deep cleaning

moving out old dreams

i clean my room the week before i’m leaving the states. by clean i mean really clean: i meticulously comb through every drawer, every shelf, every box, every book, sorting what to toss, what to donate, what to move, what to reshelve. i fill up box after box, of stuffed animals and unused school supplies and clothes that no longer fit my style. i unearth mementos buried 10 layers deep in my bedside drawer: exam materials from an international high school olympiad, receipts from first dates, silly bandz in a cookie jar, the loads of things that i had hoarded as an elementary schooler, the gremlin that i was—old gift cards, paper bags that i liked, random marbles, bracelets, pieces of babybel cheese wax, rocks (so many rocks), a porcupine-shaped 馒头 (steamed bun) from a chinese exchange summer camp, hard as a rock and miraculously mold-free. i recycle that huge stack of scratch paper that has accumulated on my desk for a decade. COVID-era physics notebooks, AP biology worksheets, middle school history handouts, those 6-question math competitions that i took during lunch, scribbling in between bites. it’s a fossil record of my academic endeavors, erased in mere seconds—because i don’t have the time to stop and remember everything

i think cleaning ought to be cathartic. and it is, this sick sort of catharsis. my soul is lighter because there’s less of it; i feel like i’m ripping my past selves into scraps, the mouth of the trash can a black hole from which i am never coming back

deep down, i know this all an illusion. because the fact that i can throw these things away only reveals that whatever i’m missing has crossed the event horizon long ago. cleaning does not destroy; it only reveals—the things i no longer want to keep, the feelings i no longer feel, the names of stuffed animals i’m forgetting, even though once upon a time there was an entire universe for them. i feel empty and hollowed out but i think these are only overdue emotions

the old makes way for the new; the world i perceive is a big pile of dynamic processes within the bigger pile of dynamic processes that is the universe, and the timescales are always too long for me to recognize that everything is changing and precious and impermanent

and everything is always, always too short

---

i think i write a lot about how cyclical my life is. i think there is probably nothing special about my life: i’m simply constantly fooling myself into believing i am a brand new person. recently i realized that i’m incentivized to believe that i’ve changed, drastically, that i am infinitely better than the person that i was. i wonder—do i see my past selves as unrecognizable because i can no longer forgive the mistakes i’ve committed? are my changes really drastic, or are they just little epsilons in comparison to what sets me apart from others?

there is no better way to measure discrete change than against people anchored in the past. for me, these are my high school friends. every school break i see my high school friends around once or twice to catch up, and every school break it strikes me about how amazing it is that people don’t change. L is still using the same nerdy quirks, A and J are still on the med school track, C is finally going to New York (she always wanted to), R may seem different from high school but really she was just kind of suppressed back then and i see exactly how she became who she is now

every school break i realize that our friendship isn’t the way it used to be. every school break i conclude that i’ve changed, i must have changed, and i’ll feel special and sad about how quickly i’ve left my high school self behind

i wonder how R and C and J and my other high school friends see me. i wonder if they think of course april is going to grad school for astrophysics, of course april dresses like that now even though it’s very different from high school. i wonder if the way i talk or laugh or stay silent has changed since the time when we were friends. and deep down, i wonder if you knew—that i would let time wash us away

---

always, but especially this summer, i am missing something or someone. i can’t fucking stop writing about it. i miss my friends; i miss boston and MIT and having not graduated. sometimes i wonder if i’ll ever stop missing them

despite my changes, i’d still like to think that nothing is really gone. even though i’m cleaning my room. even if the only memory i have of something is contained in a notebook or receipt or a roll of silly bandz on their way to the landfill

in 2019 i thought my life began in 2017; in 2021 i thought my life began in 2020; and today i feel as though my life began at MIT, and maybe that’s why i’m still hung up over it. sometimes i’m tempted to believe that everything before is just layers behind a blank slate—past iterations beyond the grave. but that’s not true at all

it’s true that the person that MIT made me again and again is who i am today. but middle school and high school and that summer camp in 2019 and my gap year over the pandemic also made me, an iteration of me, and i want to believe they’re still here somewhere, nested like russian dolls. they must be here—because i don’t think i’ve stopped missing them, either

beyond the numbness there is a deep grief for every person i used to love and every person i used to be, and maybe this is nostalgia. when i clean my room my heart breaks a little every time i throw a scrap of myself away, and when i clean my room i unearth everything i still fiercely hold on to: my high school notes on university physics, a drawing of a spherical cow, an observing notebook from a summer camp, my middle and high school IDs, six faces frozen in time. i re-label my science olympiad medals one by one with clear tape, retracing the faded sharpie as best as i can. between the lines i see the faces of all my partners and the ceilings of all those auditoriums, and i remember that joy—that joy that i’ll never feel again, of learning and winning and teaching for the first time—and as i tape the box closed i feel as though i’m suffocating

in my room, there’s a box with all the birthday cards i’ve ever received, and i will never, ever throw this away. i think nothing is really gone, because i’ll still go through this box, knowing there is nothing to clean. and i’ll still cry over and over and over reading each card, even though these cards are from exes and ex-friends and friends i talk to once a year—even if we won’t ever talk again. the person i was back then loved the person you were back then and i know this just as much as i know i love the people i love right now

i know nothing is really gone, because what i worry about the most is the same. i still sit in pools of nostalgia; i still don’t know if forever exists or why my friends love me or if i’ll ever learn to love correctly, whatever that means. i know the answers are always obvious in hindsight: that what i’m looking for is always dangling right in front of me

if only i could grab hold of everything and everyone i love and never let go

found in the depths of my camera roll