Box of Memories

You can find me inside the flower-patterned shoe box, where I hide the tokens of my memories. The birthday cards, polaroid photos, and even bottle caps represent my life and relationships. Each item carries a memory aged but frozen in time. 

When I was 14 my friend gave me a package of stickers. She had texted me earlier that day to ask if I wanted anything from the sticker store since her and her mom were already there. I said yes and asked her to surprise me. She did, giving me an array of glittery, pup-up, and animal-themed stickers. I used them to decorate her cards for every occasion possible after that. They say you’re not supposed to re-gift but I’ve been doing that every holiday; I think I’ve only used those stickers to make gifts for other people. Now that I’m down to only a few pages, some almost completely used up, I realized I much prefer the scraps to the whole page. These scraps show the care and time my friends invest in each other and live nestled in the box. 

My best friend is a tap dancer, a really good tap dancer. Every Friday during freshman and sophomore year, she would give me full insight into how the dance for her classes’ show was going, diving into the details of each move and even describing the beads of every outfit she tried on. In May, the tickets for the show came out and I immediately jumped on the opportunity and bought myself a ticket and a playbook. The performance happened in June, it was a flurry of flashing lights, glittery dresses, and the sound of tap shoes on the hard floor. My best friend has been through thick and thin with me, every obstacle that school had to offer, every bad grade, or horrible teacher—she’s been by my side. The playbook and the ticket are there to remind me that I can always count on someone and that she can always count on me too; so the ticket and the playbook are also inside my box.

In June of last year, our school had a ‘non-educational day’. In simple terms, it was a day where we attended school but didn’t have any classes and instead participated in a variety of activities. There was a lot of time on that day when we had to sit in the cafeteria for one hour, as a bridge between activities. I was seated next to one of my closest friends whose pencil case was always filled with the coolest types of pens and pencils and all the stationery one could think of. With these markers, my friends set out to draw and color on random pieces of paper. I, on the other hand, decided to write everybody’s name in cursive with each pen, resulting in one name being written 20 times. The finished result was super colorful but took a painstaking amount of time. Thinking back, I honestly don’t know why I took on the painstaking task of writing everybody's name; I honestly had much better things to do, but I think I wanted a reminder that I could always rely on my friends. Though we can be silly, and distracting, at the end of the day we will always have each other. I folded that piece of paper and enclosed it into the safety of my shoebox. 

My friend gave me a Monster Energy drink’s cap once, as a gift of sorts. A break from the monotony of school, lectures and homework. I had advised her not to drink an energy drink so early in the morning on an empty stomach, but her sleepiness won the best of her in the end, earning her the drink. She ripped off the cap and gave it to me, told me to keep it and treasure it forever. Even with the stress of school, she remembered her friend even through the mounding tower of pressure and stress. No task nor mountain of stress was too big or conquering to allow her to block me out. That too is nestled in the confines of the box. 

Each item is nestled in the confines of the box. No matter how small, they are the threads that create the tapestry of my youth. From the shiny surface of a bottle cap, a gift from my friend, and sleep deprivation to cursive names, that box will forever be the ink of my life.