"I murdered someone, she's the person I'd call to help me drag the corpse across the living room floor...She's my person." - Cristina, "Grey's Anatomy - Drowning on Dry Land"
For the year or so, I only have practised sentimentality as if it was my day-to-day chores; the thought of the past rested upon my shoulder like the warm breath of a lover. Sentimentality went a long way for me and held my hand throughout most of my year since I got home, training to keep boxes of mementos and trifling knick-knack only looked over when moving or when it was terribly thunderous past the barrier of the glass windows.
It was then that I appreciated my often obsessive nature of hoarding: the interminable hours held rapt in the youth solace of diary scribbling; incomplete blog entries; the fading and yellowing scraps of a life forgotten and stowed away long ago; tickets for the countless musicals and plays, when I first experienced the real overture brought off with subtlety and panache; essays on the feminist influence on legal policy paradigms that were laboured over months through sleepless nights, whose factuality and knowledge emanating from the page evaporated through the soapy air; photographs from the summer in Cannes and Palermo, when I got a sunburn after obstinately refusing to douse myself in sunblock; the nearly-perfect aroma of black coffee wafted from the paper cup we clutched in both our right and left hand, before the morning bustle of the Monmouth or Starbucks began to intrude; and so many other objects of the past that had little significance now.
Then again, my so-called ravaging sentimentality didn't quite end there. Sentimentality intentionally cowered in pockets of jeans and compartments of purse as if sheltered from a war between the belt buckle and the zipper. I would leave bits of life within my clothing, so that when I do wear it next, I could and would reminisce. When putting the change from my morning coffee into the blazer pocket, I could feel the crisp Parisian metro tickets or the cinema receipt.
Yet, it is ironic that the past has been the bane of my existence and what has plagued me; I would rest my head at night - physically, as my mind is never at ease - and recall the moments in the past. I vicariously relive the awkward formative years: I say the words that I could have never said then. And I only wonder - that huge part of my life spent with her - where have they gone to - and what we have been reduced to?
Nothing but a formal feeling that comes - the nerves that sit ceremonious like tombs and the stiff heart that cries.
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