Something About Boxes

Let me commence with a charge to which I must confess. Rarely do I succumb to my innermost feelings and emotions. That’s who I am. That’s how I operate. Furthermore to prove my point, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that even my closest friends aren’t privy to the way I think and feel. Bathetic stimuli fail time and time again to elicit the appropriate [tender] response that my peers can comfortably display. As a rule thumb, intense ardor must besiege my overprotective amygdala (set of neurons in the medial temporal lobe responsible for emotional arousal) to evoke even the slightest flicker of affection from my algid, benumbed, and cold (ABC) heart. I find it excruciatingly difficult—if not impossible—to think of a particular person, place, or thing that resonates deep within me. Then again there’s always been something about boxes.

I remember the first time my family moved; I was eight. Albeit we moved to a house just four blocks away, the move didn’t fail to cast my once familiar childhood into a tempest-tossed sea of unknowns. My brother and I worked in collaboration throughout the day to gather all of our toys and miscellaneous possessions. I remember tentatively placing my toys into each of the boxes’ dark, cavernous abyss. Every toy I placed within the box led me to believe that my toys were gone for good. My mother promised me that I would see my toys again. Luckily for her, she upheld her guarantee, but my short-lived enthusiasm didn’t last long. The ephemeral satisfaction came to a screeching halt when I discovered that moving involved a lot more than simply boxing up my toys. And you guessed it, the more I learned about moving, the less encouraging mom’s faux UPS toy-delivery insurance policy became.

When all was said and done, my room resembled a desolate barren thanks to the newly repainted white walls and clusters of boxed-up belongings. Years of brotherly horseplay and fraternal dalliance perished. The enchantment-filled toy-adorned sanctuary evanesced. My erstwhile room I once frolicked about freely and retreated to in times of castigation, hibernation, and recreation lost its luster—bereft of vitality and devoid of life. Theretofore, I relied on my eight-year-old naïveté and cloak of innocence to insulate my juvenile spirit from life’s harsh realities and commensurate short-end-of-the-stick misfortunes. “Nothing lasts forever” as the age-old adage goes—eight-year-old naïveté, veil of innocence, and toy-adorned sanctuary included.

Fast-forward to the present.

Sadly, eBay isn’t much into the business of selling eight-year-old naïveté and cloaks of innocence. I doubt naïveté and innocence in tandem would be much help anyway. I know from experience the withdrawal-related effects of extirpation (see above). That’s why I can’t even begin to fathom my college graduation next year because Bloomington has been my home for the past three years of my life. I’m not the least bit thrilled about parting ways with the friends that have become family—all of whom I hold dear.

Today I stood motionless inside the empty house of a great group of friends who are now graduated seniors. All that remains of the house’s formerly plush interior—stockpiles of boxes, featureless walls, and uninhabited living spaces—irks me to no end. All of the good times we shared are nothing more than frozen memories locked away in time and destined to become grandiloquent stories of yore. Throughout my life I’ve held paramount my ability to maintain the most unflappable equanimity. Apparently I’m due for a change. I guess after conducting my own informal 21-year longitudinal study, I’ve learned that boxing up my emotions never resolved anything. I had unconsciously become the very object I learned to hate most, a box—a vacuous, despondent—although not four-sided—container. Boxes are bereft of feeling and devoid of emotion and in part to the aforementioned description; I know that I am better than that. In hindsight, I know—somewhat regrettably—that my lasting impressions could’ve been more definitive and that my goodbyes and farewells could’ve been more sincere, but at least I’ve confessed to the initial charge of obduracy. And now whenever I think about my befriended group of graduated seniors, I’ll treat them to an open heart rather than a closed box. Oddly enough—there’s always been something about boxes.