last year, today

on this day last year, i had a job that i hated.

on my way there, my camry died.

it died for good.

i had to clean out the trunk, and as a testament to how often i clean out my car, there were layers of the past three years of my life, waiting to be rediscovered.

on top, the natasha bedingfield cd that i listened to on repeat. one song, "unwritten," over and over. i'm always the girl that gets stuck on a song until everyone around me gets sick of it.

then, a paper tiara from new years 2006, that jerry from the crowne plaza swiped for me off a guest table in the ballroom, because i absolutely had to have one. that night, when i showed back up at 4 a.m., tom the night auditor gave me the key to the honeymoon suite, and i still think he did it on purpose. how embarrassing that was. that paper tiara is still in a box, which i sincerely hope is still being taken care of. i'm always the girl who wants to stay out all night on new year's eve.

under that, a bag of clothes and dishes from the day i left joey's house and moved back in to the apartment on wilmington. cesare was living there at the time, and we watched dvd's and ate cold stone creamery and basked in our misery. i slept on my bathroom floor for days. i was always the girl who was pretty bad at dealing with heartache.

another layer: wild oats polo shirt, wrinkled and balled up. a job i loved and hated at the same time. as i walked out on my last day, i felt a weight lift off my shoulders at the same time that i started to cry. i was always the girl who was bad at saying goodbye.

an old sticky, dirty pink yoga mat. when i started paying for yearly membership at the studio, they started supplying a mat each day. i no longer needed to use an icky sticky mat. i rolled up the mat that had taken me through my first year of classes and abandoned it in the trunk. i was always the girl who remembered where she came from.

at the bottom, a pair of angel wings from a halloween costume. in october 2003 (when the car was fairly new and clean) i left a party, and since i couldn't drive while wearing wings, i put them in the trunk and made my way home, to my old apartment on wilmington, to sing gavin degraw songs and 3am and sit at my old wooden leaf table by my french doors. i was always the girl who was upset that she only got to be an angel for one day.

at the bottom, in with the spare tire: an old quarter, likely from the previous owner.

i still have it.

i'm still the girl who holds on to things.