One night a little over a year ago I found myself rifling through drawers in my old apartment trying to find a fork to help shovel a particularly sad batch of scrambled eggs into my mouth. You know, just your average Tuesday. There were multiple utensils to choose from; but try as I might, I couldn’t find the particular fork on which I’d had my mind set. I dug through drawers, scanned countertops, and scoured every room in my apartment to no avail.

It was at this point that I began hyperventilating. Things always had a tendency to disappear in my previous apartment: forks, plates, expensive pints of Salt & Straw ice cream. No object big or small was safe from the inescapable gravitational pull that was my roommate’s bedroom. There were so many things strewn about at any given time that it was actually impossible for a casual observer to discern whether our floors were carpeted or hardwood, since the floor in her room was perennially covered by a protective layer of random shit. I’m quite certain that over the course of the two years we lived together, more items went missing in her room than have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle over the entirety of its mythic history.

All this is to say that I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn a fork had gone missing. So many of its compatriots had been lost to the sink’s garbage disposal as well as our eminently non-discriminating trash can over the years. And I suppose “surprise” isn’t exactly the greatest word to describe how I felt in that moment. I wasn’t surprised, really, but rather…devastated. That’s it. Completely and utterly devastated.

Why did I get so worked up over the loss of an inanimate fucking eating utensil, you ask? It’s not like this was some special hand-crafted family heirloom that was once shoved up an ancestor’s ass who was trying to escape religious persecution in the old country. It was a very simple design: the classic four prongs attached via a little gold-colored band to a smooth handle with vertical lines running down into a rounded bottom. I could probably go out to Bed, Bath and Beyond and find an exact replica for $2.99. It was really more about what this fork represented to me, the memories associated with it, the possible soul crystallized within its years of use…

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Julianne, and from infancy to the embarrassing age of 10 or 11 I carried a ratty baby blanket named Blankely around with me everywhere I went and refused to let him (oh yes, it was a “him”) be washed for fear that he would lose his “essence”. After watching the infamous tearjerker “When She Loved Me” sequence in Toy Story 2 in theaters for the first time, I immediately ran to my room and hugged each of my stuffed animals tight while crying myself to sleep. And just this past year at age 27 (27!!) I was hesitant to lease a Honda Fit over a Toyota Corolla for fear of hurting the Corolla (you know, just the car make and model as a whole)’s feelings…because that’s definitely a thing.

It is exhausting being in my mind, where every object is a potential Pixar character. I must treat them with respect, care and love, or else risk becoming the villain of the movie. For all I know that fork had big dreams of breaking out of my kitchen and moving on to the big time, which in fork world I assume would be the dining table at Buckingham Palace. Instead she (oh yes, it’s a “she”) probably ended up in some horrifying dump somewhere.

But that’s not all there is to it. You see, this particular fork came from my childhood home. My parents had sold the house I’d grown up in quite suddenly a few years prior to this. Only two or three measly months separated the initial announcement from the new owners taking over. And so I had to work quickly to salvage as many comforting physical memories of my childhood as possible. I had to save them because every photo frame, piece of furniture, and, yes, utensil encased years of Kolb family experiences, stories, and traditions like a prehistoric fly trapped in amber.

That fork had been my preferred method of shoveling food into my mouth for as long as I could remember. I have no idea where it even came from. It didn’t match any of the other utensils in my family’s set. It just appeared one day (maybe I stole it from an elementary school sleepover – I used to be shitty like that) and felt nice to hold. It might as well have had my initials engraved onto it because there was an unspoken agreement among us all that it was my fork. Once the physical walls were gone, it helped to remind me of home. It took me back to the countless nights I spent sitting on the corner of the sectional in my mom’s room with her and my sister, eating dinner and watching some trashy reality show or old movie while the sky darkened outside our second story window. And if that fork was gone, it meant my childhood home was really gone too. And I just couldn’t accept that, even though it was the truth.

I extracted a shocking number of items big and small from the house, partly because no one else seemed all that interested in taking anything, and partly because I have a great deal of trouble letting go in general. Lamps, recliners, coffee tables, side tables, kitchenware, yearbooks, photo album after photo album…I just couldn’t stop myself. I tried to remind myself that I cared more about the memories associated with these objects than about the objects themselves. But what would happen to the memories if the objects were no longer around to spark them? I couldn’t risk forgetting either the good or the bad about my childhood, I suppose because I was afraid to admit to myself that one phase of my life had ended while another far scarier but potentially much more fulfilling one had begun.

