My Journey to Minimlaism

Today, I am free. I feel light, and my heart feels at peace. I have been released from a hold. Today, my things no longer control me.

I have been on a lot of great adventures in my life, being challenged and growing more in each and every one. But of all these adventures, none has taught me more and taken me deeper into myself than this adventure into minimalism.

Since most of you did not grow up with me, some of you certainly did, I'd like to paint you a picture of my childhood bedroom- but, that would take a lot of paint and you wouldn't know what you were looking at. In summation, it was full of stuff; busting out of my closet door, peeking out from under the bed, and taped to the wall, no joke. My friends would tell me to leave the room and would precede to throw stuff away claiming I wouldn't even notice an absence. But I did. See, my roadblock to minimalism was different from a lot of people. I'm not so much materialistic as sentimental. It wasn't clothes, and shoes, and bags I was collecting, it was memories. I found out very young that if you can't see something, you forget about it entirely. I didn't want to forget, nay, I was terrified to forget. I held on to everything; scraps of paper, tickets, gifts I'd received, it all meant so much to me.

Later I would learn that by holding on to every memory, I was preventing myself from making new ones.

Fast forward to adulthood where the hobby that fills my heart above all else is travel. A good portion of my time not traveling is spent thinking about where I'm going to go next, what I'm going to do there, and how the heck I'm going to make it happen financially.

As I sat patiently waiting for my parents to tell me I was adopted and my biological parents were ready to claim me and hand over the trust fund that I was entitled to, I decided the only way I could afford to travel long term was to make money while doing it. So, I hoped on the internet. The army? The peace corps? Nannying some wealthy european kids? Teaching english? Now that I could do, I mean, I speak english! Thousands of words a day in fact!

I packed a GIANT suitcase, a carry on, a purse, a backpacking backpack, my ukulele, my yoga mat, and in no time I was off to Phnom Penh Cambodia to learn in 4 weeks how to be a teacher, because, obviously, you are qualified to mold minds in that short amount of time. Certificate in hand, I threw all my bags onto my back, and wobbled Quasimodo style across the border into Thailand. I lugged all of this stuff onto buses, vans, taxis, tuk tuks, mopeds, and countless hotel rooms up and down Thailand. It was exhausting, painful, stressful, and most of all, embarrassing. I got so irritated I literally started leaving things in hotel rooms so I wouldn't have to carry as much, once a hotel employee even ran out after me waving my things in the air above his head heroically. Kevin couldn't contain his laughter as I thanked him, vein pulsing in my forehead, and preceded to unzip a bag and stuff the things in.

After lugging this load around for over a month, body sore, seams and wheels breaking on the bags, I was adamant I could do it no longer. Our boss agreed to help us get an apartment so we could have a closet to store our things making it easier for us to travel from job to job (I should probably mention we taught at english camps across the country). Conveniently our apartment was perfect for the job because it was, in fact, the size of a walk-in-closet, humor not lost on me. Now, in a place I had come to explore, I was tied down. From then on no matter where we went, we would have to return to Bangkok where our things lived. This inconvenience certainly wasn't the only reason we cut our journey short, but it was a big part of it.

I returned home pissed, for lack of a better word. My stuff, that had always been there to remind me of joyful memories, and bring me happiness, was now robbing me of these very things. It now stood between me and everything I loved. I guess you could say it no longer served me. Back on American soil, filled with resentment, regret, frustration and anger, this is where minimalism found me.

Since my return I have slowly been letting go of things, making peace with the fact that even if I forgot the memories these things held, those memories will still be apart of me. Everything I have ever been through remains in my eyes, in my heart, in every wrinkle, and every word that comes out of my mouth. My mind may forget a good portion of what I have experienced, but my spirit never will.

This transition has been a journey, a heck of an adventure for sure, one that is not over. One with many challenges and resistance. One that involved putting things in bags, taking them back out, and putting them back in again, and tons of trips to the goodwill.
But today, today I am free. While I still have things, still more things than I need, I am not attached to any of it.

I look around at all this space I have created, and I don't see emptiness, I see room to grow, I see possibility, and above all, I see freedom.
Today, I am free.