Core memory time!: growing up, I was often told the tale of how, when my mother was pregnant with me, the family house caught fire in the night (an outdoor tiki lantern not properly extinguished, I think it was) and was completely destroyed. No one was hurt, but the house, and a lot of belongings inside of it, were lost forever.

I thought about that story a lot, as a kid; my anxiety really latched onto it. The way I saw it, already, by the time I was born, I’d nearly died in a fire. Mortal danger was imminent. A ruinous house fire, I presumed, could truly strike at any time, any one of these nights, and I needed to be prepared. And thus, I have always, my whole life, kept a mental list of which objects I would grab on my way out in the event of a house fire.

The items on the list have changed over the years (at one point, my copy of JTHM: The Director’s Cut was #1 on the list, lol), but two things on it have been the same for most of my life; and currently, these two items are really the only things I think I’d grab, realistically. If there were more time, I might try and save some of the sacred art and icons on the walls, the crucifixes, my children’s certificates of baptism, the handmade quilts my mother and MIL have gifted us, or some of my framed counted cross stitch projects, or maybe my laptop. But, probably, there wouldn’t be enough time, after ensuring that all of my kids were safe. Luckily, my top two must-save items are small and close at hand, kept in my bedroom at all times. And they are:

1) My teddy bear. Yep, as a mom in my mid-thirties, I still sleep with my childhood teddy bear. My mother gave him to me when I was two or three years old – just a basic cream-colored teddy bear with black eyes and a brown nose and a serious little mouth; nothing fancy – and the moment that I received him and gave him his name is one of my earliest memories. Since then, he has slept in my bed every night, almost without fail (there was one particular trip for which I forgot to pack him, which made sleeping in that motel bed even more uncomfortable, and to this day I superstitiously believe that my forgetting the bear probably should have been a red flag that I should not have taken that ill-fated trip in the first place). I cannot sleep comfortably without him under my arm – nothing else will do – and if, in the night, he escapes and rolls out of the bed, I inevitably wake up and need to find him. This bear has been just about everywhere with me, and has, as they say, seen some shit. At times, my husband will look at him, sitting there on our bed with all his wear and tear and floppy limbs and patchy fur, and be like: “we should probably consider retiring that bear soon, putting him somewhere safe, to preserve him,” to which I always respond absolutely not, over my dead body. In the event of a house fire, this bear is escaping with me, no question.

And:

2) The USB drive that contains all of my writing. I’ve been storing all of my major writing projects on a flash drive since I was old enough to know what a flash drive was and how to use one. Even the projects that I wish I could get rid of. Some of the earlier ones are… ugh, you don’t want to know. I shudder to even think. I never look at them, never, and never ever plan to; it’s too embarrassing, even though no one but myself has ever laid eyes on any of this junk.

Why can’t I get rid of them? The thought that, one day, after I die, my children or grandchildren will discover these files and look at them, makes me positively sick with dread. I cannot let that happen. I’ve seriously considered having the USB somehow implanted in my body so that it’s destroyed with me when I die, almost like Himself in Infinite Jest (although, that didn’t work out according to plan for him, did it).

Why can’t I get rid of these stupid old files from like 2003-2006, which I wrote when I had no idea what anything was, and didn’t even realize that I didn’t know? (One of them is a “novel” of literally about 300k words, the longest thing I’ve ever written – all of it, just pure vomit!) They’re so mortifying to even think about! But, I can’t bring myself to delete it!

Is anyone else like this, with their old creations??

What’s weird is, I was pretty okay with destroying my old drawings. I used to keep sketch pads, during my teens and early twenties, in which I drew billions of little pictures that were just as cringe as some of my writing (if not more so); at some point, though, I threw all of these out, and it was not even that painful or difficult. But the writing! I can’t delete it! – Is it because I poured so much of my little heart and soul into the writing, whereas the doodles were just little snapshots, representing tiny fragments of what was contained in the writing in its horrible fullness? There was a time when I really loved to draw, but writing has always absorbed me and fulfilled me in a way that drawing does not. Writing was, for me, like the consummation of what drawing suggested.

Looking back on my life, I can organize it into sections according to what I was writing at the time, because my writing life has always been just as vivid and real and important as my real life. I guess, to sound super cliché and drippy, throwing away these old artifacts would feel like throwing out pieces of myself. Which, perhaps I ought to be okay with. Those horrible stories are pieces of my self, of what makes me Mith. But, I shouldn’t love that! Why should I be so attached to my little individual self? “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world, keepeth it unto life eternal.”

Maybe one day, when I am closer to holiness, I will be free, and finally be able to purge this USB drive of all its cursed contents. But, until then, it stays with me, and will definitely be escaping with me in the event of a house fire.