When my mom entered my bedroom one day, looked to the corner, and noticed a pile of no fewer than 35 stuffed animals, she demanded that I get rid of some.  I refused.  "But they're all special!," I said.  She snickered a bit, disbelief littering her face.  "If you can tell me where they all came from, then you can keep them all," she said.  And so I did.  I explained the origin of each stuffed animal, one-by-one.  Gettysburg, an ex-boyfriend, a Christmas gift from my best friend, a birthday gift from my 10th birthday.  This is a talent of mine, remembering the significance of objects.  I like this about myself.  It keeps me in touch with my roots (and also makes me a bit of a hoarder).

I sit here at my desk, looking at the  pink-framed cork board sitting over it, papers covering every inch.  The cork board itself is one that I've had since the age of 10.  My father painted the border pink with the same paint he used on the bookshelves that he built in my childhood bedroom.  The mauvy shade of pink brings warm memories and feelings of comfort.

The stories behind each of the papers adorning the cork board race through my mind as I type this.  A few greeting cards, some flyers, scrawled-upon sticky-notes. Some other odds-and-ends.  There is a thank-you note from a client.  One of my first real clients.  A client who had a tough life, worked hard in therapy, but never quite achieved what I wanted him to.  It reminds me that despite my wishes and wants, it's not my opinion about other people that matters, it's their opinions of themselves.

There is another thank-you note.  One from my best friend.  It was written to me as her bridesmaid.  Another note from her on my cork board simply states "No one should live with a brown shower curtain" and accompanied a beautiful, butterfly-patterned shower curtain that she sent to me "just because."  The small, rectangular, green paper note on my board accompanied a box of brownies from an undergrad professor who, really, turned out to be more like my aunt.  "When the going gets tough, the tough turn to...chocolate!," she wrote.  She sent this to me after hearing that my advisor was switching schools and I was left in the dust. These notes remind me that I am loved and that I love.  That friendship, not matter the distance, can carry through.

The sticky-notes are exclusively work/school related.  Most are check-lists of things to do.  One contains my  now completed thesis in its most infant form; just a few key words scribbled upon it.  Another is an old check-list from the assignments I somehow completed last semester.  I wrote it at a time when the end of the semester seemed almost impossible to reach.  Now looking at it reminds me that that everything, especially stress, is temporary.  A third post-it on my board also reminds me of this.  It is my student ID number, written on my very first day of graduate school.  A lot has passed since that post-it was posted.

A fortune from a cookie procured on a particularly long night of group studying reads "Good things are coming to you in due course of time."  I hope so.  A list of contact numbers that my parents left when they traveled abroad for two weeks, the first time my parents had ever left me, rather than me leaving them.  I conveniently lost my cell-phone then and had to get creative to let them know before they panicked about my death from across the ocean.  That was the first time my best friend ever saw me cry.  She still talks about the event as if she had seen the Loch Ness monster.  An email address for what was at one time a potential new advisor, garnered during a particularly awkward meeting with the chair of the department, a tassel recently earned at along with my Master's degree, a button attentively and caringly decorated for me by a former patient.  I vividly remember the day she snuck up behind me, dragging her IV pole behind her, to hand me the princess-encrusted metal circle with a shy smile.  Despite it's obvious child-like origins, it is one of the most beautiful things I own.

These are the bricks that have built my life.  A bunch of scattered papers to some, but more than that to me.  These are symbols.  Symbols of people, places, experiences, friendships, family, emotions.

The stuffed animals in the corner of my adulthood.

Keep on thinking,
Josie