Hanging On

It’s rare for me to come across something online that actually makes me feel connected, to the writer, to the words, to that quiet hum under everything. But yesterday I stumbled across an article by Claire Huish, and I thought, finally, someone has put into words a feeling I’ve carried for years but never quite named.

The line that stopped me was this:

“I don’t like to let go of what I love; have loved. I am afraid of not living fully and I find myself grasping for moments before they slip beyond my reach into the past. Photography gives me a way to keep things, to make the ephemeral permanent.”

I felt that. Deeply.

Sitting in a long plastic storage box in my closet is what remains of my childhood, the entire archaeological record of my early life. A few Asian coins my dad brought back from a business trip. A couple of $2 bills. A few old school papers written in a shaky hand that still believed cursive would matter forever. Some photos. Odds and ends.

The rest is gone. Some given away (like my original Atari and Nintendo). Some lost to tragic accident (a 500-disc CD changer I sold on eBay… with all 500 CDs still inside). And some just quietly vanished when I left home for a mission with the Mormon church. My room was packed up, my sister moved in, and my things? Scattered to the wind.

The worst loss came years later, during my divorce. I was broke, bills, rent, the whole mess, and had to hold a garage sale that felt like auctioning off pieces of myself. My Magic: The Gathering cards went to a friend’s kid. My first armored fighting helmet, the one from my days sparring with The Knight Order of the Fiat Lux, sold for next to nothing. Even my expensive curtains went for pocket change. Everything I owned became survival fuel.

Maybe that’s why I hold onto things so tightly now. The dozen or so photo prints thumbtacked to my wall, the journals stacked like quiet witnesses of time, the books that somehow made it through every loss. They’ve become little anchors, proof I was here, that I lived, that I carried something forward.

I don’t like replacing things. I blame The Brave Little Toaster. That movie convinced me my belongings might get sad if I abandoned them. But if I’m honest, it’s not about the stuff. It’s about what they hold, the memories stitched into them, the moments that might otherwise fade if I let them go.

Every object I keep is a small declaration: I was here once. I saw things. I loved things.

And after years of losing so much, maybe hanging on is just my way of saying, to myself, to time, to the universe — I’m still here.