The Origins of Trash
When I was ten, my Uncle Mark gave me a set of two journals for Christmas. They were hardcover and bound with lavender satin and lilac lace fabrics. Receiving them was one of the most influential events of my adolescence. As an avid YA romance reader — though I was arguably too young to be reading that genre at the time — I took this gift as a sign to essentially recreate my own version of Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries (2000). So, I took to keeping a diary.
I wrote about normal things — school, my family, my friends. The boys I had crushes on. The books I’d read, the movies I’d seen. The fights my parents had. The fights I had. The “rules” I discovered as a Midwestern pre-teen girl. I would sometimes share select passages with my mom, who found me so hilarious in the way all doting mothers think their children are brilliant. Once I’d completed a journal, my mom would take me to Borders to pick out a new one. And to this day I am completely obsessed with flowery and dainty stationery (thanks, Mom). I had quickly accumulated quite the collection of fancy journals. I would write and write and write because that’s all I felt I could do. Perhaps I could be like Meg Cabot one day, I thought. It was so satisfying to package my experiences into diary entries that were short and witty (in my ten-year-old opinion). It was all a part of my special flavor of delusional, prepubescent escapism — I compulsively conceptualized my life as some elaborate, endless cinematic project, complete with a director, camera crew, and script. When good or bad things happened to my character, it was all to drive the plot forward. That was my way of making sense of my life and creating my own brand of confidence that I had seen in Mia Thermopolis.
When I was in eighth grade, I spent a lot of time alone. I was constantly emotionally overwhelmed. I have since learned, when I get overwhelmed, I feel embarrassed and angry. I had so much anger, shame, and self-hatred running through me at the time. Nothing seemed to make it any easier. Not even writing. Coming out of a chronic illness diagnosis the year before, I experienced some difficulty controlling my moods. I often had fits of unmanageable rage (see also: temper tantrums). During one of these episodes, I found myself opening my dresser drawer that housed my collection of completed journals. I grabbed a large, black trash bag, and threw them in. I was so angry at my family (my parents’ looming divorce), myself (I was a diabetic thirteen-year-old), and the world (it was 2010). I felt so stupid. The stories that my mom thought were brilliant… my mind reimagined as foolish and unnecessary.
I had envisioned this archival removal to be a cathartic and mind-clearing experience. But I purged my historical documentation of my own life from 2007-2010. This had become another significant event of my adolescence — and I wish I could take it all back. I’m not angry at my thirteen-year-old self. I wish I could hug her, tell her to put the trash bag away, you’ll want to read these thoughts when you’re older. You’ll learn that anger and shame fade away over time. But all I can do now is wonder which landfill that trash bag ended up in.
So in a way, this project represents my remedy for my regret. My feelings, ideas, and stories don’t belong in the trash. And neither do yours. So I’ve decided to reclaim that bag — reclaim it from the world and from myself. I’m 27 now. From this moment on, my trash will be my treasure.
