1- Have a fresh start.

I started feeling like I needed a fresh start when I went shopping with my mother and bought twelve pairs of new earrings.

Now… I know that sounds incredibly materialistic and in a way it is. But I almost feel like one of those What Not To Wear participants who will say things like ‘This is a whole new beginning’ or ‘I’m a whole new me now’ by the end of the show. As dumb as it sounds, getting a change of wardrobe – or in my case, earrings – can change the way you look at your life.

Metaphorically speaking, the earrings represent the new me. They don’t resemble the ones I used to own, which tended to be darker, more childish, and involve skulls or bolts of thunder. The new ones are quirkier, more colorful, brighter, more original. Not made of plastic. As I bought them, I thought: “As soon as I get home I’ll chuck the old ones away.” Which isn’t a thought that often comes to my mind because I tend to be an item whore and enjoy keeping every single trinket that passes through my life. That night however, I realized that there are a lot of things that I keep from my past that I no longer need. Things that aren’t useful, things that won’t even be that enjoyable rereading in ten years time, things that are keeping me in the past rather than in the present where I should be looking toward the future. Having great memories of the past is great, but having dozens upon dozens of souvenirs and mementos plastered on my four walls was like being kept in my personal time machine, and it just wasn’t healthy. The stage I went through was great, but I could see myself sprinting towards the next one, needing to have my four white walls back; a blank canvas to create new art on.

I was sitting on my bed, looking around my room and suddenly thinking: “Well I don’t need that anymore. Or that. That can go too. Why did I ever want to have that up there?!” and not feeling attached to the items or images anymore. I went around and starting taking them down, crumpling them up and chucking them away. It felt good, like I was someone who had been sitting in the back of AA meetings for months and deciding to stand up one night and tell their story. It was the exhale after realizing you had been holding your breath, the oblivious smile after a confessional when a weight is lifted off your shoulders.

I began to become addicted to that feeling, in the sense that I knew I wouldn’t stop going through my junk until I had chucked all the useless rubbish. Throwing away old clothes, my rock collection I forgot even existed, boxes full of random keychains and ‘note to self!’s and laces. I even went so far as to go through the hundreds of pictures on my computer and throw out the ones I had ‘outgrown’. It was incredible how much I had parted with in the end, and even though my walls look empty… it just feels better this way. Cleaner, in a sense, and I’m settling into the new phase of my life quite nicely. I don’t know what is supposed to happen in this new phase, but I can’t wait for the challenges life has waiting for me. (:

Smile. by GracetoRise