monday packing blues

I've been taking an hour or so everyday to pack and sort through my apartment. What needs to be kept, stored, packed, sold, given away, or trashed. Today I finally hit the bookshelf I'd been dreading. It was going to take more than an hour and would probably induce tears, laughter and several moments of WTF was I thinking. It had all of my scrapbooks, yearbooks, journals etc. on it. Somethings were easy. NMH yearbooks keep pile, my portfolio from getting my teaching credential (sort through and keep the pictures). Notes and drawings from former students go in the keep pile. I ran across the notebook I'd been given by an ex-boyfriend.... that was almost trashed on sight...but I thought look through it one more time. So I open it and find the introduction to his dictionary... and start to laugh remembering how he had his own language... that made sense to only him. I also got a smile remembering how he looked in his dress blues when he came to pick me up for that last Tri-Sigma formal. I got lucky with the nice guys a few times in college. Then I started to flip through and at the back I found all the last wills of the house from when we closed. I hadn't looked at them in years. I thought I was done with all of them. I had a nasty taste in my mouth from things that happened that had lasted a long, long time. Is the hurt at things that happened still there, yeah. Has the bitter taste of betrayal gone away? Mostly now, it's just the wonderings of where are they now.
I know where a few are... I think I'm one of the few that has wandered far away and so I haven't and I don't bump into them at all anymore. I know that my life has taken many twists and turns... from business to education, from Sorority Girl to Leather Dyke to teacher.
A few tears came to my eyes as I thought about the times I spent in Marietta. It's been 10 years now and I'm finally at a point where forgiveness doesn't feel like it matters anymore. It's more of acceptance that would matter now.
So instead of throwing that notebook away it went in the keep box. Right between my yearbooks and the scrapbook of my first years living in Atlanta. Maybe by the time I get back from Korea I'll be at a point where I'll actually think about going back for a homecoming. See a few old faces, be able to reminisce about the fun that was had, until then, I'm going to tape the box shut, label it memories and stack it with the others.