my friends were at that time) and then I'd toss the offending item in the junk bin. It felt like my brain was some sort of large shrubbery that needed pruning so that new branches could grow and flourish.

The metaphor, however, becomes invalid once you realize that the human brain is nearly limitless in its storage capacity, and that memories can persist for years and years if you retain the proper retrieval cues. These days, however, it feels like every day goes by without being recorded in my brain. Perhaps it's the monotony, or maybe I'm just not making the effort to remember things, but frankly it scares me not to be able to remember what happened the day before yesterday, or the week before, or what I did last winter break. Part of it is turning into such a space case that my grasp on reality seems tenuous at best, and it feels like my default setting is auto-pilot.

Cutting loose from reality and living in the present are all well and good, but every time I do so, it always scares me just a little bit more that I remember just a little bit less.

And this is why I take lots of inane pictures of things and write stuff down whenever I can.

(Made it within 3 minutes of the deadline)