Everything In My Closet
Image Description: Thin, pencil-like drawing of a distressed cartoon girl with dark hair and staring blankly ahead. She’s surrounded by eight cardboard boxes, each reading different things like “growth,” “patience,” “hope,” “self-care,” and “FRAGILE: This side up,” Translucent colorful images of a dog with its mouth open, an eye amidst clouds, a red and green penguin from Club Penguin high fiving, and a woman within a rainbow-colored background and flowers in her eyes overlay the boxes and the girl.
Design by Ayesha Ashraf.
Spreading out before me are sixteen empty cardboard boxes. I think there are sixteen; there might be seventeen but I can’t really remember.
I am standing in the middle of my room, trying to clean out my closet. I’m in nothing but my favorite Radiohead t-shirt, which has several stains on it given that I’ve been wearing it for the past three days. I’ve also run out of pants, which is annoying because it’s been really cold outside.
In front of me, there are sixteen empty cardboard boxes.
I’m doing what my mom likes to call “Spring Cleaning.” I don’t believe it’s really spring cleaning, because mostly all she does is tell my siblings and I to clean our rooms, then goes to the living room and turns on the vacuum without ever vacuuming anything.
My knees are shaking– again, it’s really cold. And they’re ashy. I should shower.
But first, I really do need to fill these boxes. To get motivated to clean out my closet, I’ve been watching hundreds of Vogue videos where Bella Hadid gives tours of what’s in her house and what’s in her closet and what kind of media has she been consuming recently? I think I would love to be asked 73 Questions.
Anyways–
In front of me, there are sixteen empty cardboard boxes.
They’ve been sitting here for three days, and my room has become stale with the smell. Like if you rubbed a piece of wood back and forth all over the walls for several hours.
There are several things to put in my sixteen empty cardboard boxes. To begin “Spring Cleaning,” I take a deep breath (3 seconds inhale, 5 seconds hold, 7 seconds exhale), and pretend I am Bella Hadid. What would Bella Hadid do?
To start: my childhood trauma is scattered around the floor of my closet like a shattered mirror. There are bits and pieces of it dissipated in all of its crevices, its edges sharp and blood-bringing. In the distance, I can hear my mom turn on the vacuum. In return, I pick up the broom and these pieces of my childhood trauma.
I sweep them into the dustpan. In the distance, I can hear my brother and I building forts in the living room and my parents coming home drunk and arguing. I sweep another piece. I can hear that time in elementary school when I fell down on my face and cut open my lip and everyone laughed at me because they said I had become even uglier.
I sweep up every last rejection, every last slap of the face, every drink from the bottle, every harsh word. It all melds together. It fits perfectly into the first of the boxes. I could tie it with a bow if I wanted to.
In front of me, there are fifteen empty cardboard boxes.
I feel like a cheesy Netflix character when I pull out the next item from my closet. Several unopened, torn up, old letters that I wrote to the people I have fallen in and out of love with. My most recent one is from an old situationship. I laugh when I read it. “Everyday, I wake up excited knowing that I get to talk to you and tease you…. I have fallen in love with the idea of you.”
I laugh– I was deluded, lightheaded, for thinking that I was “in love.” I tear up the letter. I tear up all the letters. Into the box they go.
In front of me, there are fourteen empty cardboard boxes.
Box number 3 is filled with that pit in my stomach that never seems to go away, the numbness in the tips of my fingers, and the way my heart feels like it’s going to explode in my chest at the thought of meeting anyone new.
Box number 11 is my desire to be held, especially by someone in love with me.
Box 7 is the strange feeling I get at the thought of working a 9 to 5, with kids and someone to come home to. I can’t imagine it.
Box 13 is looking in the mirror and not liking what I see.
The last one, number 17, is my old stuffed animal collection. When I was younger, my life dream was to break the world record for most stuffed animals. Gone are the days of delusion.
In front of me, there are no more empty boxes.
I empty my closet just as a scab covers a wound; gone are the cracks in my brain, the cogs in the gears of my body. This is my new beginning.
In replacement of my childhood trauma: a carefully curated collection of concealers and blushes and shades of lipstick. Mom can’t talk to me through the mirror anymore.
My ex-situationships are replaced with sleek black vinyls, their sound crisp and sleek. I can’t be called uncool or uncultured.
Slowly, I refill my closet with thrifted low-rise jeans and indie blouses from Depop. I stack shelves with Camus and Kerouac so I have some proof when I swear to someone that I’m smart. I buy different types of digital and film cameras so I can take more photos of my Unique and Exciting Life, and post them on Instagram. I get a nose piercing for my 18th birthday. I dye my hair blonde. I swear, I can hear my body screaming to the world: “I am here! Please notice me. Please notice that I am worthy of your attention, because I am nice-to-look-at, and I am profound-and-deep.” I am mysterious girl. I am girl you talk to because she’s almost as cool as you. I am girl who is downforwhatever.
I fill my closet with this refined version of myself. Gone is indigestible and unsettling. Gone is rotting-in-bed. Here I am, my clean closet screams. Am I worthy of your attention? Have I become palatable enough for you?
The vacuum in the living room turns off. I can hear my mom’s white tennis shoes on the floor, the floorboards dancing in unison with her steps. She has come to check on me. I can’t wait for her giddy reaction when I announce: “Look! Spring Cleaning is done. I am anew.”
Behind me, there are seventeen boxes. I can feel them collecting dust already.