It’s so weird to see all these objects that once held such a seemingly permanent position for over 20 years in my childhood home suddenly occupying a new lesser space in my crappy twenty-something apartment. It’s a travesty, like I’m not doing them justice. That polished mahogany antique side table from its prime position in our home’s living room once bore silent witness to just about every significant family moment: every Christmas morning gift-unwrapping, every powerless SoCal winter night where we huddled by the fire pretending we were somewhere actually cold, my parents telling us they were getting divorced…and now it just sits at the side of my bed, gathering dust, standing at the ready to receive condom wrappers casually tossed aside by regrettable one-night-stands. I can almost sense it weeping, sagging under the weight of the cheap Ikea lamp above it as though shrugging its shoulders in defeat.

So why do I hold on to all these physical things? Why do I feel so beholden to them? Will that side table someday hold a meaningful position in a new home as I build a new family? Or will I accrue so many things that I drown under them? I already feel their weight crushing me, holding me back from moving into some new necessary chapter in my life. But how can I keep track of my life if not through these objects? How can I let go, and still remember?

…

I was reluctant to catch on to the recent Marie Kondo craze, not just because of the unflattering mirror it holds up to Americans’ regressively gendered view of domestic work, but also because I thought it would only serve to make me feel even more guilty and frustrated over my propensity to imbue objects with a personality. How could I ever figure out what sparks joy for me when literally everything sparks joy for me? (God, am I a glaring symptom of late-stage capitalism or what?)

But then while bored and procrastinating some productive thing or another one afternoon, I watched a YouTube video of Marie folding clothes. The way she softly ran her hands over a plain white tee, caressing it, soothing it almost, made me realize that she and I might be more alike than I’d previously thought. “She doesn’t hate possessions,” I thought to myself. “She loves them! She understands the deep meaning they can have in all our lives!”

I was instantly hooked, and eagerly lapped up as many tips and Kondo-isms as possible as I made my way through the season until an episode about a grieving widow stopped me cold. “It’s so tough to see all these dreams that he had and this life that he lived in a pile on the floor.” I could relate so strongly to this woman admirably trying and failing to keep it together in front of a reality TV crew, because that had been me many times over, during times of loss both small and meteoric.

When my mom died in the fall of 2017 I went through her bedroom with a fine tooth comb, irrationally thinking that ravenously digging through all her possessions in a desperate effort to learn something new about her after she was lost to me forever would help me cope with that loss. I was a detective searching for that one clue that would illuminate the whole case. But the more objects I found, the more lost I felt, until I began to question whether I’d ever really known my mother in the first place, whether anyone had.

I felt similarly lost the last day we held ownership of our house. No one in my family knows this; but I returned once the place had been emptied out because I couldn’t stand the thought of not saying one last goodbye. I hesitantly walked through cavernous rooms that once held all the items that now crowded my shitty apartment. My boots echoed with each step, highlighting just how alone I was in this now unfamiliar place. I sat down on the floor in the corner of what had been my bedroom, looking around me and willing tears that never came.

It was still the same house in which I grew up; but it was no longer my home.

Those items in my mom’s room may have belonged to her; but they signified nothing without her presence there to imbue them with meaning.

That fork may have in its own weird way helped me cling to simpler times; but those were times I needed to move on from anyway.

I can let go, and still remember.

Whew, what a wild ride this has been, eh? We started out with a fork and ended up in the throes of grief. It’s crazy the connections you can make when your life is in flux. Well, I can think of only one fitting way to both end this piece and give myself a sense of peace, and that is to thank all these objects that are now lost to me in typical KonMari fashion:

Thank you to my childhood home for providing me with shelter and solace for all those years. Even as I feared your dark corners, you stood over me.

Thank you to my mother’s clothes, jewelry, beauty products, and notebooks for providing her with comfort and joy throughout her life. Even as her health deteriorated, you helped her feel like her old self.

Thank you to that godforsaken fork for helping me shovel countless bites of homemade meals and takeout alike into my mouth. Even after my home was gone, you remained to spark those memories.

Thank you for everything, and goodbye.

Now it’s time for something new.