Clearing space, carrying grace—and learning to let go of the girl I used to be.
I thought packing would be simple.
I thought it would be bubble wrap, folded clothes, a few farewell notes tucked between pages of a book. I didn’t expect to be on the floor of my childhood bedroom, surrounded by a sea of old papers, pictures, and versions of myself I’d long forgotten. I didn’t expect the packing process to feel more like excavation—like digging through layers of memory, some tender, some sharp, all startling in their own way.
I found paintings I don’t remember making. Letters I don’t remember writing. Journals from college, even kindergarten—whole slices of life I had mentally boxed up years ago without meaning to. Opening them was like sitting down with someone I hadn’t seen in a decade. Someone who was deeply familiar and deeply foreign all at once.
Some of what I found… hurt to read. Not because the moments were especially dramatic, but because of how clearly they revealed the version of me I used to be—the one who was spiraling quietly, the one so far down the depression rabbit hole she couldn’t see how awful she was being to herself. And, honestly, to the people around her, too. People who cared. People who supported me through all of it. People who, somehow, still show up for me now.
That part was the hardest—facing the emotional weight tucked into those pages, hidden in the margins of class notes, or scribbled in the back of a planner. I thought I could do it in a day. I couldn’t. I had to pause, walk away, come back again. This wasn’t just tidying up—it was confronting a whole lineage of emotion I hadn’t expected to meet on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.
And yet, I’m grateful.
Not in a toxic silver-lining way. Just… in a quiet, hard-earned way. Because even though that version of me was hurting and hurtful, she was also trying—so desperately—to survive something she didn’t yet understand. And I wonder, as I gently fold those old journal entries and tuck them into a box, what she would think if she saw where we ended up.
Would she make the same choices if she could see the results?
I’d like to think yes. For some things, at least.
Because those mistakes—the messy, painful, shame-filled ones—were growing pains I didn’t want. I outright resented them at the time. But now? Now I can reflect on them and see how they shaped me. How they taught me. How they grew me.
Packing has taken longer than I thought. Not because of logistics, but because I needed time to sit with the weight of my own becoming. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe slow packing is the only way to truly say goodbye to the selves we’re not bringing with us—but who made it possible for us to leave in the first place.
—
To those of you who’ve carried me through every version of myself—thank you. I see you now in ways I couldn’t back then. I’m so glad you stayed.
