2. Christmas decorations (especially festive wreaths, but not so much mistletoe)

3. Barney (NOT the purple dinosaur).

4. Sultry, spoil-yourself fekkai body butter

5. Poems by e.e. cummings

6. Unexpected, delightfully received, phone calls

7. Bubbly taittinger champagne

8. Letters - REAL letters

9. Kisses - both passionate and tender

10. Cashmere sweaters, and scarves, and gloves...just cashmere.

"With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved...and left the room, it changed, it shaped itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past."
-Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

It's strange how just a few days ago I stumbled across some memories and thought, a little bit smugly, a little bit nostalgically, ah, how I have changed since then!, and here, now, only a few days later, I am confronted with the biting reality that no, I haven't changed, that what I once thought I left behind was always still there, that I took it with me.

The details are fuzzy, there are no sharp corners that my eyes can wrap around. What remains is only what always remains when memory escapes, and with it, the senses. What remains is what always remains, that is, feeling. That word, always, frightens me. Always means destined, fated, unchangeable. But maybe those aren't such bad things. Maybe it's good to have a heart that remembers, because that's what separates living from just doing. But there has to be more to it than that. What does one call living anyway? There are so many quotes - "live each day as if it is your last", "live to your fullest", etc. etc. I could go on for sentences upon sentences and still not exhaust all that is out there on the subject of living. Or, more precisely, of living a carpe diem-esque existence.

Alas, I digress. My point is that I'm only 22, and already, I am so weary with the world. My heart has bruises that will never be completely healed, my eyes are dulled and will never see colors as brightly as they once did. And a lot of that is because I can't let go. I carry around with me relics from past loves. I remember inside jokes to their most minute details. There are tears shed that have long dried, but remain crystallized in my mind, laced with anger, regret, love. I love too much, and I know not how to stop, only how to love, love, keep loving until my heart might burst, and then love some more. So I don't forget. I always remember. There is no door to shut out the past. Even if I close the door, the window remains open and memories float in, wrapping me in their warmth and familiarity.

Once in a very long while, I like to nestle in that warmth and familiarity, indulge that part of me that is at once both selfish and vulnerable. It is at those moments that I am most fragile, at those moments that even the most gentle touch will shatter me to pieces.

So, I remember. I don't relive, there is no reliving, but I don't forget. Your memory stays with me; it is the smell that lingers after the candle has gone, it is the quiver and soft sigh of a tree branch in the wind.