Stuff.

Like most relatively normal people, my house is full of crap. I've moved countless times in the past few years and I get rid of stuff every time, but man. I still have a lot of junk.

There's the usual litany of childhood relics. Books I loved (Annabel Lee, A Little Princess) but never read anymore. Cards from my 2nd birthday. A million pictures of my dog. These are things that I'll eventually have to part with, but until it becomes absolutely necessary they're moving with me. Report cards, love letters, the usual bullshit beginning-of-the-relationship notes and scrawlings about work meetings on napkins that remind me of a specific day or memory. I'm pretty sure this is something other people do. Right?

But I realized today that while most of these little old relationship reminders are hidden in piles of papers and tucked into books as placeholders, there are a few that stand out in the open. As much as this might be a TMI moment, this came to me today when I got dressed and noticed that I still have a pair of underwear from a 3-pack of an old boyfriend I lived with. (No, I'm not saying who.) We bought them at Wal-Mart or something, he took 2 pairs and gave me the third. I don't remember why - I can actually go for about 2 months without running out of clean underwear, not like I was desperate for a new pair or anything - but it struck me as cute and kind of silly and I kept them. They make me smile and think of the little things he used to do for me. He had a knack for pissing me off (often on purpose because he thought I should lighten up) and always knew how to catch me off-guard with some stupid little gesture (like the underwear thing). It struck me that he also gave me a little troll doll (why were those things ever popular?!) carrying a flag that sits out on a shelf with my favorite lamp. Beside that is another weird Jamaican hot sauce doll (you'd have to see it to understand, even I don't really get it) from another guy I was with for a while.

Then I looked around the rest of my living room.. whoa. band posters on my walls, more lamps (also remembered that I never use any of my lamps...), random pieces of art, foreign cigarette packages, hats, toys. Things I would definitely have thrown out ages ago, were it not for the way I think about the men who made me so happy with them at the time. I'm not super cluttered; maybe because I have a bigger apartment now so I can spread this shit around, but I don't feel like I'm at that hoarder stage. So is it weird that I keep all this ex stuff? Is it weirder that I didn't notice until today? Funny, right now I just remembered that this was part of a plotline in a How I Met Your Mother episode. Are you supposed to get rid of ex stuff after a relationship's over?