Documentation

Today… out of boredom and in one of those “need to organize something” moments, I decided to organize all the things in my room and get rid of everything that lost its meaning or use in my life.
I am not a “keep it for memory” kind of a person, the only things I keep are my scrap books and even these are thrown away in the trash more often when they bring bad memories or remind me of bad state of mind ,better to say self loathing and confusion… I find it pathetic to keep those things that provoke memories but apparently, that’s what I do.

today I found things I didn’t know they exist, pieces of papers which has poems which I’ve written 8 years ago, I used to write to newspapers and get so excited when they publish them, letters from my penpal Shayma from Iraq, we met through kids magazine “mijalet majed” which I used to read till I was 13, last letter I received from her was in 2000, she was telling me about her failing to go to medical school but she started her uni in Biological studies, I wonder what happened to her, did she survive the war? Did she finish her studies? Did she leave Iraq?.

I found photos of a school trip in the 8th grade, photos of friends who I have no idea where they are. I have 2 friends who we’ve been together since we were in the kindergarten, went to same school till highschool when we went to different schools. However, we kept our friendship, one of them has travelled to UK and is working there now, the other is married to a horrible doctor and has a gorgeous child, we used to make plans to run a way and live in the cherry castle… but we never did. I think we all are living in our own cherry castles in our own ways… I miss making plans with them.

Another thing I found and was shocking to me, 7 pages of anger, I wrote these when war started in Iraq and it’s full of anger and disgust, I remember those days clearly, I remember the smell of salad, my homework I was doing on that day, when Bagdad was invaded. How I am used to it now, to the idea of fatalities, to the idea of human corruption, how cold I’ve grown to become me!
I kept searching finding subway tickets when I was in London, something I’ve written when I was drunk for the first time in my life (2005), plans, lots of written plans, my worries and hopes, photos and post cards.

Why did I need to keep all of these, why did I felt the need to document all those memories, why did I feel weird and irritated to go through them? Why does it feel that I failed in something every time I go through memories? Why does it feel that I gave up on something every time I try to open my scrapbooks, hell… why do I keep a scrapbook in the first place?