Blog 13: Rummaging for Memories

At the top of my closet is an old pink wallet I never use anymore. I remember shopping in Macy’s with my mom and begging her to buy it for me; my birthday was close so she obliged. Now it collects dust along with my other discarded articles of clothing and torn, musty purses. It was what I found in one of the folds that caught my eye; two faded Amtrak ticket stubs from August 2006. The ink is so faint I have to squint to read the price and destinations: one, Express first $95.00, NY Penn Station to Boston, MA-the second, same class and locations, $.00.
I remember this trip to Boston with my ex boyfriend vividly. It was the summer I had come home from a strenuous year at High Point University and he wanted to take me away for the weekend. This was a time when I still thought I would be in love with the same person forever, before I realized that is an exception not the rule. It rained the morning we left and it rained the night we came back (and most of the time we were in Boston as well). I told my parents I was going to my friend Dawn’s beach house in LBI (the same excuse I would employ a year later when flying to Las Vegas for 24 hours for a Celine Dion concert, which turned out to be cancelled anyway).
It was the first time I had ever ridden a train not counting the NYC subway, which in my opinion is not so much a train as a moving container of filth and malfeasance. I was really excited to return to Boston for a second time, the first being an eighth grade trip where we were escorted to each destination on our itinerary like little sheep. Once we got to Boston though, I don’t remember doing much except watching TV in our hotel room and stopping at an enormous Barnes & Noble on the way to dinner at Applebee’s.
Tom loved to travel; in fact I remember him leaving me a least once a month to go on some random excursion to Chicago, California, Pittsburgh, once even Alabama (I still haven’t figured that one out.) Toward the end, I found myself needing him the most when he was gone and finally it was too much to deal with. Selfish or not, I need a boyfriend who will stay by my side. When I met my current boyfriend Adam I was infatuated, and slowly began to hate myself for falling out of love with Tom. It’s funny how the objects of our greatest affection sometimes lose their luster and we find we don’t need them like we use to, kind of like the pink leather wallet I used to love.